TLDR
- US stock futures dropped Tuesday with the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all falling in premarket trading
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, along with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Elon Musk, called for an AI slowdown, triggering a chip stock selloff
- The 10-year Treasury yield briefly hit 5%, its highest level since 2023, raising borrowing cost concerns
- Oil prices climbed, with WTI crude rising to over $103 a barrel due to Middle East tensions
- The Federal Reserve’s September meeting kicks off Tuesday, with traders pricing in a 94% chance of a rate hike
US stock futures fell Tuesday morning as investors faced a trio of headwinds: rising oil prices, surging bond yields, and fresh fears about an artificial intelligence slowdown.
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped around 0.7%, while S&P 500 futures fell 0.6% and Nasdaq 100 futures declined 0.7%.
AI Leaders Call for a Slowdown
The selling started Monday after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay raising AI safety concerns. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also called for a slowdown in AI development.
I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we've had at OpenAI in recent weeks.
Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We'll have more to share soon. https://t.co/1YhhIybZX7
— Sam Altman (@sama) September 12, 2026
The comments hit chip and memory stocks hard. These companies had been among the biggest winners of the AI boom, making them vulnerable to any shift in sentiment around the technology.
Deutsche Bank analyst Jim Reid noted the timing. He said the 5% yield threshold alone would have been a headline-making day, but the AI slowdown news made it worse.
“It was another session where September lived up to its reputation,” Reid added, referring to the month’s long history as the worst period of the year for stocks.
Bond Yields and Oil Add to the Pressure
The 10-year Treasury yield briefly touched 5% on Monday, its highest intraday level since 2023. Though it pulled back slightly, the move rattled investors already worried about government spending and inflation.
Oil prices added to the pressure. West Texas Intermediate crude rose 2.3% to around $103.72 a barrel early Tuesday.
Brent crude also remained elevated near $102 a barrel. The gains came after Saudi Arabia shut down its East-West pipeline and Houthi forces backed by Iran launched fresh attacks in the Middle East.
Those disruptions have kept energy prices high, which in turn pushed bond yields higher as inflation worries grew.
Fed Decision Looms
All of this is happening as the Federal Reserve begins its September policy meeting on Tuesday. Traders are pricing in a 94% chance the Fed raises interest rates by a quarter point, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
The Fed’s dot-plot projections and Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh’s press conference on Wednesday could give investors a clearer picture of where monetary policy is headed.
There are few major earnings or economic data releases to shift focus Tuesday, with Forgent Power Solutions and Vera Bradley among the companies reporting results.
Markets remain on edge heading into the Fed decision, with multiple pressures hitting at once.
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