GRO MONEY NEWS - 🚨 AI DIDN’T BREAK. THE CAPITAL STACK DID.

AI demand is still screaming. Credit markets have simply decided that enormous demand does not give borrowers a free pass on leverage.

🔥 PPI jumped 1.3% in September and 6.3% year over year.

📉 CoreWeave bonds are trading at yields around 15% plus, even while the company points to roughly $104B of committed revenue backlog.

💻 TSMC just reported roughly $46.7B of quarterly revenue and nearly $24B of profit, with management still extremely bullish on AI demand.

🏦 Meanwhile, Liberty Mutual and Elda River are targeting $500M of senior energy and infrastructure credit, exactly the kind of institutional capital AI infrastructure borrowers increasingly want access to.

🏠 Mortgage rates remain around 7.45% for the thirty year fixed, purchase applications fell 4% last week, and adjustable rate mortgages now represent 10.5% of applications.

🏢 In CRE, the CMBS special servicing rate just hit 11.49%, its highest level since 2013.

💰 And private capital is still buying. EQT is acquiring Stockbridge, while GTCR and Elliott announced a $6.1B acquisition of CCC Intelligent Solutions.

The takeaway is simple: AI infrastructure is not failing. The market is getting more sophisticated about who should own it, who should finance it, and what the collateral and contracts are actually worth.

Cheap money rewards narratives. Expensive money rewards underwriting.

Until tomorrow, be the best human you can be.
~ Teresa Grobecker

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Duration: 12m
Broadcast on: 15 Oct 2026
Audio Format: other

I didn't break. The capital stack did. When the bond market starts yelling, the equity market eventually has to stop pretending it cannot hear it. Good morning. This is GRO Money News for Thursday, October 15, 2026. Today's episode is brought to you by Grow Group. We are actively looking to place $5 billion of equity financing in 2026 for qualified master builders in major MSA territories, with multiple financing structures available, including up to 100% financing for qualified developments, data centers, and solar projects. And today is a very good day to talk about financing, because the AI industry just got a reminder that having enormous demand does not exempt you from the laws of credit. Let's start with the macro picture. September producer prices came in brutally hot this morning. The producer price index jumped 1.3% in one month and 6.3% from a year ago. That was the largest monthly increase since March 2022. Even stripping out food, energy, and trade services, prices increased another half percent for the month and 5% from a year ago. Yesterday, consumer inflation had already surprised to the upside at 3.7% annually. Today, retail sales added another complication. Headline sales rose 0.8% in September, substantially stronger than expected. But gasoline was doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Excluding gasoline, sales increased only 0.2%. Meanwhile, initial unemployment claims remain extremely low at 199,000, while the Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index dropped to 20.9 from 37.8. Put that together, and the Federal Reserve has one of those jobs where everyone thinks you are overpaid until they realize the building is on fire. Inflation is hot. Consumers are still spending. Layoffs remain low. Manufacturing momentum is cooling, but not collapsing. That is not a clean rate cutting environment. Now look at the markets. Yesterday, the NASDAQ fell almost 1.9%, the S&P 500 lost 1.1%, and small caps fell almost 2%. Market sentiment has moved solidly into fear territory. Asia took the baton and sprinted toward the exit. South Korea's Cosby fell roughly 7.6%. Japan's Nikkei dropped about 4.9%. Hong Kong lost around 1%, and mainland Chinese stocks also declined. But here is the interesting part. Treasury yields are falling today, with the 10-year around 5.07%, even though inflation data came in hot. That is not necessarily good news. Investors are buying treasuries partly because money is moving away from higher risk technology and AI credit. The market is beginning to separate sovereign credit from heavily leveraged corporate infrastructure credit, which brings us to the real story today. Corweave has become the credit market's favorite stress test for the AI infrastructure boom. Its bonds have been trading at distressed looking yields, with some debt yielding around 15% or higher. That is extraordinary for a company sitting on approximately $104 billion of contracted revenue backlog. And this is why I keep telling people that an off-take contract does not eliminate financing risk. You can have a phenomenal customer contract and still have construction risk, refinancing risk, hardware depreciation, customer concentration, technology obsolescence, collateral risk, and enormous future capital requirements. Corweave is now trying to broaden its funding base by creating investment grade structures that can attract life insurance capital. That is not a side story. That is probably the next chapter of AI infrastructure finance. Insurance balance sheets control enormous pools of long duration capital, but insurance companies do not want venture capital risk disguised as a bond. They want predictable cash flow, durable collateral, strong covenants, credible residual value, and investment grade credit architecture. The AI infrastructure winners will increasingly be the companies that can transform compute revenue into financeable credit. Now compare the financing anxiety with what is actually happening to semiconductor demand. TSMC just reported another extraordinary quarter with nearly $24 billion in quarterly profit and about $46.7 billion of revenue. Management expects full-year US dollar revenue growth around 44% and continues to describe AI demand as extremely strong. That is the important distinction. AI demand did not suddenly disappear because a bond traded down. The capital market is beginning to differentiate between demand for AI and the financing structures being used to build the infrastructure that serves that demand. Those are two completely different underwriting questions. Private capital is already responding. Liberty Mutual Investments and Elder River announced a partnership targeting up to

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