02/11/2026
Following Wall Street’s decline on Friday, Asian equities edged lower as concerns that the artificial intelligence rally had overextended sparked a broad tech selloff, while crude oil retreated.
Benchmark indices in Japan, South Korea and Australia opened lower, with the MSCI Asia Pacific Index down 0.5%. The Nasdaq 100 tumbled 3.5% on Friday, its steepest one-day drop since June. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index plunged 7.2%, and Intel posted its worst single-day performance in more than four decades. U.S. stock futures edged higher in early Asian trade, suggesting the selloff may be easing.
Elsewhere, Brent crude fell 1.6% to around $111.60 a barrel ahead of Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections, even after another vessel attack near the Strait of Hormuz. Gold rose 0.7% to roughly $3,900 an ounce after closing at its lowest level in more than a year on Friday. Bitcoin rebounded over the weekend following a sharp drop last week triggered by a record hack at Binance Holdings, an incident that roiled the crypto sector.
The tech slump signals that amid surging AI investment, investors have grown less tolerant of tech firms with slowing core business growth. Results from Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. released last week amplified worries that AI spending is eating into the core businesses funding these investments. Traders are bracing for heightened volatility, with U.S. midterm elections due this week and NVIDIA scheduled to report earnings later in November.
America’s big tech giants have poured a combined $750 billion into artificial intelligence this year, yet the advertising, consumer and retail operations funding this spending are showing signs of slowdown, raising questions about how much longer the investment boom can sustain its current pace.
In crypto markets, Binance saw $3.6 billion in net outflows after it resumed customer withdrawals on Sunday. The world’s largest crypto exchange said outflow pressures moderated after the initial rush. It had suspended withdrawals on Thursday to investigate and stabilize the platform following a $6.3 billion hack, and pledged to fully compensate affected users.
Friday’s rout in U.S. stocks brought long-awaited volatility. Disappointing results from major tech firms fueled doubts over the durability of the AI-fueled stock rally. The CBOE Volatility Index, or VIX, hit its highest intraday level since April. Demand for bearish put options to hedge further losses surged and stock correlation climbed, signs of mounting market stress. Even so, these metrics remain well below levels reached in March after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.
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