"Be afraid. Be very afraid." A belated spooktacular post of market news

By this gets posted, there's a good chance that retail investors will be cheerfully buying the dip and Wall Street will be sunny again but a lot of veteran observers are still waiting for the really scary part.

“.. Everybody is trying to raise money for their build-outs before the liquidity dries up,” said Ben Connard. “Ultimately, there might not be enough ..” @wsj.com www.wsj.com/finance/the-...

[image or embed]— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) October 31, 2026 at 4:59 AM

(WSJ) - OpenAI has raised less than half of the $30 billion it had initially targeted for its latest funding round, with market jitters over the AI trade dampening investor appetite for one of the industry’s biggest names. @wsj.com www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...

[image or embed]— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) October 31, 2026 at 4:43 AM

OpenAI trimming its target for its next round of funding from $30B down to $20B. This is probably not gonna help the vibes come start of trading on Mon. www.cnbc.com/2026/10/31/o...

[image or embed]— Lora Kolodny (@lorak.bsky.social) October 31, 2026 at 2:22 PM

‘“What’s scary is the circularity both in fixed income and the equity world should there be a correction.“ This interdependence also makes the market less diversified. Shares of companies that depend financially on each other should move more closely together.‘ www.wsj.com/tech/the-tan...

[image or embed]— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder.com) November 1, 2026 at 9:00 AM

George Steer writing for the Financial Times:

US tech stocks tumble as concerns over AI spending intensify
US tech stocks tumbled on Friday as revelations that Anthropic may receive a junk rating after its Wall Street debut fuelled fresh concerns over the borrowing spree underpinning the AI boom. The Nasdaq 100 closed 3.5 per cent lower, following a $500bn rout in Alphabet shares on Thursday that sent the tech-heavy index down 1.4 per cent. The Nasdaq briefly entered correction territory, down 10 per cent from its October 6 record high, before recovering slightly towards the end of trade. The index hit session lows on Friday after the FT reported that Blackstone told investors that Anthropic might not secure an investment-grade rating following its initial public offering, reversing its previous guidance. A speculative-grade rating for Anthropic would hinder the AI company’s ability to access financing without the backing of higher-rated companies, which have been helping finance its vast spending on computing power. It comes when Big Tech companies are already spending hundreds of billions of dollars on chips, data centres and other AI infrastructure. Anthropic, which revealed its IPO filing on Monday, was “critical” to the broader AI narrative, said analysts at Vital Knowledge. Friday’s market rout began after Intel, in which the US government has a roughly 10 per cent stake, reported weaker than expected sales forecasts, undermining confidence in the broader AI boom. Its shares dropped 29 per cent — the chipmaker’s worst session since 1974.“Investors are waking up to the fact that the chip shortage may be an illusion,” said the chief investment officer at a North American hedge fund. Demand for components “should not be soft right now, in this part of the cycle,” they added, referring to Intel’s earnings report....“The combination of deteriorating cash flows and rising capital commitments means the debate over whether AI returns can ultimately justify the scale of investment may not be resolved any time soon,” said Emmanuel Cau, head of European and Apac equity strategy at Barclays.“The direction of travel into next year should naturally be towards slower earnings growth” from the big technology companies, Cau said.In a sign of the market’s turbulence, SoftBank-backed Nigerian finance group OPay, which was scheduled to debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday following its $4bn IPO, never began trading.“I’ve never seen that before,” said one US asset management firm executive. “I’ve been doing this a long time through a lot of different IPO cycles.”Crypto-linked stocks were also among Friday’s worst performers following a huge hack on Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Robinhood fell 7.2 per cent and Coinbase lost 10.6 per cent.Analysts warn that rising anxiety about the sustainability of the AI infrastructure boom would make it harder for companies to raise further debt and equity, which would weigh on spending on data centresThose concerns also hit Asian tech stocks earlier on Friday, with Japan’s tech-heavy Nikkei 225 index closing down 2.1 per cent. OpenAI investor SoftBank fell 6 per cent, taking its losses from its June peak to 48 per cent.“The major tech names are entering a no man’s land where they become uninvestable,” said Neil Newman, Japan equity strategist at Astris Advisory in Tokyo. “When heavyweights like SoftBank halve in value over a few months, it is neither a buy nor a sell. Investors will want to simply keep out of the way.” ...Concerns about AI spending have grown as profitable companies such as Google plough their free cash flow into capital expenditure and increasingly turn to public markets to raise more funds.Shares of Google parent Alphabet tumbled 13 per cent on Thursday after the company reported a second straight quarter of cash burn and revealed “AI mode” searches were threatening its core advertising business.“Expectations built into [tech share] prices are being challenged and are now resetting,” said Hank Calenti, global markets strategist at SMBC. “The weakness is due to a combination of some firms not earning as much as expected and others spending more on capex than forecast.”Prime brokerage data shows hedge funds had built up big exposure to the Magnificent Seven tech stocks heading into earnings season. Those positions were now being violently unwound, according to Charlie McElligott, a strategist at Nomura.