It’s shaping up to be a spooky Halloween on the markets. Nerves over AI, fears about France and soaring oil prices are more than enough to keep any investor awake at night. They also underline the threats to economic confidence and growth over the winter.

So far the world economy – and Ireland – has shown a remarkable resilience, particularly to uncertainty and rising energy costs. More challenges, however, lie ahead over this winter. The era of uncertainty just keeps rolling on.

Oil prices are rising again and so are wholesale gas prices, threatening higher household and business bills. Global bond markets are nervous at the level of debt in the world economy, with France in particular in the spotlight. Ireland’s cost of borrowing is on the rise, though it remains close to the lowest in the EU.

But the big news on markets this week was an AI scare leading to a fall in share prices of the big AI players on Thursday. As the European home of some of the big AI companies and an economy among the most reliant on the US, Ireland has skin in the game here. How this pans out matters.

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The trigger for this week’s nerves was results from Meta. They underlined the rising scale of investment by big companies in AI and, crucially, how much of it was now reliant on borrowing.

Meta increased........

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