The morning belonged to the sellers. In Seoul the Kospi sank 7.6%, in Tokyo the Nikkei fell nearly 5%, and by the time the sun reached New York the AI sell-off looked ready to run for a third day. It did not. The Dow added almost 600 points, a gain of more than 1%, the S&P 500 came back from red to finish up 0.3%, and the Nasdaq turned a decline of more than 1% into a small advance.
What pulled the market back was the bond rally. Investors fleeing tech for two days ran into Treasuries, and the 10-year yield sank to 5.09%, with the 10-year and 30-year both posting their biggest daily drops since February. That came on a day when September’s wholesale inflation index was reported at its fastest pace since 2022. Bonds rallied anyway. Homebuilders liked the arithmetic: Lennar gained more than 5% on hopes of cheaper mortgage rates.
Chips had the hardest morning and the softest landing. Taiwan Semiconductor fell 2% even after reporting a record profit that beat estimates on global demand for AI chips. The hyperscalers, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet, held steady or rose while the physical build-out bled. Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre counted Vertiv down more than 6%, and six suppliers of cooling, electrical gear and construction, among them GE Vernova, Eaton and EMCOR, down a combined $94 billion since Oct. 6, more than $23 billion of it on Thursday alone. “The AI trade is getting whacked for a second straight day”, he wrote. “Its biggest spenders are holding their ground.”
CoreWeave was the day’s drama. The heavily indebted AI cloud provider, beaten down 15% on Wednesday in its worst session since February, sank roughly 10% in early trading, then swung to a gain, its biggest intraday comeback since Aug. 3. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, speaking at a Bloomberg event in Stockholm, gave the recovery its push: “CoreWeave’s strength is improving every day,” he said, adding “I’m optimistic. Their cost of capital is actually decreasing.” The debt market stayed unconvinced. Insurance against a CoreWeave default hit a record, at prices implying roughly 60% odds of a default inside five years.
The strangest number of the day belonged to Apple. “In the midst of the AI sell-off, the iPhone maker’s market capitalization crossed the $5 trillion mark”, Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley reported, the second time Apple has reached the milestone after first touching it in July, as investors parked money in the one giant that has not had to spend billions building AI data centers. Retail joined the rebound, with Nike and Lululemon each up around 5% despite brutal years. The scene by the close was relief, not triumph. Lennar is still down roughly 25% this year, and the fresh inflation reading leaves the Federal Reserve’s next move an open question.
Sources
- Asian stocks plummet as AI debt and inflation fears bite, Nikkei Asia
- Stock market today: Dow jumps, S&P 500, Nasdaq gain as AI jitters fade, Yahoo Finance (live coverage October 15, 2026; Ines Ferre, Jared Blikre, Anjali Robins)
