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A BIG DEAL
Airbnb CEO targeted by hackers in AI attack
Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky appears to have been the target of a cyberattack, a source familiar with the situation said Fortune’s Rachel Ventresca. On Monday, Cheskys shared
“I have been quietly watching the tokenization of assets in the real world for some time now,” the account wrote in the now-deleted series of tweets. “Most of it is noise. But beneath the noise, something real is happening.”
When Assets When Chesky’s thread was analyzed using the AI detection tool Pangram, the system determined that it was 100% AI generated. The posts have now been deleted. Airbnb declined to comment.
The hacked posts were on Assets. X secured the account on Tuesday evening and Chesky was able to regain access to his account.
THE MARKETS
Tech stocks lead steep global selloff
US futures were in the red this morning before opening in New York, following a significant global sell-off in Asia and Europe. Several factors are at play, but triggers included earnings reports from chip maker TSMC and Netflix, both of which disappointed traders. The former lost 2.63% today and the latter lost 9.24% overnight. Japan’s tech-heavy Nikkei 225 and South Korea’s KOSPI saw big moves lower in the past 24 hours. The KOSPI (which is closed today) is particularly volatile because half of its weight consists of just two stocks, Samsung and SK Hynix, and because The country has allowed retail investors to purchase leveraged ETFs increase fluctuations in trade.
In the USA, Chipmakers Intel, Micron, AMD and Marvell all fell in overnight trading, losing additional ground before yesterday’s close. Investors appear to largely view the AI chip business as overbought.
Doesn’t help: Obviously the war. Oil prices remained in the mid-80s. “And in the background there are still fears of interest rate hikes and more persistent inflation,” Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid told clients this morning.
- S&P 500 futures were down 0.66% this morning. The index fell 0.51% yesterday.
- In Europe, The Stoxx 600 lost 0.7% in early trading and Britain’s FTSE 100 was flat before lunch.
- Asia: South Korea’s KOSPI fell 6.37% yesterday; The index is closed today. Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost 4.03%. India’s Nifty 50 rose 1.22%. China’s CSI 300 fell 3.6%.
- Brent crude oil was at $84 a barrel this morning.
- Bitcoin was $62.7k.
If hyperscalers get their timing wrong, “the economy risks falling into recession,” says a top analyst
Torsten Sløk of Apollo Global Management fears that there could be a timing mismatch between capital expenditure and free cash flow for AI hyperscalers. If revenues from the various AI models are not as robust as expected due to price competition from Chinese and open source models, disappointing earnings could drag down the entire stock market. he believes. And if hyperscalers cut their budgets for building data centers, that could slow economic growth – without IT-related investments, business investment in the US would actually be negative right now.
“The bottom line is that AI has been the only thing that has kept both the economy and the markets going, and with so much riding on so few names, a slower return would not only be an industry problem, but would also risk sending the economy into recession and the S&P 500 into a correction,” he says.
Don’t worry, the S&P 500 will add another 500 points, says UBS
Charlie Anderson, senior vice president of UBS Wealth Management, predicts the S&P 500 will reach 7,900 by the end of the year. The reason? Investors are paying more attention to earnings results and less to headlines. “We have moved from a market driven by macro headlines to one increasingly driven by micro fundamentals. This is a healthier environment for long-term investors because it rewards companies that perform well rather than just benefiting from liquidity,” he said in an email.
MORE FROM FORTUNE
Kevin O’Leary claimed opposition to his Utah data center was fueled by Chinese money. Now he and Fox News are being sued for defamation – Marco Quiroz Gutierrez
US companies have finally received $71 billion in tariff refunds, but are using them to offset inflation caused by the Iran war -Sasha Rogelberg
How Apollo-owned Michaels transformed the bankruptcies of two competitors into a growth strategy -Phil Wahba
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky’s X account was hijacked in an AI slop hack that is driving crypto tokenization -Rachel Ventresca
Kimi K3 from Moonshot brings Chinese AI to Fable levels -Nicholas Gordon
IRAN
The US is expanding its bombing campaign in Iran to include bridges, trains and airports
The US began bombing civilian infrastructure in Iran last night. reported the BBCincluding bridges, a train station, a nuclear power plant and an airport. The forces also targeted various coastal areas. Previously, the US had only targeted the Iranian military and its political leadership.
Iran responded with attacks on US radar sites and targets in Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan.
- Lurking in the background: Bab al-Mandeb Street. This is the other narrow sea passage on the western side of the Arabian Peninsula that separates Saudi Arabia from Africa. Iran could allow the Houthis, its proxy terror group in Yemen, to harass shipping in that strait and effectively close it as well. Al Jazeera’s Tehran-based reporter said this morning.
Chart of the day
National debt is higher today than it was during the Great Financial Crisis – and it’s getting bigger
According to Deutsche Bank’s research institute, the combined deficits of the United States, China and Germany are larger today than they were at the worst point of the Great Financial Crisis. “After years of ever-increasing deficits, we have become accustomed to numbers that would once have seemed extraordinary. What would have been unimaginable in 2008 to 2009 is of little concern today because there are numbers that did not previously exist outside of major wars or major recessions,” says Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid.
NUMBER OF THE DAY
200 billion dollars
Samsung’s forecast profits in 2026 “are roughly equivalent to the combined profits of all listed companies in India,” said Herald van der Linde, head of equity strategy/Asia Pacific at HSBC.
TODAY’S FRONT PAGES
The hotel group Accor hired a law firm to investigate the behavior of CEO Bazin – F.T
The world’s largest olive oil company says the market has “finally” entered a new phase -CNBC
Trump accuses a broad conspiracy to commit and cover up election fraud – Axios
The inside story of IBM’s shocking profit warning -WSJ
Trump wants to cut US stays for Chinese journalists and risks retaliation -Bloomberg
In prime time, Trump criticized the networks for not broadcasting his speech -NYT
ONE MORE THING
Congress may be on the verge of stopping the clock — literally
The twice-yearly clock change in the U.S. could become a thing of the past if legislation currently in Congress mandating permanent daylight saving time passes. But as annoying as some people find the back and forth time difference in spring and fall, sticking to this time difference doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be well received. America tried it back in the 1970s and it didn’t last. This is reported by AP.
The bill would keep America on “Spring Forward,” resulting in permanently darker mornings but brighter evenings.
Congress tried the same plan in a trial period from January 1974 to April 1975. It lasted until October, when it was repealed after public outcry: “I had to get up for school and it was like it was midnight,” said Kevin Birth, a professor of anthropology at Queens College, who remembers it vividly. “It was just pitch black and it stayed pitch black well into the school day.”