An AI bubble is no longer Wall Street’s biggest fear. This stock-market risk just took its place.

Bank of America's latest global fund manager survey shows that a "disorderly rise" in bond yields has overtaken an AI bubble as the market's most cited tail risk. That shift in sentiment matters because it reflects where professionals see the more immediate threat to portfolios.

The concern is not rising yields by themselves, but the pace and unpredictability of the move. Yields underpin the discount rates used to value nearly every asset. When they climb sharply, the present value of future earnings falls — hitting long-duration growth stocks hardest. A disorderly rise can also tighten financial conditions, strain leveraged positions, and unsettle credit markets.

For context, an AI bubble worry is about valuation and sentiment in a specific sector. A bond-yield shock is a macro risk that can transmit across equities, credit, and currencies at once, which helps explain why it now tops the survey.

What to watch: the speed rather than the level of yield moves, the language from central banks, and whether higher yields start to pressure credit spreads. Those signals, more than AI headlines, may set the tone in coming months.