October 31, 2026

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Happy Halloween. Our sympathies to anyone who didn’t realize the party would be this warm, but can’t take off their jacket because it’s absolutely pivotal for understanding their costume.

And not to scare you, but…the clocks fall back at 2am tomorrow, so don’t forget to set yours.

—Matty Merritt, Molly Liebergall, Dave Lozo, Sam Klebanov, Holly Van Leuven, Abby Rubenstein

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

Tech stocks tumbling
Big profits for Big Oil
The biggest crypto hack ever

Markets

Nasdaq

25,437

-2.86%

S&P

7,580.07

-1.82%

Dow

51,770.31

-1.09%

10-Year

4.929%

-6.0 bps

Bitcoin

$76,724.36

-2.74%

SanDisk

$1,150.89

-13.47%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 6:00pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: Yesterday was a scary day for stocks, which fell as tech companies got walloped like Kirk in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (more on that below). Intel’s rough earnings made it one of the hardest hit, but even Sandisk, whose earnings beat expectations, dipped.

EARNINGS JITTERS

Nothing scarier than a Big Tech sell-off

Stock traders at computers with one looking distressed with hand on forehead

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

The state of the Nasdaq yesterday was as scary as encountering a group of teens in matching clown masks stocking up on eggs for an “omelet party.” The tech-heavy index suffered a huge hit over the last few days as investors faced their fears about tech companies’ massive AI spending after several reported less-than-stellar earnings this week.

Correction territory. With tech stocks selling off, the Nasdaq Composite finished the day down 2.86%, its worst single-day performance since June. The Nasdaq 100 shed as much as 4.5% yesterday, falling into its third correction this year.

What’s got investors running scared?

Several Big Tech earnings reports this week led investors and analysts to come to a similar conclusion: A lot of money is going into AI and not enough is coming out. Plus, more traditional moneymakers weren’t delivering as much as hoped amid the spending spree:

Google parent Alphabet’s stock had its worst day ever on Thursday, with about $475 billion in market value vanishing after it reported on Wednesday that search revenue growth was slower than expected, and free cash flow (i.e., the money left after paying for AI infrastructure like data centers) had swung to a ~$9 billion loss.
Amazon’s stock fell 1.41% yesterday, after reporting on Thursday that it spent even more money than it expected on AI last quarter, and growth from its online shopping sector slowed down.
Neocloud companies and chipmakers all fell this week. But no one is having a worse time than Intel. Its stock cratered 28.58% yesterday—its worst day in 50 years—after its Thursday earnings report revealed weak PC demand amid high AI spending. The US government’s 10% stake in the company lost about $12 billion yesterday, according to CNBC.

Big picture: AI spending is having a big impact on the economy, and tech companies see it as their way to dominate in the future, but investors are getting nervous about whether it’s going to pay off.—MM

Reader Poll

Are investors right to fear AI spending?

Yes, these are huge investments that may not pan out.
No, you’ve got to spend money to make money, and the tech is the future.
Maybe, but it’s too soon to know.
🤷‍♂️ I just want to know what other Brew readers think.

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World

Tour de headlines

Chevron gas station with gas prices sign in foreground

Mario Tama/Getty Images

🛢️ High prices have been good for Chevron and Exxon. While most of the world sees high diesel prices as a cause for concern, the CEOs of Chevron and ExxonMobil probably don’t. Both companies reported windfall Q3 profits yesterday amid prices being driven up by wars in Iran and Ukraine. Chevron’s profit grew to $9.9 billion, almost 200% compared to the same period last year, while Exxon’s profit doubled to $15.4 billion. Both companies’ stocks touched record highs yesterday. But all that profit isn’t great for political optics, with gas and diesel prices high and the midterms looming—President Trump said both companies were making “too much money” in August.

💬 Christa Pike speaks after botched execution. Pike, who survived two doses of pentobarbital that were intended as a lethal injection in Tennessee last month, issued her first public statement since her failed execution, saying she is in pain and is “searching for meaning” in what happened to her. “And the pain isn’t just physical,” Pike said in a statement dictated to her lawyers. “There is pain in my mind and in my soul.” She was returned to prison following a hospitalization, and she remains sentenced to die for the 1995 death of her classmate Colleen Slemmer—though her lawyers are asking the state’s governor to change that to life in prison.

⌨️ Reddit wants you to log in. One of the internet’s most free-flowing platforms for dialogue wants to be a little less open: Reddit said this week it’s planning to become a mostly logged-in-only experience. It’s starting with testing, but if one day you have to log in to upvote a post insulting the same reality star you can’t stand, you can blame Google’s AI overview, which tanked Reddit’s search referrals last quarter. The significant change for one of the last bastions of the open internet, coupled with a weak sales forecast for Q4, helped spur a 29% drop in its stock yesterday that made it the company’s worst day since it went public in 2024.—AR

HACK TO THE FUTURE

Record crypto heist swipes $6.3b from Binance

Illustration showing a Binance crypto coin in high-contrast black and white turning into glitches

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Adobe Stock

The biggest crypto theft in history happened faster than the average American’s commute. Hackers stole most of their $6.3 billion haul from Binance in roughly 20 minutes yesterday, leaving the world’s largest digital coin exchange scrambling to cover losses.

No other crypto theft comes close to this one. It’s four times larger than last year’s then-record hack of Bybit, and almost twice as big as all 2025 crypto thefts combined. Binance’s co-CEO said that the exchange suspended withdrawals until it passes “rigorous testing,” which he said should wrap up sometime this weekend.

In the meantime:

Binance and its partners have frozen $3 billion of the stolen assets, with $3.3 billion still in the wind.
The exchange said it would cover all losses, but it plans to dip into company funds to do so—its emergency reserve for cyberattacks only held $1.23 billion in bitcoin (which got slightly devalued after the hack spooked crypto markets).

Whodunit? A group of hackers may have broken into an engineer’s laptop, Binance said. The FBI is investigating, but blockchain analysts already think this was the work of the same North Korean hacker group that allegedly targeted Bybit last year.

“Bad time to troll,” Binance’s co-founder posted on X in response to a post from Elon Musk that appeared to mock the exchange.—ML

This week’s question

What’s the most surprising biographical fact you’ve learned about a relative?

Sam’s answer to get the juices flowing: “My grandfather, who lived in the Soviet Union, once beat World Chess Champion Mikhail Botvinnik in a chess match organized by their shared workplace. The grandmaster never showed up to the game, so my grandpa was handed a technical win.”

Submit your response here.

recs

Costumes you can still make before tonight.
Keep spooky season going by visiting these haunted restaurants across the US.
A taste test that found the best fast-food chicken wings.
A cookbook full of cozy Eastern European dishes that you can eat with a spoon.**

Meet SPECS, Snap’s AR glasses. Get a virtual 115-inch screen, heads-up directions, and jump shots alongside virtual players, all while still seeing the world around you. Computing, minus the phone.*

^{*A message from our sponsor. **This is a product recommendation from our writers. When you buy through this link, Morning Brew may earn a commission.}

Play

Brew Crossword: Your sample clue from our biggest puzzle of the week is, “Kia model that sounds as good as can be.” Play the Crossword here.

Open House

Welcome to Open House, the only newsletter section that can withstand an F5 tornado. We’ll give you a few facts about a listing and you try to guess the price.

Zillow

Today’s megamansion is in Wellington, CO, and it comes fully stocked with every gadget, gizmo, and entertaining tool you can imagine. The 8,886-square-foot home sits on nearly five acres of land right next to the North Poudre Reservoir for access to your own watersport haven. Amenities include:

7 beds, 10 baths
Saltwater pool with water jets
Trees inside

How much for the house party house?

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$3 million

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: illumination, meaning “the quality or state of having or giving off light.” Thanks to Danielle from Ann Arbor, MI, for a suggestion that got us out of the darkness. Submit another Word of the Day here.

Written by Abigail Rubenstein, Matty Merritt, Molly Liebergall, Dave Lozo, Sam Klebanov, and Holly Van Leuven

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