U.S. stocks suffered a broad selloff on Monday, caught between AI leaders' calls for a slowdown, sticky inflation, and rate hike fears, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index plunging nearly 6%. Yet JPMorgan has reaffirmed its bullish stance, warning that excessive pessimism could lead to missed opportunities.

Under the dual pressure of inflation anxiety from surging oil prices and an abrupt 'brake' in the AI sector, U.S. equities opened sharply lower, with tech names bearing the brunt of the selloff. All three major indices fell at the open: the Dow dropped 0.2%, the S&P 500 slid 0.7%, and the Nasdaq declined 1.2%. The Nasdaq 100 hit a six-week low, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index tumbled nearly 5.9% intraday, marking its worst daily drop since early July.

Among individual stocks, chip leader Nvidia fell over 4%, while Intel, Micron Technology, SanDisk, and SK Hynix—storage and computing heavyweights—saw deeper losses, ranging from 5% to 7%. The entire tech sector was engulfed in extreme caution.

The trigger for the semiconductor turmoil stemmed from a public rift within the AI industry over development pace. Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei issued a rare statement urging the industry to voluntarily 'set the speed limit' for frontier model evolution, curbing the expansion of computing power and training. While this initiative drew support from OpenAI executives and Elon Musk, it sparked panic in financial markets over potential cuts to AI hardware capital expenditures.

Adding fuel to the fire, multiple large firms, including Nvidia itself and data analytics giant Palantir, have reportedly begun imposing strict restrictions on external advanced model usage, citing concerns over core trade secret leaks.

Prominent investor and 'Big Short' Michael Burry quickly took to social media, denouncing the AI giants' 'brake-pedal' rhetoric as selfish and hypocritical. Burry argued that current large language models cannot cultivate true general reasoning capabilities, and that leading companies' talk of 'AI doom' is merely a strategy to fortify their moats, block newcomers, and bolster IPO valuations. He sharply noted that executives' claims of slowing down actually mask the inability of the industry's real growth rate to be sustained. This year, Burry has heavily shorted multiple AI concept stocks and has consistently warned of hidden debts and false prosperity in the sector.

Beyond the industry's valuation concerns, macro-level inflation and rate pressures weighed decisively on the broader market. Escalating geopolitical tensions have kept international oil prices pinned above the $100 mark. Following attacks on Saudi oil pipelines and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, Brent crude has stabilized at $105, gaining 20% this month. The oil surge has quickly permeated the real economy, as the just-released U.S. core inflation for August rose 0.3% month-over-month, shattering hopes for a rapid cooling of inflation.

This data has put the Federal Reserve in a bind ahead of its policy meeting this week. Commerzbank's latest analysis suggests that with core price pressures remaining elevated, the Fed has little choice but to announce a 25-basis-point rate hike on Wednesday, pushing the federal funds rate to a 3.75%-4.00% range. Interest rate futures data show traders' pricing of a hike has jumped to 88% from 62% last week.

Wall Street's biggest fear, however, is not the single hike itself, but whether Fed Chair Kevin Warsh will break expectations of a 'one-off adjustment' in his subsequent remarks, releasing hawkish signals for a new round of tightening.

Despite the panic, institutional divergence is widening sharply. In its latest report, investment bank Bernstein has sought to soothe markets, arguing that the negative impact of AI's 'speed limit' has been overblown. The bank emphasized that tech giants' substantial budgets have already been scheduled, and with reasoning computing power still in severe shortage, real hardware demand has not reversed.

JPMorgan: Blind Bearishness Is Unwise

JPMorgan's global and European equity strategy head, Mislav Matejka, has again warned aggressive short-sellers: while oil price surges may compress valuations, blindly betting against U.S. stocks is extremely dangerous as long as corporate earnings expansion remains unrefuted. Should President Trump attempt to de-escalate Middle East tensions through diplomacy, or should Q3 earnings surprise to the upside, excessive short positions could face a violent squeeze.

Matejka pointed out that the underlying earnings resilience of U.S. companies remains unshakeable, with inflation expectations still anchored. Even if the Fed raises rates by 25 basis points on Wednesday, robust EPS growth is sufficient to see the equity market weather the storm. On this basis, JPMorgan had already bucked the trend in August, raising its year-end S&P 500 target to 8,000 points from 7,800, and anticipates a 29% year-over-year surge in constituent EPS to $350.

Matejka's guidance to investors is unambiguous: firmly treat the valuation 'golden dip' hammered out by high oil prices and rate hike fears as a rare opportunity to add positions, accumulating shares at lower levels to prepare for a more favorable trading environment as the Q3 earnings season arrives in October and November.

Bernstein also reiterated that market fears over AI hardware spending are an overreaction. Given tech giants' long-cycle budgets and the acute shortage of inference computing power, real chip demand has not fundamentally reversed.