StockMarket.News

South Korea's KOSPI is now down 40% from its record high

The index peaked at 9,115 on June 22. It's trading near 5,416 on Friday, per Yahoo Finance data

The KOSPI fell as much as 4.1% to 5,306 at the lows today, its weakest level since late July, as Wall Street's AI selloff spread to Seoul

Samsung Electronics dropped nearly 4% and SK Hynix slid more than 3% early on, even after SK Hynix scrapped plans for a US listing of its Solidigm unit, per The Herald Business

Foreign investors dumped a net 256.5 billion won of KOSPI shares in early trading, per Aju Press

The index has now lost 23% in a single month, from 7,081 on Sept 23

Overnight the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index sank 6.7% and the Nasdaq fell 2.6%, its worst day since June, after $Meta Platforms(META.US)'s $2.12 billion free cash flow deficit reignited fears about AI spending

Korea was the purest AI memory trade on the planet this year, which is exactly why it's unwinding the fastest. Even after this crash the KOSPI is still up 41% from a year ago, a reminder of how much froth got priced in on the run to 9,000

Source: StockMarket.News

Investors are on pace to pour a record $1.3 trillion into global stock funds in 2026, the biggest annual intake ever, per BofA

That would smash the previous record set in 2021, which came in under $1 trillion, based on EPFR fund flow data in BofA's latest Flow Show

US equity funds are on a record $636 billion pace, and tech funds are on track for a record $196 billion

In the week through Oct 14 alone, $64.5 billion flowed into stock funds while $53.1 billion left cash funds

Now that money is getting tested. The Nasdaq 100 fell 2.9% on Thursday, its worst day since June 23, and $SOXL dropped 20.5%

South Korea's KOSPI is down another 2.6% early Friday

Record inflows mean a lot of fresh money bought in near the highs. Even BofA's Michael Hartnett says he's leaning risk-off for the next 3-4 weeks while the cash keeps pouring in, and days like today show how fast crowded trades can unwind

Source: StockMarket.News

Trump just invoked the Defense Production Act for oil

A presidential memo signed Thursday declares US petroleum production, refining, pipelines, storage and marine terminals "essential to the national defense," per the White House

It directs the Secretary of War to make purchases, commitments and financial support to expand that capacity, and waives the usual DPA requirements

That replaces an April 20 order that had put the Energy Secretary in charge

Brent crude is near $112.87, up 3.7% today and about 56% above its $72.48 close before the US-Israel strikes on Iran in late February, per Yahoo Finance data

Last week Vance said the DPA would be used to expand a $Delek US(DK.US) refinery in Texas, and Congress set aside $1 billion in DPA money for energy projects last year, per Reuters

The midterms are 12 days away, and only 36% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the economy in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll

Handing oil to the Pentagon shows Washington now treats fuel as a wartime supply problem, not a market one. But new wells, pipelines and refinery capacity take years to build, so this does little for $113 Brent before Nov 3

Source: StockMarket.News

SpaceX wants access to at least 80,000 US cell towers to build a 4th national wireless carrier, per Bloomberg

$SpaceX(SPCX.US) is in talks with at least one major tower owner, including $Crown Castle(CCI.US), and the deals could be worth billions of dollars

Tower stocks ripped after hours. $Crown Castle(CCI.US) is up 9.7%, $SBA Communications(SBAC.US) 7.1% and $American Tower(AMT.US) 4.6%, per Yahoo Finance data

The carriers went the other way. $AT & T(T.US)-Mobile US(TMUS.US) is down 4.3%, $Verizon(VZ.US) 3.6% and $AT & T(T.US) 3.3%

SpaceX recently bought low-band spectrum and has FCC approval for 15,000 direct-to-phone satellites. Musk said on this week's earnings call that Starlink Mobile is on a path to become a major US carrier

Pairing satellites with ground towers is how SpaceX gets real indoor coverage, and that is a direct threat to the big three. Tower owners win either way because they rent space to everyone, which is why the market is paying them first and asking questions later

Source: StockMarket.News

Iran just threatened to strike data centers, AI facilities and undersea internet cables across the Gulf

Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said oil facilities, cables, data centers and AI sites in as many as seven Gulf countries could be hit if the US and Israel attack again, per The Guardian

He told Iran's state-run Press TV that more than $2 trillion of US-linked tech infrastructure in the region could be at risk, per Al Arabiya

"We have not yet included these assets among our targets. But if war breaks out, many of these cables, data centers, artificial intelligence facilities, and numerous other sites will be destroyed," Rezaei said

US media report a target list for a new joint US-Israel strike has been drawn up for after the November 3 midterms, per The Guardian

Brent crude is up 3.3% to about $113 a barrel today and the Nasdaq 100 is down 3.5%, per Yahoo Finance data

US tech giants have spent the past year pitching the Gulf as the next AI hub, built on cheap power and sovereign money. Tehran is now openly naming that buildout as a target, which adds a war-risk premium to an AI trade the market is already questioning

Source: StockMarket.News

Americans now hold a record 48.2% of their financial assets in stocks

That is the highest share in Federal Reserve data going back to 1945, per the Fed's latest Z.1 Financial Accounts for the second quarter of 2026

The dot-com peak was 38.7% in early 2000. The 2007 peak before the financial crisis was 33.5%

Households held $74.0 trillion in stocks, directly and through funds and retirement accounts, out of $153.5 trillion in total financial assets

The share jumped from 44.7% in the first quarter, and household net worth hit a record $195.9 trillion

That snapshot is from the end of June. Today the S&P 500 fell 1.2% and the Nasdaq 100 dropped 2.9%, its worst day since June 23

Retail ownership is a big reason dips keep getting bought so fast. But with nearly half of household savings riding on equities, a real drawdown now hits consumer spending harder than it did in 2000 or 2008. The next Fed update lands Dec 10

Source: StockMarket.News

$SOXL just crashed 20.5% in a single day, one week after traders poured a record $3.8 billion into it

The 3x leveraged semiconductor ETF closed at $82.11 today, its worst day since June 23, per Yahoo Finance data

The record weekly inflow came during the week of Oct 16, as buyers piled in while the fund was already falling, per Seeking Alpha

$SOXL is now down about 73% from its June 22 high of $300.77

Chips led the whole selloff. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 6.7%, $AMD(AMD.US) dropped 8.1%, $Micron Tech(MU.US) 6.3% and $NVIDIA(NVDA.US) 4.4%

The Nasdaq 100 lost 2.9% for its worst day since June 23, while the Dow finished slightly green and $Apple(AAPL.US) closed at a record high

Leverage cuts both ways. Getting back to the June high would now take a 266% gain, and anyone who bought the dip last week with 3x exposure is already deep underwater

Source: StockMarket.News

$Apple(AAPL.US) is the only Magnificent 7 stock in the green today, and it is trading above its record close

Shares are up about 0.7% near $346, above Wednesday's all-time closing high of $343.99, per Yahoo Finance data

Every other member is red. $Meta Platforms(META.US) is down 8%, $Amazon(AMZN.US) 5%, $NVIDIA(NVDA.US) 4.4%, $Alphabet(GOOGL.US) 3.4%, $Tesla(TSLA.US) 2.6% and $Microsoft(MSFT.US) 2.1%

The Nasdaq 100 is down 3%, on pace for its worst day since June

Per Yahoo Finance, $Apple(AAPL.US), $Eli Lilly(LLY.US) and $Walmart(WMT.US) have added more than $400 billion in market value since chip stocks peaked in early October, while $Meta Platforms(META.US), $Alphabet(GOOGL.US) and $SpaceX(SPCX.US) have lost nearly twice that

The dividing line is AI spending. $Meta Platforms(META.US) just narrowed its capex plan to $135 billion to $145 billion and created a new class of nonvoting shares it can sell to raise money

For two years the knock on $Apple(AAPL.US) was that it was behind in AI. Now that the bill for the buildout is coming due, not spending $100 billion+ a year on data centers is starting to look like the feature, and Apple has become where money hides inside Big Tech

Source: StockMarket.News

$Moderna(MRNA.US) just dropped about 24% after its closely watched cancer vaccine data appeared to leak early

The Phase 3 melanoma results showed up on the medical news site Oncology Central late this morning and were taken down shortly after, per

Source: StockMarket.News

Elon Musk just put about $1 billion into Skydance, and the stock still turned red

Semafor broke the news this morning, citing people familiar with the matter

$Skydance(SKYD.US) jumped as high as $8.46 within minutes, up 7.5% on the day

Then it reversed. Shares are now near $7.74, down 1.7% from Wednesday's $7.87 close, per Yahoo Finance data

The money arrives alongside fresh equity from other Skydance investors, including board member Laurene Powell Jobs, as the company cuts costs after its Warner Bros. Discovery takeover

It also comes full circle. Larry Ellison put $1 billion into Musk's 2022 deal to take X private, and he personally guaranteed more than $40 billion of the equity behind the Warner Bros. deal

Even with the Musk check, $Skydance(SKYD.US) is still about 55% below its 52-week high of $17.16

When a $1 billion vote of confidence from Musk can't hold a pop for 10 minutes, the market is saying it cares more about debt and cost cuts than famous names on the cap table. The real test is whether this cash buys time for the streaming pivot or just plugs a hole

Source: StockMarket.News

$Meta Platforms(META.US) just erased about $245 billion in market value from its post-earnings high

The stock jumped as high as $748.80 after hours Wednesday, up 7.4% on a revenue beat

It is now trading near $653, down 6.4% on the day, per Yahoo Finance data

What changed overnight was the fine print

Meta's 10-Q filed this morning shows about $825 billion in future leases and contracts, much of it tied to AI data centers and cloud capacity, up from nearly $700 billion disclosed in July per Bloomberg

That includes $454.52 billion in non-cancelable commitments, with $121.41 billion due in 2027 alone

Q3 revenue grew 26% to $64.60 billion, but free cash flow was negative $2.12 billion after $34.91 billion of capex

Meta also created a new non-voting Class C stock that it says can be used for future capital raises

The ad business is still growing fast. The market is now pricing what it costs to keep up in AI, and a quarter that looked like a beat at 4 PM turned into a balance sheet question by the morning

Source: StockMarket.News

The 10-year Treasury yield just dipped below 5% for the first time since September 23

It touched 4.996% this morning per Bloomberg data, down about 15 basis points on the day

That is roughly 30 basis points below the October 5 peak of 5.31%

And it is happening with Brent crude above $111, the highest since May

Money is rotating out of AI stocks and into bonds. The Nasdaq is down 2.2% and the S&P 500 is down 1.4% as $Meta Platforms(META.US), $Tesla(TSLA.US) and $Amazon(AMZN.US) slide (AP)

Per Reuters, the US 10-year even traded below France's 10-year yield this morning for the first time in 13 years

Normally an oil spike pushes yields higher on inflation fears. This time the bond market is treating the AI selloff as a growth scare, and that is the bigger signal. If capex doubts keep spreading, falling yields could become the cushion the rest of the market leans on

Source: StockMarket.News

Short sellers betting against AI data center stocks just made $6 billion in October

That is paper profit in just 22 days, per ORTEX data reported by Reuters this morning

Bets against $Nebius(NBIS.US) made the most at $2.94 billion, even though Nebius shorts are still down $3.33 billion on the year

$Coreweave(CRWV.US) shorts made nearly $1.7 billion as the stock slid almost 30% this month

$IREN(IREN.US) and $Applied Digital(APLD.US) shorts made more than $1.2 billion combined, and $Core Scientific, Inc.(CORZ.US) shorts added $115 million

Short interest across all five now sits between 20% and 26% of free float, with about $17 billion of stock sold short, and borrowing is still cheap

The fear is simple. These companies borrowed heavily to build AI capacity, and with rate hike bets rising the math on that debt gets harder every week

But 20% to 26% of the float sold short is a crowded trade. If one of these names posts a strong contract or a clean refinancing, the squeeze could be just as violent as the drop

Source: StockMarket.News

Saudi Aramco just evacuated its headquarters for the first time since the Iran war began

Staff at the Dhahran HQ of the world's largest oil company were told Thursday to leave and work remotely, per Reuters and Bloomberg

A Houthi strike hit the same compound earlier this month, damaging several floors and sparking a fire

On Wednesday, a drone attack near Aramco's Shaybah oilfield, which pumps about 1 million barrels a day, killed two people, and a strike on Dammam's airport about 9 miles from the HQ killed two more

The US has now ordered non-emergency diplomats and their families to leave Saudi Arabia

Brent crude jumped to $111.86 this morning, up nearly 3% on the day, its highest level since May and 54% above the $72 it traded at before the war started in late February

For months the market priced the risk around Hormuz. Now the strikes are landing on the infrastructure Saudi Arabia built to route around Hormuz, including the East-West pipeline, and that is a much harder risk premium to fade

Source: StockMarket.News

China's stock market just entered a bear market

The CSI 300 fell 1.8% Thursday to 4,036, its lowest close since July 2025 and 20.2% below its June 22 peak, per Reuters

It has now fallen for 10 straight weeks, the longest losing streak since the index launched in 2005, and it is down again this week

AI and chip stocks led the selloff. The ChiNext Composite dropped 4.4%, the CSI Semiconductor index fell 3.6% and the CSI AI index lost 3.3%

In Hong Kong, $Alibaba(BABA.US) dove more than 6% and Tencent $Tencent(TCEHY.US) slid 2.9%

Stronger than expected Q3 GDP growth of 4.5% actually hurt, because it lowered hopes for more stimulus from Beijing

Retail investors drive about 90% of daily trading in China, per HSBC, so when confidence cracks the selling feeds on itself

The AI trade is wobbling here too, with Nasdaq 100 futures down 1.9% this morning. China's chip names ran first and are now falling hardest, which makes them a preview worth watching for what happens when AI hype meets soft earnings

Source: StockMarket.News

$Lam Research(LRCX.US) just reported the biggest quarter in its history, and the stock fell 7% after hours

Revenue hit a record $8.22 billion, up 54% from $5.32 billion a year ago and up 22% from last quarter

Adjusted EPS came in at $2.20 vs $2.18 expected, with record profit and a 40.2% adjusted operating margin

CEO Tim Archer credited AI driving higher chip demand and more complex devices

December quarter guidance is $8.60 billion in revenue, plus or minus $400 million, and $2.33 in adjusted EPS

Shares traded near $241 after hours, about 44% below the June 30 close of $433 and roughly 30% lower than on Oct 2

When a company prints records and the stock still drops 7%, the market is not doubting this quarter. It is doubting how long the AI chip spending cycle lasts, and right now nobody wants to pay up to find out

Source: StockMarket.News

AI just found a bug that puts up to 70% of the world's websites at risk, per The Wall Street Journal

The flaws, dubbed PHP2Shell, sit inside PHP itself, the language that runs WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Wikipedia

Every PHP version going back to 5.4 is affected, and the vulnerable code sat unnoticed for more than a decade

Attackers can take over servers remotely without logging in, or pull passwords, tokens and API keys straight out of memory

Researchers at Wiz and Calif cracked it with frontier AI models through OpenAI's Patch the Planet program, and Wiz ranks it among the most severe flaws in software history

PHP rushed out a patch Wednesday after details leaked online, and Cloudflare $CloudFlare(NET.US) is already seeing early attacks

Finland temporarily shut down its government's public websites and the Dutch cyber agency took its own site offline, per the BBC

This is the other side of the AI trade. The same models that turned a decade-old bug into a working exploit in hours are getting better every month, so every company running a website just got a surprise patching bill, and cybersecurity budgets look a lot less optional

Source: StockMarket.News

Wall Street expected $Tesla(TSLA.US) to BURN $4.92 billion of cash in Q3

It generated +$1.53 billion instead

Capex came in at $4.73 billion vs $7.96 billion expected, and $Tesla(TSLA.US) cut its full-year capex guide to $20 billion from $25 billion

Adjusted EPS was $0.48 vs $0.44 expected, while revenue was flat at $28.05 billion

The weak spot is margins, with operating margin falling to 2.6% from 5.8% a year ago and GAAP net income down to $787 million from $1.37 billion

Optimus production has started in Fremont and Cybercabs launch in Dallas next month

Same night $Meta Platforms(META.US) posted its first negative free cash flow since 2012, so $Tesla(TSLA.US) spending less than feared stands out, but nearly $4 billion of extra unpaid supplier bills helped the cash number and that timing boost will not repeat every quarter

Source: StockMarket.News

The US and Israel have drawn up plans for renewed strikes on Iran after the November 3 midterms, per The New York Times

Targets would likely include Iran's energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and missile and drone arsenal

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met Netanyahu in Israel this week, and some US planners think an intensive three-day campaign could force Iran into concessions

Iran has threatened to widen retaliation beyond ships and energy sites to data centers and undersea internet cables

Trump has vetoed a return to major combat several times this year, including this month, so new strikes are far from certain

Brent crude is already near $110, more than 50% above the roughly $72 it traded at before the first round of strikes in late February

Oil has priced a long standoff, not a second war. Hitting Iran's energy grid would turn a shipping risk into a supply risk, and with diesel already above $6 that lands straight on inflation

Source: StockMarket.News

$Meta Platforms(META.US) just posted NEGATIVE free cash flow for the first time since 2012, the year it went public

Q3 free cash flow came in at -$2.12 billion, down from +$10.63 billion a year ago

Capex hit a record $34.91 billion in one quarter, up 80% year over year, while cash from operations grew just 9% to $32.79 billion

The ad machine is still humming. Revenue rose 26% to $64.60 billion, beating estimates, and Q4 guidance of $73 to $76 billion came in above Wall Street

$Meta Platforms(META.US) also confirmed the new non-voting Class C stock tonight, saying the scale of AI investment required is "significant"

It narrowed 2026 capex to $135 to $145 billion and says it will keep investing aggressively in 2027

The most profitable ad business on earth now spends every dollar it makes and then some on data centers. Buybacks are gone, a new share class is coming, and the AI bet is no longer funded by spare cash

Source: StockMarket.News

Mark Zuckerberg is considering leaving California if voters pass a one-time 5% tax on billionaires, per a $Meta Platforms(META.US) filing reported by Bloomberg

Prop 40 is on the November 3 ballot and would hit billionaires who lived in California on January 1, 2026, with the tax due in 2027

$Meta Platforms(META.US) says the tax could leave Zuckerberg with a multibillion-dollar bill, potentially forcing him to sell voting shares to pay it

That is the real reason behind tonight's new non-voting Class C stock, which $Meta Platforms(META.US) will hand out as a dividend to every shareholder starting January 19, 2027

In return, Zuckerberg signed an agreement to stay a resident of California, or wherever $Meta Platforms(META.US) is headquartered, for 8 years

Backers say Prop 40 raises $100 billion, while Stanford economists estimate about $30 billion and warn the state could end up $39 billion worse off

$Meta Platforms(META.US) tried a similar non-voting share plan back in 2016 and abandoned it in September 2017

The headline is about taxes, but the real story for shareholders is control. Zuckerberg keeps his voting power no matter what happens in November, and every $Meta Platforms(META.US) holder gets a new stack of shares with no say attached. When the next big AI spending bill comes due, those non-voting shares are the currency

Source: StockMarket.News

China's holdings of US Treasuries just fell to $590.7 billion, the lowest since 2008

Beijing cut another $27.3 billion in August alone, per new US Treasury TIC data

China is now down 55% from its $1.32 trillion peak in November 2013

Japan, still the largest holder, cut $35.6 billion to $1.068 trillion, its lowest since December 2024

Meanwhile the UK climbed to $1.01 trillion and now sits just $58.8 billion behind Japan for the top spot

Total foreign holdings still rose $83 billion to $9.33 trillion, the 6th-highest on record, led by Canada adding $38 billion

The buyers of US debt are quietly changing. China and Japan are stepping back while London, Canada and offshore financial centers fill the gap, and with deficits running hot, who keeps showing up at Treasury auctions matters more than ever for yields

Source: StockMarket.News

$Meta Platforms(META.US) was just ordered to pay $25 billion in what New Mexico's attorney general calls possibly the largest state verdict against a company in American history

A Santa Fe judge set the penalty today in the state's Cambridge Analytica privacy case, per CNBC and AP. A jury found in September that $Meta Platforms(META.US) misled users about data privacy and content moderation

The jury counted more than 43 million violations of the state's Unfair Practices Act, at up to $5,000 each. That put the theoretical maximum at $219.5 billion

New Mexico asked for $35 to $40 billion. $Meta Platforms(META.US) argued it should pay no more than $3.45 billion, per Reuters

For scale, the record $5 billion FTC privacy penalty in 2019 is a fifth of this. $Meta Platforms(META.US) is expected to appeal

The stock is still up about 2% today ahead of earnings after the close tonight. Wall Street is treating $25 billion as a cost of doing business for a company this size. The bigger risk is the precedent, because per-violation state laws just turned a decade-old scandal into a bill five times the size of that FTC fine

Source: StockMarket.News

AI companies have borrowed nearly half a trillion dollars in 2026, and the year isn't over

Borrowers tied to the AI buildout have priced close to $500 billion of new debt this year, per Bloomberg data and Goldman Sachs Research estimates

The hyperscalers alone have issued $194 billion so far in 2026, up from $108 billion in all of 2025, per Goldman

And they're only about 40% of the total. The rest is chipmakers, data center developers, utilities and project finance deals

$Oracle(ORCL.US), $Broadcom(AVGO.US) and $SpaceX(SPCX.US) are among the biggest borrowers, and there have been nine U.S. high-grade bond deals of $25 billion or more this year, the most ever per Bloomberg

Morgan Stanley expects AI-related debt issuance to reach nearly $570 billion for the full year

The AI boom started out funded by cash flow. It's increasingly funded by credit, and credit markets are less forgiving than stock buybacks. With $Meta Platforms(META.US) reporting tonight, how it plans to pay for its next round of capex matters as much as the capex number itself

Source: StockMarket.News

Nearly half of the entire S&P 500 now sits in just 15 companies

The 15 largest companies make up about 46% of the index by weight, per Slickcharts data this morning. The other 485 share the remaining 54%

$NVIDIA(NVDA.US) alone is about 7.4% of the index. That's as much as the 237 smallest S&P 500 stocks combined

$NVIDIA(NVDA.US), $Apple(AAPL.US), $Alphabet(GOOGL.US) and $Microsoft(MSFT.US) together are more than a quarter of the index at roughly 26%

Two of those 15 report after the bell tonight, $Meta Platforms(META.US) and $Tesla(TSLA.US), worth about 4.6% of the index between them

This is why owning "the whole market" isn't the diversification it sounds like. Most index fund money is now riding on a handful of AI-linked giants, so a single earnings night like tonight can move the S&P more than hundreds of smaller companies ever could

Source: StockMarket.News