U.S. stocks fell as fears mounted that artificial-intelligence profits would not come soon enough to meet increasingly expensive credit obligations for CoreWeave and other aspiring hyperscalers.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 175.28 points, or 0.34%, to 52002.41. The S&P 500 lost 84.62 points, or 1.09%, to 7659.44. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 572.99 points, or 2.14% to 26140.03, and lost about 4.5% for the week, its biggest decline since the week ended June 26.
Shares of CoreWeave fell 12% and are down more than 50% from their highs earlier this year as concerns about the cloud-computing company's ability to pay down debt lingered.
"Inevitably, with the cost of credit and capital rising to unaffordable levels, plans will have to be scaled back and capex reduced sooner or later," said Lorenzo Di Mattia, founder and chief investment officer at hedge-fund firm Sibilla Capital. Di Mattia has a modest short position on the U.S. stock market, he said.
Speaking at an International Monetary Fund event in Bangkok, Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh declined to give any rate guidance ahead of the October meeting of the central bank's rate-setting committee. Rising oil prices and broader inflation worries spurred long-term Treasury yields higher.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose 0.011 percentage point to 5.097%. The yield on the 30-year bond rose 0.009 percentage point to 5.436%, recouping some losses from Thursday but still registering its biggest weekly drop in more than a year. The yield on the two-year Treasury fell 0.013 percentage point to 4.734%, completing its largest one-week retreat since August.