Tech, AI Infrastructure Spending Under Assault as NASDAQ Suffers Another Major Decline; Earnings Reports Unimpressive; Fiat Currencies Dying

At last, it's Friday and the stock market can rest for a couple of days.

Stocks, especially anything even remotely related to AI or the infrastructure buildout and its enormous Capex budgets, were bludgeoned on Thursday, with the NASDAQ and S&P taking the full brunt of a semi-panic mood. Investors rushed to dividend-producing stocks on the Dow and into treasuries, sending the 10-year yield down to 4.95%, a massive drop of 20 basis points from Wednesday's close of 5.15% and the first time the 10-year has been below five percent, suspiciously, in exactly one month.

As usual, the information, analysis, and/or advice offered by financial institutions, politicians, statisticians, chartists, scientists and the mainstream media backing all of their conclusions is complete nonsense, and missed the bigger picture completely. The United States the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the Eurozone continue to spiral toward a currency crisis, manifested by increasingly high levels of inflation, i.e., loss of purchasing power in the fiat currency regime.

That is the overwhelming problem that nobody in the mainstream dares mention, precisely because it is the truth and the conclusions are frightening. Western economies are in decline without a doubt and the main cause has been, still is, and will continue to be fractional reserve banking and excessive monetary profligacy, papering over the obvious by issuing more and more currency, all of it backed by debt.

The world will keep on spinning, but, standards of living in developed Western economies will continue to be plagued by central banking and debt-backed currency until there is a radical reset back to something resembling a gold standard or, in simpler terms, honest money. Dollars, yen, pounds, euros and the like are not money. They are money substitutes, credit, and derivatives. Western nations use the currency to measure wealth, while compared to gold, they are all in severe decline. Keeping a lid on gold and silver works only as far as inflation can be contained or moderated. Inflation is currently out of control and there's little any central bank or government can do to halt its relentless destruction of fiat paper currencies. Most of the developed world is on the brink of hyperinflation, once again, a subject that is strictly taboo in the financial and mainstream media.

After Thursday's closing bell and prior to Friday's open, a few companies reported earnings for the third quarter, including:
Bloom Energy (BE) - top and bottom beats, shares down 4% pre-market
Western Digital (WDC) - EPS, revenue beats, stock down 2.5%
Verisign (VRSN) - EPS miss, revenue in-line, stock is flat
Newmont Mining (NEM) - EPS, revenue beats, stock down 1-2%
Booze Allen (BAH) - EPS beat, revenue miss, shares up 1-2%
American Express (AXP) - EPS beat, revenue miss, stock down 1-2%

Of those companies, perhaps only American Express and Bloom Energy are significant, though the suspicion is that all stocks are being dragged down by the increasingly-negative sentiment spreading through Wall Street. One consistent theme this earnings season has been the recurrence of EPS beats with revenue misses, indicating that the economy is contracting rather than expanding, the GDP figures that will emerge next week (Thursday) clouded by inflation. Government figures being mostly professional guessing, it can safely be assured that GDP for the third quarter will come in somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5% higher. The modeling and massaging of GDP estimates are inadequate at best, outright lies at worst. The U.S. economy hasn't “officially” been in a recession for the past five years (pandemic-induced, 2020) and that was the shortest on record. The last actual recession in the U.S. was in 2008-2009, 17 years ago. It would not be a stretch to conclude that the U.S. is overdue for one. It's currently being delayed until after the midterms.

There is a strong likelihood that the U.S. will enter recession either in the fourth quarter of 2026 or the first quarter of 2027. All the elements are in place, including overvalued stocks, two wars, high inflation, and uneasiness lurking behind every headline.

With U.S. equity markets due to open in minutes, stock futures are again collapsing, with the Dow leading lower by 400 points, the NASDAQ down 45, and the S&P off 25.

Have a nice weekend. Enjoy some football and the World Series and buy some gold or silver.

At the Close, Thursday, October 22, 2026:
Dow: 52,867.98, +11.89 (+0.02%)
NASDAQ: 26,008.86, -694.00 (-2.60%)
S&P 500: 7,663.43, -93.74 (-1.21%)
NYSE Composite: 24,275.53, +22.41 (+0.09%)