Global Stocks Rally on Fed Cut, AI Demand

Global stocks pushed to intraday records as investors priced in a near‑certain 25‑basis‑point Federal Reserve rate cut and eased US–China trade tensions while markets awaited the Fed’s policy decision and corporate earnings. The rally was led unusually by storage hardware stocks — Western Digital and Seagate — which have surged roughly 189% and 173% as AI-driven demand for memory and disk capacity soars. That optimism sat alongside acute crypto volatility ahead of the Fed, with roughly $100 million of positions wiped in one hour and more than $550 million liquidated over 24 hours, and bitcoin trading near $111,000 while remaining vulnerable to sharp reversals. Market participants warned that supply/demand dynamics, customer overordering and opaque cloud-provider deployments could blunt gains, and rising debt issuance to finance data-center expansion has drawn scrutiny from regulators including the Bank of England. The result is a market buoyed by easier-rate expectations and AI demand but exposed to rapid repricing if capacity, credit or macro signals change.