Good evening and welcome to Markets Desk, your closing read on the stories moving money and markets today.
Meta is taking a serious hit, with shares sinking roughly six percent after aggressive artificial intelligence spending pushed free cash flow into negative territory. Perhaps more telling, five-year credit default swaps on the company are hitting all-time highs, signaling that bond markets are starting to price in genuine credit stress — not just equity volatility.
That pressure on tech spending is rippling through the chip sector as well. Micron and peers are sliding after Tesla trimmed its near-term capital expenditure target and Lam Research delivered a forecast that came in softer than Wall Street expected. Together those two signals are cooling investor appetite for the entire semiconductor supply chain.
Elsewhere in crypto infrastructure, Fireblocks is pushing back hard on reports that Visa was in acquisition talks to buy the digital asset platform for two point five billion dollars, calling the story, in their words, news to us. That denial lands awkwardly in a week when stablecoin infrastructure is under heavy investor scrutiny, and it leaves the question of Fireblocks' next funding path very much open.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
