Asian markets were mixed on Monday as oil prices climbed and AI stocks came under pressure after industry leaders called for a slowdown in artificial intelligence development. The damage didn’t stay on trading screens. The jump in oil prices pushed the average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline across the country to nearly $4.32, up from $4.08 a month ago and $3.18 a year ago, according to AAA. That’s the bill ordinary people get handed when fighting, speculation, and corporate power squeeze the flow of fuel.
Who Pays for the Power Games
Taiwan’s Taiex fell about 0.6%, while South Korea’s Kospi dropped 3.3% because of losses in Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. In Tokyo, SoftBank Group, a major investor in OpenAI, lost 10.7% after OpenAI’s Sam Altman supported the idea of a slowdown and said in an interview with Fortune published Saturday that OpenAI would likely wait until next year for a sale of its stock on Wall Street. That could delay a gusher of cash for SoftBank and other early investors in OpenAI. The market’s pain and the investors’ delay are not the same thing, and the numbers make that plain.
Nvidia fell 2.8% and was the heaviest weight on the market because of its size. SpaceX rose 0.5% after Elon Musk said over the weekend that he agreed with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Amodei had called for a deliberate and global slowdown in AI development, warning of safety issues, including the risk that AI could become capable within six to 12 months of leading a swarm of agents that could take over the entire internet. The people at the top of the AI pile are now publicly arguing over how fast to move, while workers, users, and everyone else live with the fallout.
What They Call Guardrails
President Donald Trump played down the need for his administration to check AI development, 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. On his social media network Monday, Trump said the only guardrail it needs “is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” That’s the whole pitch: trust the boss, trust the state, trust the race for dominance. The people who’d bear the consequences get no real say in the machinery being built over them.
Oil prices continued to rise as fighting in the Middle East squeezed the global flow of oil. Brent crude rose 0.8% to $105.45 after getting near $110 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 $72 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.
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. That’s the language of markets trying to normalize crisis. Meanwhile, the crisis keeps moving down the chain to fuel prices, borrowing costs, and household budgets.
The Cost Lands Below
The yield on the 10-year Treasury breached 5.00% during the morning for the first time in nearly three years, up from 4.96% late Friday and just 3.97% before the war with Iran began in February. It later pulled back to 4.95% as oil prices came off their highs for the day. The 10-year yield has not consistently remained above 5% since the turn of the millennium, and its jump has already made it more expensive for U.S. households and companies to borrow, including the highest average long-term mortgage rate in more than 14 months.
That’s the hierarchy in motion. Decisions made through war, corporate strategy, and central banking land as higher costs for people who didn’t choose any of it. Wall Street can call it volatility. Everyone else calls it rent, gas, and debt.
Helping to limit Wall Street’s losses were several software companies that had tumbled earlier on worries AI-powered competitors would undercut their businesses. Intuit rose 4.8%, Autodesk climbed 7.8% and Adobe added 4.6%. The S&P 500 fell 0.2% as more stocks rose within the index than fell. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 16 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 1:06 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% lower after clawing back most of an early loss of 1.3%.
The index numbers wobble. The power structure doesn’t. AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Michelle Chapman contributed to the report.