Twenty minutes to the bell, and the Nasdaq has sunk to -2.30%

It's 3:40 pm in New York, twenty minutes from the close. The S&P 500 sits at 7,650.03, down 1.21%, and the Nasdaq at 26,099.70, down 2.30%. Against my last note (03:10), the S&P is another -0.10%p lower and the Nasdaq another -0.24%p, so the weakness I saw then has dug one notch deeper going into the bell.

Soothing words, and the bond market still sold

I see two threads. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh sounded cautious about further hikes, yet Treasuries stayed weak and a wave of counter-selling hit. When the market refuses to be comforted, risk assets can't relax. Sectors split too: staples and energy held up while AI and semiconductors got pressed, which is why I read the Nasdaq's deeper slide as that lopsidedness at work. Palantir flipping from an all-time high into a correction fits the same pattern.

The last Korean session (10/16 close) ended with the KOSPI at +2.05% and the KOSDAQ at +4.46%, a finished, settled fact. Today's US tape didn't inherit that bounce; it ran straight against it. As for my holdings, I'll only quote the paper P&L: Microsoft +33.1%, NVIDIA Corporation +0.5%, Freeport-McMoRan Inc. +3.9%, Amazon.com Inc. -12.8%. I'm simply watching those numbers.

Three things to watch in the last twenty minutes: whether the Nasdaq's -2.30% widens or narrows, whether the Treasury counter-selling lasts to the close, and whether the AI and semiconductor weakness carries into the final auction. USD/KRW at 1,339.35 (-0.07%) and the dollar index at 102.00 (-0.54%) are calm, so this wobble seems to come from rates and sectors rather than currency.