The markets remained volatile throughout the week as fears about Big Tech’s spending, central bank signals and a strong crypto recovery collided in an extremely volatile session.
Amazon’s shares fell on fears over massive AI spending. India’s central banks kept rates unchanged and struck a stable tone for growth.
Wall Street digested Goldman Sachs’ push towards AI automation even though Bitcoin and other major tokens experienced a dramatic rebound after a brutal sell-off.
Amazon’s stock drops sharply due to massive AI capital expenditure plans
Amazon’s stock fell sharply Friday, after its eye-popping AI capital expenditure plans rekindled Wall Street’s fears that Big Tech spends first before calculating returns.
Investors were rattled when Amazon said that it expected capital expenditures to reach $200 billion by 2026, as the company builds data centres and AI-based infrastructure for AWS.
This sell-off occurs as AI costs for the sector are estimated at over $600 billion in this year. Questions arise about near-term returns and margin pressures if demand changes.
India’s RBI maintains interest rates at the same level
Reserve Bank of India maintained its main repo rate at 5.25%, as widely anticipated. Growth remains robust and inflation is benign.
The six members of the monetary policy panel voted unanimously to maintain a neutral stance. This signals that there is no rush to change rates in any direction.
Sanjay Malhotra, the Governor of India pointed out that there was a more stable external background after an agreement between India and the United States eased some tariff pressure. This offered relief for exporters as well as markets.
RBI has also projected a solid growth rate of 6.9% between April and June 2026, with 7% the next quarter.
Goldman Sachs’ major AI pivot
Goldman Sachs has partnered with Anthropic in order to build AI agents that will automate the most time-consuming and complex tasks at the bank. This is a step beyond using chatbots or coding assistants.
Anthropic engineers have been embedded with Goldman team members for the past six months. The project is led by CIO Marco Argenti.
Agents who are early in the game focus on trade and transactional accounting to reconcile records, resolve breaks and speed up deals, as well as client screening and onboarding where rule checking and document reviews can slow down transactions.
Argenti claims that the new tools will be available soon, and they should reduce turnaround time dramatically.
Goldman claims it is too soon to discuss layoffs. However, the new technology may reduce the reliance of the company on external vendors.
Bitcoin and XRP are on the rebound
Bitcoin climbed back to $70,000 Friday after briefly falling below $60,000. This was a jump of more than 11 percent.
XRP was the star of the show, zooming up 22%, to about $1.50, after dipping below $1.14 as traders rushed back to build risk positions.
Ethereum has risen to $2000 from $1750 and Solana is now $86.
The snapback of crypto-linked stocks has begun: Strategy rose over 21%; Coinbase rose by 10% and Galaxy gained 17%.
Analysts cautioned that it could be a temporary relief rally.
S&P 500, Nasdaq and other US markets were also up by around 1.5% at midday.
The post Evening Digest: Amazon’s Artificial Intelligence Capex, Bitcoin’s rebound, XRP’s pivot, Goldman’s AI pivot, may be updated as new developments unfold.
