AI chiefs urge a slowdown and Nasdaq futures sink before Fed week

The chief executives of Anthropic and OpenAI spent the weekend calling for a slower pace of AI development, and the stocks most tied to AI spending took the hit overnight: SoftBank Group fell 10.7% in Tokyo and Nasdaq futures were down 1.61%. It lands two days before a Federal Reserve decision that traders price as an 86% chance of a rate hike, with Brent crude back above $107.

The call to slow AI reached markets overnight

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in a blog post on Saturday, September 12: “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models.” SiliconANGLE summarized his proposal as three steps: AI companies giving independent evaluators extensive access to their systems, cooperation across the rest of the industry, and an international agreement so that other countries, notably China, pace development too. Some of that coordination, he wrote, “will require government support.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman replied on X, “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier,” and said OpenAI would also commit to independent evaluators. In a Fortune interview published Saturday, Altman called an OpenAI IPO this year “ill-advised,” which pushes one of the most anticipated listings to 2027 at the earliest. Elon Musk, who runs xAI, posted: “Dario is right.”

Asia traded first. SoftBank, a major OpenAI investor, plunged 10.7%, SK Hynix fell 6.4% and Samsung Electronics 4.1%, the Associated Press reported at 1:09 a.m. ET. South Korea’s Kospi was down 3.3% at 6,684.37 and Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.8% at 63,492.99, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.4%.

In the same AP update, S&P 500 futures were down 0.69% and Nasdaq futures 1.61%, but Dow futures were off only 0.20%. The VIX, Wall Street’s volatility gauge, was up 12% at 17.77. That spread is the clearest read on the morning so far: the selling is aimed at technology, not at stocks in general.

Friday’s rally ran through the same stocks

Friday snapped a four-session losing streak. The S&P 500 rose 0.86% to 7,656.98, the Dow Jones Industrial Average 0.98% to 52,573.29 and the Nasdaq Composite 0.96% to 26,333.04. All three still fell for the week: the S&P 500 by 0.8%, the Dow by 1.6% and the Nasdaq by 0.7%.

The gains were broad. In our feed, 76 of the 100 stocks and funds we track finished higher. XLK, the technology fund, gained 1.32% to $187.67, the best of the five sector funds in the feed. XLV, the health care fund, was the only one of the five to finish lower, by 0.18%.

Chipmakers led. Arm Holdings (ARM) rose 4.17% to $264.79, Texas Instruments (TXN) 3.82%, Qualcomm (QCOM) 2.88%, Intel (INTC) 2.61% and AMD 2.49%. Cisco (CSCO) gained 4.37% and IBM 3.96%; we could not confirm a company-specific reason for either. Dell rose almost 12% to $567.12, a new high, according to our movers feed, after RBC Capital Markets started coverage with an outperform rating, CNBC reported.

Nvidia is the exception worth noticing this morning. Nvidia (NVDA) opened Friday at $221.24 and closed at $218.29, essentially flat and down 0.03% on the day, on 88.8 million shares, the heaviest volume in our feed. Yahoo Finance’s live coverage described all seven Magnificent Seven stocks trading higher; by the close in our feed, Nvidia had slipped fractionally lower. Apple (AAPL) rose 1.75%, Alphabet (GOOGL) 1.77% and Amazon (AMZN) 1.94%.

The laggards were mostly software and security. MongoDB (MDB) lost 3.12%, the worst performer in the feed, with Palo Alto Networks (PANW) down 2.32%, Cloudflare (NET) down 1.49% and CrowdStrike (CRWD) down 1.02%. UnitedHealth (UNH) fell 2.37% to $379.09, extending a slide that followed its sale of part of its Florida Optum Health business to TPG.

Oracle’s reversal raised the spending question first

Oracle’s results on Thursday evening beat estimates, and the stock traded as if they had. In our feed, Oracle opened Friday at $164.43 and touched $166.00, a gain of about 8.5% at the high. It then sold off all day. Oracle (ORCL) closed at $150.28, down 1.74% from Thursday’s $152.94, on 79.5 million shares.

Coverage of the reversal pointed to the cost of Oracle’s AI buildout rather than the quarter itself. Before the report, Oracle had already guided to about $70 billion in fiscal 2027 capital spending and said it planned to raise about $40 billion in debt and equity, according to 24/7 Wall St.

That is the thread connecting Friday’s close to this morning’s futures. Oracle was punished for how much it is spending on AI capacity. Two days later, the heads of two of the largest buyers of that capacity said the technology is moving too fast. The stocks whose rally rests on that spending, the chipmakers, server makers and cloud providers, are the ones under pressure before the open.

Oil and rates still point the other way

Friday’s August Consumer Price Index rose 0.4% for the month and 3.4% from a year earlier, both in line with forecasts. Core prices, which exclude food and energy, rose 0.3%, a tenth of a point above the forecast, and 2.4% from a year earlier. Fed funds futures priced about an 87% chance of a quarter-point hike afterward, up from 72% the day before, Yahoo Finance reported. This morning Reuters put it at 86% for Wednesday.

The University of Michigan’s preliminary September consumer sentiment reading fell to 47.8 from 51.7 in August, below the 51 expected, and one-year inflation expectations jumped to 4.6% from 4%. The 10-year Treasury yield finished Friday at 4.96% and was still 4.96% in the AP’s early Monday update.

Oil reversed Friday’s relief. Brent settled Friday down 2.8% at $104.61 and US crude at $100.05. Overnight, Brent rose 2.8% to $107.55 and US crude 2.9% to $102.90, per the AP. Reuters attributed the jump to new strikes on Saudi Arabia and on ships in the Gulf, after an attack on a Saudi oil pipeline and an advance by Yemen’s Houthis. A meeting in Oman between Iran and Gulf Arab states on reopening the Strait of Hormuz was postponed.

In our feed, XLE, the energy fund, rose 0.32% to $65.14 on Friday, TLT, the long-bond fund, 0.11% to $80.87 and GLD, the gold fund, 0.61% to $398.77.

What to watch today

The 9:30 a.m. ET open for Nvidia, Arm, Dell and Oracle, after Friday’s moves and the overnight selloff in Asian chip stocks.
No major US economic data is scheduled today. Dave & Buster’s reports after the close.
Empire State manufacturing survey, Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. ET. The forecast is 6.5, up from 3.7. The Fed’s two-day meeting begins the same day.
August retail sales and import prices, Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. ET.
FOMC rate decision, Wednesday, September 16. Futures price an 86% chance of a quarter-point hike.
Bank of Japan decision, Friday. Markets imply about a 76% chance of a quarter-point increase to 1.25%, Reuters reported.
Any new date for the postponed Oman talks on the Strait of Hormuz.

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