The Nasdaq 100 had its worst week since April 2025. During that same week, buyers put $3.8 billion into a leveraged semiconductor fund.
Tech was falling hard. Some investors were buying the drop.
Tech Fell, but Buyers Stepped In
The Nasdaq 100 lost 5.5% for the week and finished 7% below its high from 10 days earlier. It fell 2.15% on Friday.
Semiconductors had been under pressure even longer. $SOXX closed lower for 9 straight sessions through October 16, matching its previous record streak. Yet $SOXL, a 3x leveraged semiconductor fund, drew $3.8 billion during the week after falling 35% over the previous 7 trading sessions. One post questioned whether those buyers had moved too early.
The weakness was uneven. Ryan Detrick said 378 S&P 500 stocks rose on one day, the most since June 12. Fundstrat pointed to healthcare reaching new all-time highs. One X post reported an $850 billion rebound in US stocks from the previous day’s lows. Another reported that the 10-year note yield fell to its lowest level since September 23rd.
CoreWeave’s Demand Comes With a Financing Question
$CRWV fell 11.91% on Friday, while $NBIS fell 12.18%. Deutsche Bank said it saw no company-specific deterioration at CoreWeave that justified the size of the selloff. It tied much of the decline to financing concerns after CoreWeave bond yields approached 15%.
Bank of America said CoreWeave’s contracted backlog grew from roughly $26 billion in Q1 2025 to over $104 billion in Q2 2026. CoreWeave is targeting 8 GW of power capacity by 2030.
That demand and the cost of building capacity belong in the same conversation. CoreWeave’s CEO said the company raised $35 billion in 18 months. He described deals where customer payments first cover the data center, power, interest, and principal before anything flows back to CoreWeave.
The roughly 15% yield on traded bonds is one financing figure, but the script gives others. An author of a post attributed to Jensen Huang put CoreWeave’s weighted average interest rate at 7.8%, down from nearly 15%, and cited convertible debt at 2.875%. A separate post cited $8.5 billion of GPU-backed financing in March 2026, including a fixed-rate tranche at 5.9%.
A CoreWeave skeptic offered a harsher reading of the credit-default-swap market. The skeptic said a level of 1,047 basis points implied a 58% chance of default within 5 years. That is the skeptic’s interpretation of the price. Another writer expects many smaller neoclouds to fail or be acquired, while naming CoreWeave and Nebius as likely survivors.
Dan Ives called the selloff in $CRWV, $IREN, and $NBIS a buying opportunity. He said chip demand reportedly exceeded supply by 13 to 1. He also estimated that 5-10% of planned data centers may never be built because of financing and political risks.
Inflation Rose, but the Rate Decision Was Still Open
September producer prices rose 1.3% from the prior month and 6.3% from a year earlier. Consumer inflation reached 3.7%. The Hormuz Letter reported Brent near $110 and US oil at $100 as tensions rose in the Middle East.
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh gave no signal about the October 27 and 28 meeting. Jesse Cohen said prediction-market odds of a 25 bp hike fell from 55% to 13%, leaving an 87% chance of a hold. Those were market odds, not a Fed decision.
President Donald Trump pressed for cuts and renewed his threat to stop trading with countries that have surpluses with the US unless the Fed lowers rates. His call for cuts sits beside those inflation figures.
September retail sales rose 0.8%, helped by gasoline receipts, while underlying sales were softer. Higher receipts do not tell us that people bought more goods. A consumer-spending blogger made that point and said one in five US households was behind on loan payments, while more than six in 10 Americans were living paycheck to paycheck.
AI Products Advanced as Supply and Prices Drew Scrutiny
Meta introduced a personal AI agent powered by Muse Spark. It has a free tier and plans costing $20 and $100 a month, and it can handle appointments and forms. Users must opt out if they do not want Meta to use their interactions to train its models.
Meta has not settled on a plan for taking a cut of shopping transactions through the agent. The product gives investors something concrete to watch as the company faces pressure to show returns on AI spending.
Behind the products, the buildout continues. An X post said Apple and Meta are working to run the 816B-parameter Muse Spark across linked Mac Studios. A TSMC post cited $46.72 billion in quarterly revenue, versus $12.14 billion in the same quarter of 2020, even as its ADR closed down 1.8%.
Supply is another constraint. Shay Boloor reported Michael Dell saying memory shortages will get worse next year. Boloor cited about $95 billion in AI server backlog, with DRAM supply limiting deliveries. Korean media reported Samsung and SK Hynix showing HBM4E products targeting speeds of up to 16 Gbps.
Prices and expectations were under scrutiny elsewhere. A linked X post attributed to Reuters said some Anthropic investors were considering lowering its IPO valuation from $2 trillion to $1.5 trillion. A Broadcom post paired a 17.5% share decline over 6 months with the company’s stated aim to exceed $30 in earnings per share in fiscal 2028. Its $600 share-price calculation was the post author’s valuation case, not a company forecast.
A Fundstrat speaker said profit growth could be the best in 30 years and cited GDP estimates of 2.2%. A speaker in the JPM global markets blog called US developed markets expensive and warned about debt that must be refinanced at higher rates.
Fidelity said the average 401(k) balance rose 10.5% from March through June, to $75,200 for participants in their 30s and $156,800 for those in their 40s. In a separate portfolio blog, the speaker said his Bitcoin allocation would be zero because he views its price as driven by speculation. A SpaceX Mobile skeptic said SpaceX had spent $25 billion on spectrum rights, while Starlink accounted for 0.00002% of T-Mobile traffic. The skeptic estimated a standalone national network would need at least 10 million terminals.
Reuters said Tesla Roadster buyers will have to wait until 2028. $MSTR fell 9.56% after MSCI adopted rules that could remove it from its indexes in November. $VRNS rose 2.92% after Proofpoint agreed to buy it for $6.3 billion.