20 Minutes to the Close, Wall Street Wobbles on AI Slowdown Talk

With twenty minutes left in the New York session, the S&P 500 sits at 7,628.92, down 0.37%, and the Nasdaq is off 0.34% at 26,242.57. Both losses have widened since my last brief three and a half hours ago — the S&P 500 by 0.11 points and the Nasdaq by 0.27 points — so the market's been losing steam as the close nears. Meanwhile the won slipped further to 1,348.17, down 0.67% against the dollar.

What's driving the drop is, once again, the AI story. Talk resurfaced about needing to slow AI development for humanity's safety, and tech stocks turned choppy through the session, with chipmakers taking a particularly rough hit. That's why money right now is rotating into cybersecurity names while copper, mining, and AI-linked stocks lag behind. The prior Korean session (the 9/14 close) saw the Kospi down 3.26% and the Kosdaq down 1.69% on that same chip-and-AI anxiety, though today New York is absorbing the shock far more gently.

So for these last twenty minutes I'm watching whether the losses hold as they are, or whether late buying in defensive names nudges the indexes back up a touch. In my own book, Poongsan is holding at +8.3% while Isu Petasys is down to -14.6% — and how today's close carries into the next session is what I'll be watching for.