Japan MoF official says G7 and G20 see no financial instability risk from AI sell-off

Japan’s Ministry of Finance has a message for anyone watching AI stocks tumble: the grown-ups in the room are not panicking. A ministry official said there are no concerns that the AI-driven sell-off will trigger financial instability. The official added that the global economy remains resilient. A rough day in Tokyo On October 15, 2026, the Nikkei 225 fell 4.9%, or 3,318 points, to close at 64,425.95. That marked the index’s third-largest single-day point drop in history. The damage clustered in the names most tied to the AI and chip trade. Advantest, Tokyo Electron, SoftBank Group and Kioxia all posted heavy declines. Two forces drove the sell-off. The first was rising anxiety over corporate debt, with particular focus on AI cloud provider CoreWeave, where climbing bond yields fed broader market jitters. The second force came from the US, where inflation data showed a year-over-year rate of 3.7%. The pain was not confined to Japan. Asian markets broadly declined, while the Japanese yen strengthened slightly as investors moved toward safe-haven assets. What the finance ministers actually said Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama said G7 and G20 finance ministers did not view the AI-l...