Global stock markets plunge
CNN
Japanese stocks crash in biggest one-day drop ever as global market rout intensifies. Follow the latest news here.
Trading on the market is inherently risky, so two emotions tend to dictate the direction of stocks, bond, currencies and commodities: fear and greed. So CNN Business created a Fear & Greed Index, a measure of market sentiment, analyzing seven different metrics. Today, the Fear & Greed Index is pointing solidly to “Fear” and remains just a couple points away from “Extreme Fear.” That’s a big change: Just a week ago, the market was in “Neutral.” Investors are worried that the economy is taking a turn for the worse, confirmed by Friday’s weak US jobs report and rising unemployment rate. Investors are also fearful that tech stocks may have been driven too high this year on hopes that AI could create a new wave of profitable technologies — risky applications that customers may hold off on buying if the economy heads south. The price of oil fell sharply along with stocks Monday as investors’ concerns about the global economy mounted. US oil tumbled 1.9% to $72.10 a barrel Monday. Brent crude, the global benchmark, fell 1.5% to $74.60 a barrel.
The DeepSeek drama may have been briefly eclipsed by, you know, everything in Washington (which, if you can believe it, got even crazier Wednesday). But rest assured that over in Silicon Valley, there has been nonstop, Olympic-level pearl-clutching over this Chinese upstart that managed to singlehandedly wipe out hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap in just a few hours and put America’s mighty tech titans on their heels.
At her first White House briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made an unusual claim about inflation that has stung American shoppers for years: Leavitt said egg prices have continued to surge because “the Biden administration and the department of agriculture directed the mass killing of more than 100 million chickens, which has led to a lack of chicken supply in this country, therefore lack of egg supply, which is leading to the shortage.”