A sudden plunge: - The US stock market declined across the board, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 1.33%, the S&P 500 down 1.57%, and the Nasdaq down 2.03%; - Gold prices initially fell 4%, silver plummeted 11% — gold and silver are still largely driven by market sentiment; - Oil prices dropped 2.7%, copper fell as much as 2.9%, and Bitcoin dropped to $65,000; - The US dollar index stabilized but closed nearly unchanged. To be precise, this crash was triggered by a specific sector in the US stock market, which then propagated to global markets. Everything happened so quickly that even gold was sold off by liquidity-seeking investors during this highly tense market period. Concerns over the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence have spread from software stocks to logistics, commercial real estate, and other industries (market worries that AI will further compress industry profits). After Anthropic released automation tools, the market speculated: Will wealth management be replaced? Will commercial real estate brokers be replaced? Will insurance agents be replaced? Will logistics dispatching be replaced? As a result, investors started “looking for losers,” which is more frightening than just looking for winners (this is much more serious than simply underperforming expectations). The shift from “AI is omnipotent” to “AI will destroy industries” has only taken a few weeks, and now is the most uncertain moment of the US stock bull market. Last night’s decline began at 22:30 when the US stock market opened, and before that, gold was almost unaffected. The accelerated drop started at midnight, with gold prices plunging by $180 within an hour. This major decline occurred just before the release of key inflation data, with the US January CPI report scheduled for 21:30 tonight — investors generally believe that inflation will decline (hoping for rate cuts), and then the market will be saved. But even if the data brings good news, it might only be a “one-day rally” (just a “technical rebound”). The root cause of this decline is that the market has shifted from enthusiasm for artificial intelligence to fear of it; no matter how good the CPI data is, it cannot resolve concerns about whether AI will destroy profits. One more thing to note is that in recent days, the most obvious trend has not been heavy selling. Instead, no one is willing to step up and buy during the plunge.