Of everything in the headlines this morning, the line I keep rereading is a Reuters one: Big Tech returned the smallest share of its cash to shareholders in 15 years, because the data centers are eating it.

For a decade the biggest steady buyer of US stocks was the US stocks themselves, through buybacks. If that buyer is now writing checks to concrete and chip suppliers, the market has lost its most reliable bid, and it lost it at the same moment it needed one. Meta wants to raise up to $95 billion in new equity, which is the opposite of a buyback. Meanwhile Bloomberg says AI enthusiasm is “collapsing,” the Nasdaq just had its worst day since June, and Yahoo’s chart of the day says the market’s favorite stocks are in their worst slump since 2010. Crowded trades have a particular way of leaving: everyone is polite until the door is small.

Rewind to early October. BofA said the AI trade was the last line of defense for Treasuries, and Deutsche said stocks and bonds were pricing two different worlds. This morning Bloomberg has Treasuries extending their rally on the tech selloff. So bonds, with inflation at 3.7% and a Fed still leaning toward hikes, are now the refuge from stocks. One of those two regimes just got to be right, and it wasn’t the one with the cheerleaders.

One headline has stocks swinging “like meme tokens,” on the same day a crypto exchange lost $6.3 billion in about 20 minutes. I suspect the comparison is less a joke than a risk model.

Does anyone own the stuff that isn’t tech anymore?

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