Market / Stocks

Futures steadied in New York. Asia slid anyway.

US futures bounced on Sunday night after the Nasdaq's worst week since June, but Asian markets opened the week lower as the argument over AI spending crossed the Pacific. The rout is pausing in one timezone and continuing in another.

Tokyo, Japan · October 19, 2026

The first signal of the week came from New York, and it was cautiously hopeful. Stock futures rose on Sunday night, with Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.4 percent, S&P 500 futures up 0.2 percent and Dow futures ahead by about 110 points, according to CNBC's live coverage, helped by steadier oil prices. Traders were buying back into the AI trade, carefully, after the Nasdaq fell 4.5 percent last week in its worst week since June.

Asia did not take the hint. Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 2.0 percent on Monday, extending a 5.4 percent drop the week before, South Korea's Kospi lost 1.6 percent, and the broad MSCI Asia-Pacific index outside Japan eased 0.3 percent, according to Reuters. By the Asian session, S&P 500 futures had firmed to a gain of 0.5 percent, and falling oil prices cushioned bonds. Two markets looked at the same trade and reached opposite conclusions about the same morning.

The disagreement is not really about direction. It is about who carries the risk while the argument runs. The worry that drove last week's selling, set out in our report on the AI selloff, is specific: the borrowing behind the data centre buildout, and whether AI revenue arrives fast enough to service it. Asia hosts much of the hardware supply chain for that buildout, so its markets feel the financing question first and hardest.

What settles it, for now, is earnings. A packed week of results will test whether the biggest buyers of AI hardware can show the spending earning its keep. Until the first of those land, expect this split to persist: dip buying in New York, caution in Asia, and a market that has stopped rising on promises and started asking for receipts.