• Markets: Yesterday was a scary day for stocks, which fell as tech companies got walloped like Kirk in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (more on that below). Intel’s rough earnings made it one of the hardest hit, but even Sandisk, whose earnings beat expectations, dipped.

EARNINGS JITTERS

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The state of the Nasdaq yesterday was as scary as encountering a group of teens in matching clown masks stocking up on eggs for an “omelet party.” The tech-heavy index suffered a huge hit over the last few days as investors faced their fears about tech companies’ massive AI spending after several reported less-than-stellar earnings this week.

Correction territory. With tech stocks selling off, the Nasdaq Composite finished the day down 2.86%, its worst single-day performance since June. The Nasdaq 100 shed as much as 4.5% yesterday, falling into its third correction this year.

What’s got investors running scared?

Several Big Tech earnings reports this week led investors and analysts to come to a similar conclusion: A lot of money is going into AI and not enough is coming out. Plus, more traditional moneymakers weren’t delivering as much as hoped amid the spending spree:

• Google parent Alphabet’s stock had its worst day ever on Thursday, with about $475 billion in market value vanishing after it reported on Wednesday that search revenue growth was slower than expected, and free cash flow (i.e., the money left after paying for AI infrastructure like data centers) had swung to a ~$9 billion loss.
• Amazon’s stock fell 1.41% yesterday, after reporting on Thursday that it spent even more money than it expected on AI last quarter, and growth from its online shopping sector slowed down.
• Neocloud companies and chipmakers all fell this week. But no one is having a worse time than Intel. Its stock cratered 28.58% yesterday—its worst day in 50 years—after its Thursday earnings report revealed weak PC demand amid high AI spending. The US government’s 10% stake in the company lost about $12 billion yesterday, according to CNBC.

Big picture: AI spending is having a big impact on the economy, and tech companies see it as their way to dominate in the future, but investors are getting nervous about whether it’s going to pay off.—MM

      

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World

Tour de headlines

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🛢️ High prices have been good for Chevron and Exxon. While most of the world sees high diesel prices as a cause for concern, the CEOs of Chevron and ExxonMobil probably don’t. Both companies reported windfall Q3 profits yesterday amid prices being driven up by wars in Iran and Ukraine. Chevron’s profit grew to $9.9 billion, almost 200% compared to the same period last year, while Exxon’s profit doubled to $15.4 billion. Both companies’ stocks touched record highs yesterday. But all that profit isn’t great for political optics, with gas and diesel prices high and the midterms looming—President Trump said both companies were making “too much money” in August.

💬 Christa Pike speaks after botched execution. Pike, who survived two doses of pentobarbital that were intended as a lethal injection in Tennessee last month, issued her first public statement since her failed execution, saying she is in pain and is “searching for meaning” in what happened to her. “And the pain isn’t just physical,” Pike said in a statement dictated to her lawyers. “There is pain in my mind and in my soul.” She was returned to prison following a hospitalization, and she remains sentenced to die for the 1995 death of her classmate Colleen Slemmer—though her lawyers are asking the state’s governor to change that to life in prison.

⌨️ Reddit wants you to log in. One of the internet’s most free-flowing platforms for dialogue wants to be a little less open: Reddit said this week it’s planning to become a mostly logged-in-only experience. It’s starting with testing, but if one day you have to log in to upvote a post insulting the same reality star you can’t stand, you can blame Google’s AI overview, which tanked Reddit’s search referrals last quarter. The significant change for one of the last bastions of the open internet, coupled with a weak sales forecast for Q4, helped spur a 29% drop in its stock yesterday that made it the company’s worst day since it went public in 2024.—AR

HACK TO THE FUTURE

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Adobe Stock

The biggest crypto theft in history happened faster than the average American’s commute. Hackers stole most of their $6.3 billion haul from Binance in roughly 20 minutes yesterday, leaving the world’s largest digital coin exchange scrambling to cover losses.

No other crypto theft comes close to this one. It’s four times larger than last year’s then-record hack of Bybit, and almost twice as big as all 2025 crypto thefts combined. Binance’s co-CEO said that the exchange suspended withdrawals until it passes “rigorous testing,” which he said should wrap up sometime this weekend.

In the meantime:

• Binance and its partners have frozen $3 billion of the stolen assets, with $3.3 billion still in the wind.
• The exchange said it would cover all losses, but it plans to dip into company funds to do so—its emergency reserve for cyberattacks only held $1.23 billion in bitcoin (which got slightly devalued after the hack spooked crypto markets).

Whodunit? A group of hackers may have broken into an engineer’s laptop, Binance said. The FBI is investigating, but blockchain analysts already think this was the work of the same North Korean hacker group that allegedly targeted Bybit last year.

“Bad time to troll,” Binance’s co-founder posted on X in response to a post from Elon Musk that appeared to mock the exchange.—ML

      

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ICYMI

Have you heard...

Here’s everything that didn’t make it into this week’s newsletters but we immediately sent to the group chat.

➡️ Electricity bills are up 5% over last year. Candy costs 8% more than it did in 2025. So, if you see a house with the lights out tonight, they might not be avoiding children on Halloween—they might have just chosen groceries and the mortgage over chocolate and illumination.

➡️ The New York City Marathon is tomorrow, and data shows that the most common place for Marathon runners to give up and rip off their bibs is Mile 18. For the rest of us, the most common place to give up and rip off our bib is between the barbecue ribs and dessert.

➡️ Knicks star Jalen Brunson will appear on Law & Order: SVU this week as a police detective. He will solve the case, but only after getting a tip from OG Anunoby.

➡️ The Vatican Museum opened an exhibition to display all of the popemobiles used over the last century. Hopefully, this will be a subplot of the next Fast & Furious movie.

➡️ ESPN football analyst Dan Orlovsky admitted that he did not know what “percent” meant before this week. People thanked him for “keeping it 100,” but he had no idea what that meant either.—DL

News

What else is brewing

• Affordable Care Act plan premiums are on track to rise 13% next year, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
• A federal appeals court rejected the Trump administration’s request to set aside 20,000 disputed midterm election ballots in California.
• An ICE officer has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, with prosecutors alleging that he intentionally ran over a Mexican construction worker in Houston, TX.
• The Treasury Department announced new I Bonds with a 5.51% return. That’s lower than the 9.62% rate that caused a buying spree in 2022, but it’s still considered high.
• Pope Leo XIV is now the first pontiff to vote in a US general election, after sending in a mail-in ballot for the midterms.
• The Atlanta Dream and the Golden State Valkyries will face off for the title in the WNBA’s first-ever Game 7 tonight.

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Community

Crowd work

Last week, we asked, “What’s a commuting route you have an emotional connection to?” Here are some of our favorite responses:

• “The orange line to Foggy Bottom. I mean, the name says it for itself, and when you have the case of the Mondays, arriving at a stop called Foggy Bottom just matches the vibe.”—Hessel from Washington, DC
• “Every week, I go to a supermarket not far from where I live. Passing over a street known as Carrer de la Marina, from where you look up and have a beautiful view of the Sagrada Familia. Just reminding me of the beautiful city of Barcelona that I get to live in.”—Jan from Barcelona
• “When I was a submariner stationed at Point Loma, San Diego, I would ride my bike down the length of the peninsula to work. Nothing beats sunshine, the smell of eucalyptus trees, and a nice breeze after emerging from the sub.”—Warner from Seattle, WA
• “I’ve lived outside of Venezuela for 15 years, but I always remember the ‘Cota Mil.’ It’s a highway (officially known as Avenida Boyacá) that runs across the capital city from east to west, bordered by El (Mount) Ávila—the best GPS anyone could ever ask for.”—Gaby from Panama
• “In sixth grade, the bus back home from school would stop at another school to drop off the tennis kids. Unfortunately, that meant we were at about double capacity, so the first ten minutes of that bus ride consisted of us sitting four to a bench and struggling to breathe, yet somehow I still miss it.”—Adhya from Phoenix, AZ

This week’s question

What’s the most surprising biographical fact you’ve learned about a relative?

Sam’s answer to get the juices flowing: “My grandfather, who lived in the Soviet Union, once beat World Chess Champion Mikhail Botvinnik in a chess match organized by their shared workplace. The grandmaster never showed up to the game, so my grandpa was handed a technical win.”

Submit your response here.

recs

• Costumes you can still make before tonight.
• Keep spooky season going by visiting these haunted restaurants across the US.
• A taste test that found the best fast-food chicken wings.
• A cookbook full of cozy Eastern European dishes that you can eat with a spoon.**

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Play

Brew Crossword: Your sample clue from our biggest puzzle of the week is, “Kia model that sounds as good as can be.” Play the Crossword here.

Open House

Welcome to Open House, the only newsletter section that can withstand an F5 tornado. We’ll give you a few facts about a listing and you try to guess the price.

Today’s megamansion is in Wellington, CO, and it comes fully stocked with every gadget, gizmo, and entertaining tool you can imagine. The 8,886-square-foot home sits on nearly five acres of land right next to the North Poudre Reservoir for access to your own watersport haven. Amenities include:

• 7 beds, 10 baths
• Saltwater pool with water jets
• Trees inside

How much for the house party house?

Answer

$3 million

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: illumination, meaning “the quality or state of having or giving off light.” Thanks to Danielle from Ann Arbor, MI, for a suggestion that got us out of the darkness. Submit another Word of the Day here.