Stan Choe
Artificial-intelligence stocks are sliding worldwide after leaders of the industry warned a slowdown is needed for the safety of humanity. Another jump in oil prices, meanwhile, briefly sent the bond market to its latest pressure-raising milestone as the yield on the 10-year Treasury touched 5 per cent for the first time since 2023.
Despite all the downers for Wall Street, gains for many stocks outside AI helped limit the market’s losses. So did a midday tempering of oil prices, and the S&P 500 fell a relatively modest 0.3 per cent as more stocks rose within the index than fell.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 116 points, or 0.2 per cent, as of 2:02 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1 per cent lower after clawing back most of an early loss of 1.3 per cent. The Australian sharemarket is set to edge up, with futures at 4.50am AEST pointing to a rise of 5 points, or 0.1 per cent, at the open. The ASX closed flat on Monday. The Australian dollar was trading at US71.45¢.
AI stocks have been under pressure a while because of worries their prices shot too high in the frenzy around the technology. The concerns jumped to another level over the weekend after one of the industry’s leading voices, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, called for a deliberate and global slowdown in the development of AI.
He cited safety issues, including the risk that AI becomes capable of leading a swarm of agents that could take over the entire internet within six to 12 months.
Nvidia, whose profits have soared because its chips are helping to train AI models, sank 2.8 per cent and was the heaviest weight on the market because of its massive size.
SpaceX, which gets a chunk of its business from AI, rose 0.4 per cent after Elon Musk said over the weekend that he agrees with Amodei. Softbank Group, the Japanese giant that is a major investor of OpenAI, lost 10.7 per cent in Tokyo after OpenAI’s Sam Altman likewise supported the concept of a slowdown.
Altman also said in an interview with Fortune published on Saturday that OpenAI would likely wait until next year for a sale of its stock on Wall Street, potentially delaying a gusher of cash for Softbank and other early investors in OpenAI.
In South Korea, the Kospi index dropped 3.3 per cent due to losses for its two most influential stocks, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
President Donald Trump played down the need for his administration to check the development of AI, saying he worried about ceding his country’s edge over China in a global competition and that winning would help address the risks from the advancing technology.
Even with so many voices inside and outside the AI industry calling for a slowdown to protect humanity, Trump said on his social media network on Monday that the only guardrail it needs “is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the USA. has that, in spades!”
Helping to limit Wall Street’s losses on Monday were several software companies that tumbled earlier on worries AI-powered competitors would undercut their businesses.
Intuit, the company behind TurboTax and QuickBooks, rose 5 per cent. Autodesk, whose software helps designers, climbed 8 per cent, and Adobe added 4.7 per cent.
Oil prices, meanwhile, continued to climb as fighting in the Middle East keeps squeezing the global flow of oil. The price for a barrel of Brent crude rose 1.1 per cent to $US105.76 after getting near $US110 in the morning.
An important Saudi oil pipeline will mostly be out of service for weeks following an attack last week, two regional officials told The Associated Press. The pipeline offered a way for Saudi Arabia to shift exports to the Red Sea and avoid the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz, where Iranian attacks have stifled the movement of oil tankers.
Brent has jumped from less than $US72 in early July as doubts rise that the United States and Iran can come to an agreement that would allow oil tankers to freely exit the Persian Gulf through the strait again.
While the prospect of a de-escalation of war in Iran may have dimmed, ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey wrote in a commentary on Monday that the situation is still fluid and “sizable” volumes of oil have still been moving through the strait.
So far, the jump in oil prices has sent the average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline across the country to nearly $US4.32 from $US4.08 a month ago and $US3.18 a year ago, according to AAA.
Such upward pressure on inflation has much of Wall Street expecting the Federal Reserve will hike its main interest rate on Wednesday at the end of its next meeting.
That’s the traditional way the Fed tries to rein in high inflation. Such a move then filters out through the rest of the bond market, slows the overall economy and undercuts prices for investments. That hopefully would remove some of inflation’s fuel, though Trump has been lobbying for lower interest rates instead of higher.
Besides high inflation, worries about rising debt for the US and other governments and other concerns have sent longer-term Treasury yields to their highest levels in years.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury breached the 5.00 per cent level during the morning for the first time in nearly three years. That’s up from 4.96 per cent late Friday and just 3.97 per cent before the war with Iran began in February.
But the 10-year yield later pulled back to 4.96 per cent as oil prices came off their highs for the day.
The 10-year yield has not consistently remained above 5 per cent since the turn of the millennium, and its jump has already made it more expensive for US households and companies to borrow. That includes the highest average long-term mortgage rate in more than 14 months.
AP
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