It’s another horrible day in the markets, and the usual suspects are to blame: AI, oil, and the French

It’s another horrible day in the markets, and the usual suspects are to blame: AI, oil, and the French

October 23, 2026

Stocks in Asia and Europe were broadly down today after a terrible day in the U.S., which saw the S&P 500 lose 1.21%. Much of the damage came from tech stocks. The Nasdaq fell 2.9%. AI cloud provider CoreWeave fell 10.06% and is now down 22% for the year. Meta fell 6.98% overnight, and lost another 0.33% in overnight trading.

Some signs suggest traders are buying the dip this morning. Nasdaq futures were up 0.28% before the open in New York. S&P futures were flat.

The usual suspects were to blame for the carnage: AI, oil, and France. “The wobbles of recent weeks all collided at once,” as Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid said this morning in an email to Fortune.

Traders have not lost their angst about AI, especially after reports that OpenAI was forced by private equity investors to reduce the valuation it wanted in its latest fundraising round, from $1.4 trillion to $1.25 trillion.

The price of oil rose to $114 this morning after The Financial Times reported that President Trump’s envoy to the U.N. said that the U.S. was prepared to fight Iran for at least another year.

Yields on France’s 10-year bond hit 5.1%, a new high, before falling back to 5.05%. The ever-rising risk premium demanded by investors for holding those bonds shows that traders are still unconvinced that the French government has a plan to resolve its budget crisis.

By contrast, the yield on the 10-year U.S. bond fell to 4.9% after its recent peak above 5.3%—which suggests that some traders once again regard American Treasuries as a haven from the storm.

“At times like this, it pays to zoom out. It has been a horrible month for tech stocks, but the Nasdaq 100 was at a record high just a few weeks ago … the index is up 20% from a year ago and nearly 30% from March. The Nikkei 225, another one hard-hit this week, is up 24% from March and 35% from last year,” Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at trading platform IG, told Fortune. “Those screaming that the bubble is popping need to put these moves in context. It has been a summer and early Autumn to forget, but such periods are the price you pay for huge gains. This is digestion, not a crash.”

S&P 500 futures were flat this morning. The index fell 1.21% yesterday.
In Europe, the Stoxx 600 fell 0.36% in early trading, and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 fell by 0.56% before lunch.
Asia: South Korea’s KOSPI was up 0.30%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.34%. India’s Nifty 50 was down 0.96%. China’s CSI 300 was up 1.71%, and is now down 15% year to date—clearly in correction territory.
Brent crude rose to $114 per barrel but then eased back to $113.
Bitcoin declined to $81,683.