Retail investors bought $9.1 billion of US stocks last week, the most in 16 weeks. The Nasdaq fell 4.5% that week.
AI stocks were falling, but retail buyers kept putting money into the market. The case for a rebound depends on the AI trade’s underlying fundamentals holding up.
Tech Fell While Retail Buying Rose
The Nasdaq fell 2.1% for the day, and chips had their eighth straight down day. $MU fell 5.6%, $INTC fell 5.8%, and $CRWV sank about 12%. $CRWV ended the week down roughly 25%, while $PLTR entered correction territory. Goldman noted that hedge funds had sold AI names at one of the fastest paces in more than a year.
Retail buying went the other way. Last week’s $9.1 billion followed $6.4 billion the prior week and $4.8 billion two weeks earlier. Semiconductors drew $2.6 billion. AI infrastructure stocks drew $2.4 billion.
One commentator calls the tech pullback a buying opportunity. Another sees a rebound if the AI trade’s underlying fundamentals remain intact. The buying shows demand for exposure. It does not answer the questions about AI infrastructure debt and returns that weighed on stocks like $MU and $INTC.
A separate commentator relays forecasts of a US debt crisis in the next three years, give or take two, and a market crash within zero to nine months. The same discussion raises concerns about AI spending, reported profits, and cash flow if AI proves less profitable than expected. Those timelines are forecasts, not reported outcomes.
Fidelity says the average 401(k) balance rose 10.5% from March through June. The average was $75,200 for participants in their 30s and $156,800 for those in their 40s. Participants saved an average 14.4% of pay, including employer contributions, just below Fidelity’s recommended 15%.
Oil Rose as Rate Views Split
Brent reached about $109.86, its highest level since May. Iran war risks and the absence of a US supply deal helped push WTI up about 2.6%.
After hot CPI and PPI readings earlier in the week, one market account put the odds of a December Fed hike near 74%. President Donald Trump called for lower rates, arguing for 1% or half a percent instead of 4%. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh had said a week earlier that hikes could soon be on the table as the Fed worked toward its 2% inflation target.
One commentator says the war against Iran is widening through Saudi Arabia’s renewed war against Yemen, which the US is backing. The commentator cites the Pakistani military’s confirmation that it has troops in Saudi Arabia helping attack Yemen, and Turkey’s announcement of military support for Saudi Arabia. The same account says the US military is reportedly supplying intelligence and refueling Saudi jets.
Muse Gives Meta a Possible Paid AI Product
Meta introduced Muse, an AI agent it says can book appointments, fill out forms, and monitor home security camera feeds. A person cited in the report described a free tier and monthly plans of $20 or $100, depending on usage. That person said Meta is exploring a cut of shopping transactions handled by the agent, but has no concrete plan.
Muse gives Meta a possible paid AI product. Whether it can produce a meaningful return on the company’s AI investment is still a question.
One commentator links $META’s spending and $NBIS’s GPU cloud buildout to demand for $ANET switches, $CRDO connectivity chips, $LITE lasers, and $DELL servers. That is the commentator’s account of where the spending is reaching.
Muse also asks users to trust it with sensitive tasks. A person cited in the report said the agent runs in an isolated environment, cannot see passwords or payment details, and asks before sensitive actions. Users must opt out if they do not want Meta to use their agent interactions for AI training. The launch comes amid a settlement of nearly $17 billion with state attorneys general and ongoing lawsuits.
Data Center Strikes and AI Device Tests Have Limits
Ukrainian drones struck three of Yandex’s six major data centers. Two shut down completely, and a third lost several modules. Yandex shares fell about 11% over the strikes. Someone close to its management told the FT that restoring full capacity would take several months.
The FT described disruptions beyond search. Some payment app users saw balances vanish, bus timetables disappeared in some cities, and some apartment residents could not open courtyard barriers that relied on Yandex.
A widely viewed chart claimed the strikes also collapsed online activity around Germany’s AFD party. DW found that the chart named no data source, platform, or measure. It contained data from three days in the future and did not mention the AFD.
Cloudflare saw a large drop in Yandex search crawler traffic, but no unexpected change in social media activity passing through its network. It could not rule out effects beyond what it could see. The chart does not establish that the strikes stopped a political bot operation.
One account of influence operations describes rented residential connections, phone farms, and cloned news sites. A 2018 MIT study found false stories were 70% more likely to be retweeted, and the gap remained after researchers removed bots.
On October 12th, Anthropic researchers reported running an AI model across 15 low-cost Android TV boxes at 0.39 tokens per second. Their paper warns that small models may be months away from copying themselves across devices like these. The simulated devices had no passwords, and the researchers found the small models were very poor to poor at persuading people with convincing messages.