Big Tech is finally plowing their cash & their investors’ cash into the economy.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Five companies announced that combined they plan to make about $700 billion in investments in 2026. The bulk of these capital expenditures are related to AI with a focus on AI infrastructure – data centers and everything in them and around them, from AI servers to onsite power-generation equipment if the utility cannot supply the juice.
- Amazon: $200 billion
- Alphabet: $175-185 billion
- Meta: $135 billion
- Microsoft: $145-150 billion
- Oracle: $42 billion
The market has not been enthusiastic about this spending binge, fearing that this cash that gets spent will sooner or later come out of share buybacks; and that is already happening.
If these five companies actually make the announced capital expenditures and the funds flow into the economy in various forms, they would amount to 2.1% of current-dollar GDP.
Other companies are also cranking up capital expenditures, though not as much, and the overall capex figures are much larger. So overall, this is a big stimulus for the economy for as long as it persists.
A stock market crash would end the binge. Think of the Dotcom Bust, when the S&P 500 plunged by 50% and the Nasdaq by 78% over a span of 2.5 years. As thousands of companies collapsed and vanished, and the stocks of the survivors crashed, capex and corporate spending got slashed left and right. It triggered a run-of-the-mill recession in the US overall and a depression in the tech areas. Lots of people are holding their breath, but it hasn’t happened yet.
Where will this $700 billion in cash come from?
The cash for these investments of $700 billion would come from a mix of:
- Share buybacks get cut (already happening)
- Share issuance (already started)
- Debt issuance (oh-la-la)
- Their massive hoard of cash and short-term investments
- Their huge operating cash flows.
Cherry on top: There are the massive and accelerated tax cash-benefits for investments in 2026 that will provide some additional funding.
Share buybacks get cut. This has already happened. So actual share buybacks, not announcements:
Oracle flipped from share buybacks to a share issuer, which has the opposite effect of share buybacks. In 2025, it issued $2.1 billion in new shares, largely the result of its stock compensation plans. In February, it launched a $20 billion at-the-market share offering (see below).
Amazon last bought back shares in Q2 2022 ($3.3 billion), and has had zero share buybacks since then, investing the funds instead in its AI endeavors.
Meta cut back share buybacks to $3.3 billion in Q3 and Q4 2025 combined. Share buybacks in the same period in prior years:
- $8.8 billion in Q3 and Q4 2024
- $9.5 billion in Q3 and Q4 2023
- $31.2 billion in Q3 and Q4 2022
- $33.5 billion in Q3 and Q4 2021.
Alphabet cut its share buybacks to $17 billion in Q3 and Q4 combined. Share buybacks in the same period in prior years:
- $30.6 billion in Q3 and Q4 2024
- $32.0 billion in Q3 and Q4 2023
- $30.0 billion in Q3 and Q4 2022
- $26.1 billion in Q3 and Q4 2021.
Microsoft reduced its share buybacks in 2024 and 2023, then increased them some in 2025. The share buyback peak remains in 2021 and 2022.
For these five companies, share buybacks combined in Q4 plunged to $12.6 billion, the lowest level since Q1 2018.
At the peak in 2021, these five companies spent $149 billion on share buybacks. If share buybacks of all of them go to zero, that would provide $149 billion in cash compared to 2021.
In addition, there are massive and accelerated tax cash-benefits to investing in 2026, while share buybacks are taxed. So after tax effects, the cash generated by ending share buybacks and investing these funds in AI infrastructure are very substantial (share buyback data via YCharts):
Share issuance: This also is now in the works. Oracle was the first out of the gate. It announced this month that it would raise $20 billion by selling new shares “at-the-market,” which allows it to sell the shares in dribs and drabs over time.
But it’s not free. The price of its shares has plunged by 58% in five months from the high in September, to $142.82. If they fall by another $40 a share, back to where they’d been in December 2023, they’d qualify for our pantheon of Imploded Stocks, for which the minimum requirement is a 70% plunge from the more or less recent high.
Share prices of the other four companies are still sky-high, and they can easily sell shares at very high prices, which would be efficient for them to do, but that would come only after they stop the share buybacks entirely.
Debt issuance. Oh-la-la. Oracle’s capital raise announced in February included a $25-billion bond offering, which was met with ravenous demand from investors (orderbook $129 billion). In September 2025, Oracle had already raised $18 billion in a debt sale. At the end of Q4, so not including the $25-billion debt sale, Oracle had $131 billion in short- and long-term debt.
Meta, which has $85 billion in short- and long-term debt, issued $30 billion in bonds last October. Then it took on another $27 billion in debt, but kept if off its balance sheet via a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), an outfit called Beignet, that issued the bonds to fund a huge data center in Louisiana. Meta is backing the bonds with debt-like guarantees. It guarantees the construction risk. Its rent payments cover the interest payments of the bonds. Its residual value guarantee is to be used to pay off the bonds. If Meta wants to bail out of the deal, it has to make bondholders whole by paying off the remaining amounts after the data center is sold. But the advantage for Meta is that its credit rating won’t get dinged.
Amazon, which has $167 billion in short- and long-term debt, pulled off a $15-billion bond offering in November 2025, also amid ravenous demand from investors.
All of the five companies have at the moment lots of room left to sell bonds amid huge demand for bonds from investors. Four of them have still very high to stellar credit ratings: Microsoft ‘AAA’; Alphabet ‘AA+’; Meta ‘AA-’ ; and Amazon ‘AA-’. Oracle at ‘BBB’ is two downgrades away from “junk” which starts at BB+ (my cheat sheet for corporate bond credit ratings). But even a junk rating of ‘BB+’ or ‘BB’ would only mean slightly higher yields these days, with still ravenous demand from investors. Everyone is chasing yield.
Their cash hoard. Cash and short-term investments could partially be used to fund capex. At the end of 2025:
- Amazon: $126 billion
- Alphabet: $127 billion
- Microsoft: $95 billion
- Meta: $82 billion
- Oracle: $16 billion.
Operating cash flow. In 2025, four of these companies generated massive operating cash flows (Oracle not so much). All five combined generated $575 billion in net cash flow in 2025. And similar cash flows in 2026 would help fund the $700 billion in investments:
- Alphabet: $165 billion
- Amazon: $139 billion
- Microsoft: $136 billion
- Meta: $115 billion
- Oracle: $20 billion.
Big Tech is plowing their cash & their investors’ cash into the economy.
When these companies don’t blow their cash on buying back their own shares, but instead use the funds to invest in AI infrastructure, they’re plowing their cash, and by extension, their shareholders’ cash, into the real economy, contributing to economic growth. I have long advocated for this shift, and it is now happening, though shareholders won’t like it.
When they issue new shares, to invest the proceeds in AI infrastructure, they’re plowing the cash from these investors into the economy. Shareholders get diluted, but the economic growth gets stimulated.
When they issue new debt to invest the proceeds in AI infrastructure, they’re plowing the cash from these yield-chasing investors into the economy. These investors like that, which is why they’re buying the debt, and the economy likes it. Shareholders maybe not so much, or maybe they don’t notice.
When they use part of their cash hoard, they’re handing Treasuries and corporate securities to other investors, and are plowing the proceeds into the economy. As long as they still have enough cash, everyone is happy with that.
When they use their operating cash flow to fund these investments, the economy benefits. That’s what operating cash flow is for, to invest and grow.
So as long as the financial markets can be kept spinning, this investment binge will continue to be a big stimulus for the economy.
In case you missed it: PayPal Shares Plunged 86% from the 2021 Goofball High and Right into our Imploded Stocks
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The shareholders can go eff themselves, it’s about time these companies made the rest of America wealthier. Our electricity grid is crap, they should start there.
I take it that you are not invested in stocks atm?
Which is superior for the economy.
Infrastructure or an individual share price?
AGREE, like totally Sandy:
As someone who made a ton on stocks ‘back in the day’ but OUT of the SMs, and other mkts since mid 1980s when I realized the futility of trying to keep up with the ”big boys,” I certainly agree with both of your clear sentiments, but especially that the USA ”grid” is bad…
IMVHO, the very best thing for the GUV MINT to do NOW is to make every home, biz, warehouse, etc., a source of solar electricity and hot water, and also make the investment needed to provide LOCAL grids independent of nationals…
Clearly, the technology, although also clearly restrained by the lack of investment into basic hard science for decades, is now adequate to make such investments by GV an actually better investment of tax payers money than anything else currently being subsidized.
JPMorgan calculated last fall that the tech industry must collect an extra $650 billion in revenue every year — three times the annual revenue of AI chip giant Nvidia — to earn a reasonable investment return. That marker is probably even higher now because AI spending has increased.
OpenAI, which unleashed the nation’s AI mania with the public debut of ChatGPT in late 2022, expects to lose more than $100 billion through the end of the decade, the technology news publication the Information reported in September.
Companies might never achieve a decent return on these investments. But that’s a problem for stockholders, not for the capex investments or the economy.
So read the article. It explains why for stockholders, this is not an ideal situation. But they have been spoiled for so long. Now they’re going to do some heavy lifting.
How does this affect the companies they’re paying? The data center developers, the contractors, the suppliers?
They get rich.
More like some heavy sinking…
Written by someone with a BS in economics from Wharton mind you, using the reduce to the ridiculous method. The number, $35/iphone user, is an attempt to make $650B seem unattainable.
1. There are nearly 5B mobile phone users in the world. If the average revenue increase is $2/mo per user thats $120B
2. Regarding streaming, thats 1B subscribers. Again $2/mo is $50B
3. The top 25 companies have $7T in annual revenue. If AI adds just 2% thats $140B
That’s just touching the surface on the revenue side.
What about cost cutting?
If AI displaces just 3% of the US workforce alone at average incomes of 70k, thats $350B.
So there is your $650B and that is just scratching the surface.
I have a tiny retail business and AI, even at this early stage with our limited use, has its imprint all over it in the form of productivity, cost cutting, and increased revenue.
The capex spending these companies are commiting to will without doubt pay huge dividends. These will be perhaps the same or maybe new generation titans of industry.
Many companies will vanish and burn large sums of investors money in the process.
Just as before; new cycle same outcome.
The value of AI investment should be crystal clear to anyone with business acumen. That in no way justifies the valuations of many AI related companies. Two very different topics.
Written by someone almost finished a PhD in economics but decided to get one in computer science instead.
Just because a technology can reduce cost, it doesn’t mean that the savings will translate to revenue. Internet vastly reduced cost of commerce but the amount of profit generated is far lower than the amount it destroyed. For example, Amazon killed brick and mortar business and the the amount of profit Amazon generated is far less than the amount it destroyed.
Thanks to competition from China. GenAI companies make meager profit if at all from its services. All the investment in the world is not going to change that. How much can OpenAI charge for its subscription? The moment it cuts off free services, all the users will flock to Chinese providers. It is as simple as that. Unlike car market, US can set up a tariff barrier, there is no way to prohibit service flow. None of the investment can be recuperated.
“Internet vastly reduced cost of commerce but the amount of profit generated is far lower than the amount it destroyed. For example, Amazon killed brick and mortar business and the the amount of profit Amazon generated is far less than the amount it destroyed.”
Total utter fabricated bullshit. Is bullshit fabrication the art they teach you in economics grad school? Everything else in your comment is of equal quality. I doubt you ever had a single course of economics.
Amazon is just one online retailer (among other stuff it does). Walmart is another huge online retailer, as is Macy’s, as is Apple, as are all big brick-and-mortar retailers, and all online-only retailers. Profits in ecommerce are huge. At the same time, there is still a big part of brick-and-mortar retail that is throwing off huge of profits too, the biggest one being motor-vehicle dealers, and grocery stores.
Since 1998, when ecommerce was still just a blip, total profits at all retailers combined — brick-and-mortar plus ecommerce — has multiplied by 8:
AND RETAIL IS ONLY A MINUSCULE PART OF WHAT THE INTERNET DOES.
Apple not playing?
Dabbling.
About $14 billion
Apple loyalists will buy whatever they make and not care too much about AI.
“Apple AI how do I read magazines more effectively?”
/s
There model seems to be paying Gemini and to a lesser degree to use their models. Smart play in my mind.
@glen Totally agree on Apple. Why invest a gazillion dollars in something guaranteed to blow up when you can just buy access to the platform guaranteed to be left standing when tears have dried. Same thing they did with Search, instead of developing their own, just cut a deal with Google. Gemini is likely to one of the remaining platforms, they’ve got DeepMind and will be just fine after OpenAI goes down in history as the MySpace of the AI world.
Apple outperformed the Nasdaq this week by simply not doing anything significant in AI.
The illogical thinking of every company in America…except for goosing the stock options.
Stock buybacks when stock prices are insane.
Issue more shares when stock prices plummet.
“Share prices of the other four companies are still sky-high, and they can easily sell shares at very high prices, which would be efficient for them to do, but that would come only after they stop the share buybacks entirely.”
The customers of these companies are not you and me, nor the mom and pop shareholders. Their real customers are the Wall Street whales and market movers who are happy to trade short term losses for massive long-term gains. From that perspective, those moves are very logical.
what public stocks will be the best positioned to profit from all this capex spending ? just a question for all you smart commenters and wolf…………thank you for your attention to this matter. please LOL
Seems like cat has been benefiting but it’s stock is pretty high already so not sure chasing would be wise here.
Lotta questions in the ai narrative in my eyes but the biggest is how does it impact the job market.
Will new jobs created by AI come even close to replacing jobs lost?
Is Elon right and is ubi the long term answer… and is there an appetite for that with 40 trillion in debt our doorstep?
How deep does the NASDAQ have to go down before the faucet turns off?
Lotta stress on tech and software in particular lately does not give me high confidence that this will last much longer but I have an open mind
These investments are fantastic to see.
Agree and disagree. I agree that, between plowing this money into investments and doing stock buybacks or dividends, the former is better.
But the real problem is that the Mag7 have so much operating cash flow in the first place. Since this cash flow has grown far faster than the economy as a whole, it means they’re taking more and more of the pie. Their monopoly/oligopoly pricing power assures that.
I don’t consider that a good thing.
Is the 700 billion all in the US? Or is there a breakdown by region?
700 billion/52 weeks = $13 billion a week or just under 2 billion day. The Chinese abacus is now much larger/longer. I can’t fathom this amount.Scary all these techno nerds with so much money. Good luck to all the players.
While the general idea of “plowing cash back into the economy” is directionally correct, the specific content of the capex, in this case, is mostly wasteful and ridiculous.
We do not need more “data centers.” And when we blow capital on this stuff, it is no longer available for things we really do need. The only benefit that the real economy will derive from this is a very short building boom of a few years’ duration – a classic boom town cycle. We can ask the shale patches in South Dakota how well that worked out for the folks there.
This seems to be a real dilemma. If AI “works” (it won’t, but let’s just pretend for argument’s sake), then it will displace millions of workers in the real economy, who will be jobless and broke while the efficiency gains accrue to the billionaire class. If it doesn’t work, then we will have wasted all this capital by building Ozymandian monuments to digital nothingness.
It’s hard to see how anybody benefits from any of this.
That’s a silly comment. Just like cars will never work because of yada yada yada, and we don’t need no effing cars. Horses will do just fine.
AI works and has been used everywhere already for years, and its use has been expanding at a very rapid pace, as have its capabilities. You just didn’t notice? Maybe get out a little more often?
I just listened to the Nobel peace prize talk about AI.
Their words were “it’s uses are shallow at the moment”
And “obviously this massive build up will crash just like the .com bubble”
these are Europeans , smart ones, real smart.
Hehe , so who knows
AI is being used for protein engineering for new medicines for incurable diseases. I hardly think this is “shallow.”
Consider the source, the Nobel Peace Prize was previously awarded to Barry Obama who went on to assassinate roughly 3,000 people.
“Nobel peace prize talk about AI”
🤣🤣🤣🤣❤️
What kind of bullshit are you going to cite next???
Europeans are miles behind on AI and tech in general, which is a huge problem in Europe, and causes a lot of handwringing there, if you pay attention to the European media lamenting it.
Sure, but BigTech is not doing it to better society, but so that they can harvest our data, sell it for marketing purposes, and make money.
When Henry Ford rolled out the Model T, of course, he was trying to make money, but the people who bought the cars wanted them.
Do Americans want the “product” that Google and Meta are using their data centers for?
TSonder305
Most uses of AI are not consumer-facing at all. Companies use AI, from your healthcare provider down to small businesses for internal stuff. This is not new.
AI will easily replace search engines and can take nearly half a trillion dollars in ad revenue.
This is almost a done deal.
If AI replaced search engines, why would any business pay to advertise on it?
This AI data-center boom echoes railroads or fiber, massive capex before we really know if the productivity shows up. We are probably already running into diminishing returns on scaling, but the spending just keeps going.
Also, big part of the AI story is “augmentation” (not replacement, as they say) one person doing the work of many. But if that’s true, what happens to the other workers? Let’s say mass layoffs don’t happen, the idea then is that productivity would rise because output per worker goes up. But if AI lets, for example, one lawyer do the work of three, or one marketer produce 10 times content, or one analyst run 100 times simulations. Do we really need 3 times more lawsuits or 10 times more ads or 100 times more reports? I would think not. So the extra capacity doesn’t automatically translate into extra spending.
I guess it all depends on whether AI creates new categories of spending or mostly optimizes existing ones. Either way, I think it will be less than the capex implies.
It’s like the Adam smith pin factory.
AI taking jobs frees humans to do other more important jobs.
As the specialized slower pin masters can do something more beneficial for the nation.
In theory
Automation has worked very well for the economy over the past many decades.
Offshoring to cheap-labor countries and for tax benefits, and then importing those goods, has been a disaster for the economy and national security.
Excellent comments/insight.
There is an increasing amount of information coming out about the limitations of Large Language Models (LLM) that the AI industry hopes will go away by super scaling. Everything I’m able to glean so far is that the super scaling won’t fix the intrinsic problem.
What this means to me is that at least for current LLM technology, the results of AI will have to be checked if 100% accuracy is required. If this is true, the application of AI (while still large) will not be the “rule the world” theme we have often heard.
I go back to the legal usage. Yes AI can assemble some pretty impressive contracts…but, they will still have to be reviewed by someone that knows their stuff. And if one doesn’t do the basic research to form the contract, how does a reviewer know where the error(s) are? Where the context is not correctly assimilated.
I am forming the belief that AI (at least in the current LLM technology) is not going to provide the types of massive productivity that is being claimed. And scaling the LLMs up to massive levels) is not going to eliminate the underlying weakness (hallucinations).
Sounds like it’s going to supply more of the blue collar labor jobs needed in the economy for a while until the robots cometh anyway.
The profits from the productivity gains that do show up will continue to accumulate to the top as have the computer boom gains over the last 30 years. Our “new” K shaped economy will be even more divergent.
Just gotta watch out for the political power grabs as AI starts tracking our every move for the corporate and sovereign types… may not even have to wait that long as they’re in the woodworks already. Seems a pretty good chance they’ll manufacture consent for handing over democracy using the data to herd the masses around again.
More strong men will save the day for sure. /s
You can’t tell where the freed up resources will be deployed. No one in the 1920s could predict that the great grand children of the out-of-work farriers would become website designers.
Similarly the smart people all predicted the demise of Standard Oil when electric lights were introduced in the 1890s. As predicted the demand for kerosene for lighting dropped, and at that time gasoline was a waste product inherent to the refining process.
As one of 5 ”estimators/analysts” of construction costs with a very good company in1985, with no computers,,, WE did about 6MM per quarter…
As the only such employee in 2009,,, I did about $40MM per quarter! With computers, but without fancy software, though I helped, when asked, to review and vet on screen takeoff and other similar software being developed at that time, even though I could do what that software did faster and more accurately AT THAT TIME.
So far as I have been able to discover from reading, lately, AI is very likely to provide similar cost efficiencies sooner or later.
Excellent article Wolf.
Can you now apply this analysis of A.I. spending to upcoming earnings pressures? My understanding is that these “hyper scalers “ have extended the depreciation schedule on the expensive chips they are buying.
Yet earnings pressures are mounting, correct?
The practical use of A-1 would be to get rid of over-compensated executives versus worker bees. A-I does what executive are supposed to do. Manage and guide employees.
As for stock buybacks, they should be banned or taxed heavily. Instead of buybacks, pay dividends. They are only used to boost the churning of stock option awards and how exactly do they benefit when exercised at high prices, then the stock falls? Just for the execs.
Also, where is Tesla, et al, on your list?
Investments not big enough to be included here. It’s among the smaller players, such as Apple.
“Hey, My horse has more than “one horse power” ! And he is offended, Henry Ford would suggest such a thing” pssstt!
Great article! Finally, a data-driven analysis of company cash flows and AI proposed investments. This article obviously required actual research on your part, which is generally lacking from other more famous investment sites. Thank you for your efforts.
Seven companies does not a market make. There are another 4,993 US companies in the broader market out there that sell for a lot less than 200X future earnings. Especially in the small cap arena. Follow the cash. What companies have contracts with the AI Big Spenders? $700B is a lot of future revenue and EPS for a lot of great tech companies who must continuously build out support for the AI and Bitcoin mining infastructure. Go back and look at Oil Service companies vs. Big Oil company Capex when Oil prices are high.
Dividends?
Buybacks hace juiced the market while reducing PE ratios. Once they stall, investors will face a real dilemma where ROI will have to increase dramatically to offset PE gains. Apple has been smart to sit this one out and let others spend spend spend biding its time to buy appropriate AI tools for its platforms.
As for economy, there should be concern about inflationary pressures on labor specifically trades like HVAC and electricians. There will be cost pressures on anything requiring chips and memory. Then there’s strains on energy and water. No free lunch.
I have to admit that a part of me is concerned about some of the motivations behind this spending spree. I think it is about more than just building a profitable business. Whoever wins the AI race will have tremendous political and social influencing powers. If everyone just asks AI for all the answers to any questions, then the runners of AI can influence and control how a future generation thinks. Kind of scary.
Regular internet search, totally dominated by Google, has offered this problem for two decades.
“When every one thinks alike, nobody thinks.”
If the hyper traders – who traded the Mag7 for twenty years, splitting them multi times – lift QQQ to a new all time high, the Mag7 market cap will rise above China GDP, slightly below the US GDP, for distribution. TGA can rise from $908B to $1.5T. Don’t blame Tim Cook and Jensen Huang. Blame wall street. Wall street will send the markets down.
I don’t get how these expenditures are a great economic stimulus. They create a small number of construction jobs, and the chips that fill them are mostly made by machines. Once running, they require almost no human supervision. Great for Nvidia, but who else?
You don’t understand what is happening here.
just like the dot-com fiber buildout, some of this investment will not earn its cost before it’s obsolete. The chips and the servers will need to be written off and replaced in years 3-5 as the technology moves past it. So these companies need immediate payoff because they have to do a lot of it all again in 3 to 5 years sans the land, buildings, and power infrastructure. I don’t see them achieving their revenue goals before obsolescence touches their servers/chips. I think Nvidia come out with new chips every two years.
It is shoot first and ask questions later at AI companies. They are all cowboys. Who is going to end up at the Golden Coral?
So many experts
Wow. The top is in. The last bear giving in :)
RTGDFA?
What does it say about stockholders and investors? They’re paying for all this. See ORCL, as noted.
I should require a pop quiz about the article before people can comment.
Well, semiconductors and NVDA still going strong. And this is what I am talking about. Saying for years that AI is real. For years proven better than t bills and chill. Cheers.
Great article Wolf…. I find it interesting that NOONE mentioned the obvious beneficiary of this massive spending. AMD reported last week and their gudiance for their AI chips was lower than expected.
Meanwhile, NVDA STILL has an enormous market share, somewhere north of 85% right now for GPUs and just made a huge licensing deal w/Groq for inference chips and technology not to mention make muti-billion dollar investments in many start-ups with new technologies. CEO Huang is pounding the table saying the demand is insatiable and had the foresight to have previously made long-term deals with Micron and other HBM chip makers to ensure supply in an industry that is becoming very constrained.
All this adds up to the likelihood of blowout earnings for the next few years. UNLESS, of course, something changes or a Black Swan event happens. YMMV :-)
Happy NVDA owner since DEc ’17
Excellent article and insights Wolf.
Pretty amazing to see how money has been moving throughout the economy lately. 2026 looks like it will be a wild ride.
Stock Bubble Update: S&P 500 total market cap now $62.78 Trillion.
Top eight tech stocks (Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, Broadcom, Tesla) total $22.53 Trillion, or 35.8% of the entire S&P 500.
Micron Technology +AMD together= $784 Billion. Palantir Technologies market cap is now $324 Billion, down from almost a half Trillion, but still far above IBM at $279 Billion. Palantir EBITDA is $1.44 billion, IBM EBITDA is $16.78 Billion. You can’t make this stuff up.
The equal weight S&P and even the Dow are both outperforming the SPY and the QQQ so far this year, so maybe the market is finally sending a message.