What Happened Yesterday
Monday, October 26, 2026
The 30-second version: stocks bounced on Monday after Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, filed its paperwork to go public and showed sales up about 14 times in a year. Chip stocks led the way. Meta fell after announcing a giant stock sale to pay for AI. Your S&P 500 fund gained 0.7%, and the Fed decides on rates on Wednesday.
Market | Close | Move | Mood |
|---|---|---|---|
S&P 500 | 7,676.77 | +0.70% (+53 pts) | Texting back |
Nasdaq Composite | 26,169.38 | +0.82% (+214 pts) | Already picked a song |
Dow Jones | 52,361.58 | +0.28% (+146 pts) | Polite interest |
SOX (chip index) | 11,083.47 | +2.82% | Smitten |
VIX (fear gauge) | 18.39 | -5.5% | Unclenched |
Small caps (fund, IWM) | $276.99 | +0.45% | Friend of a friend |
Gold (fund, GLD) | $367.82 | +0.33% | Still single, still fine |
Oil (fund, USO) | $166.23 | -1.95% | Ghosted, briefly |
10-year Treasury yield | 5.00% | flat | Waiting by the phone |
Bitcoin | ~$80,000 | about flat | Left on read |
Small caps, gold, and oil are funds (IWM, GLD, USO). For those rows, watch the move, not the price. The price is just what one share of the fund costs. SOX is the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, a basket of 30 big chip stocks. The VIX is Wall Street's fear gauge.
The $1,000 test: $1,000 in the S&P 500 at Friday's close was worth about $1,007 by Monday's close. In the chip index: about $1,028. In Tesla: about $1,052.
Anthropic finally posted its profile, and the numbers were real
For two years, the AI boom has been dating on vibes. Monday, one of the biggest names finally posted a full profile. Anthropic filed its S-1, the roughly 400-page form a company hands regulators before selling shares to the public. It plans to list on the Nasdaq under the stock symbol ANT.
The headline: sales of $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, up from $1.16 billion a year earlier. That's about 14 times as much (Zacks, TechPowerUp, BetaNews). The fine print: a net loss of about $80.7 billion. Most of that is an accounting charge because IOUs that convert into stock got more valuable, not cash out the door. The actual loss from running the business was $693 million (BetaNews, Data Studios). The company could reportedly be valued at $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion (The Wall Street Journal, via TechPowerUp). No price is set yet.
Chip stocks read the profile and swooned. The chip index rose 2.82%. Micron +3.0%, AMD +2.8%, Nvidia +2.4%, Broadcom +2.3%, Intel +4.0%. Memory stocks got an extra push from a Bank of America note that kept recommending Micron and pointed to tight memory supply through 2027 and 2028 (Tradingpedia, StockStory).
Last Thursday, the AI question was "Who's paying?" Monday, somebody finally showed a pay stub. That beats another week of guessing from a blurry photo, and the chip stocks were clearly ready to be convinced.
Meta asked its suppliers to chip in for dinner
Meta had a different kind of Monday. Per Meta's SEC filing, it plans to raise to $95 billion by selling stock, mostly to pay for AI data centers. About $35 billion launches now, per the filing: $22.5 billion of regular shares and $12.5 billion of preferred stock, a kind of share that pays a set dividend and later turns into regular stock. The other $60 billion would be sold bit by bit on the open market and isn't expected to start before early 2027 (Benzinga).
This is a real sale of new shares, so your slice of the Meta pie gets thinner. Meta fell 1.9% to $630.56, and the communication services group, home to Meta and Alphabet, slipped 1.6% (Zacks). Alphabet lost 1.1%.
The best detail: per the filing, Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom said they might buy up to $5 billion of the new stock combined. That's interesting, not a promise. Still, think about it. Meta sells stock to its chip suppliers, then uses the money to buy their chips.
That's like asking the restaurant to lend you money so you can keep ordering its food. It works great until someone asks who's actually paying. Meta's business is real, and its sales are huge. But when the people selling you the chips also help pay for them, that's a loop worth watching.
Tesla got a matchmaker
Tesla rose 5.2% to $391.62 after Barclays upgraded the stock and raised its price target, the price it thinks the stock can hit, to $450 from $370 (Yahoo Finance). The pitch: Barclays thinks the most likely future is SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company, buying Tesla in an all-stock deal, paying with its own shares instead of cash (Yahoo Finance, StockStory). It also pointed to more miles driven by Tesla's robotaxis.
One small thing. There is no deal. Nobody has announced one. Wall Street paid up for a wedding that exists only in an analyst's notebook.
An analyst playing matchmaker moved a $1 trillion-plus company 5% in a day. That tells you how badly investors want a reason to love Tesla again. Want to own the stock on a rumor? Fine. Just know you're the one buying the ring.
Oil cooled off a little, for now
Brent crude, the global oil price, settled at $115.81 a barrel, down 91 cents, after briefly topping $117 (CNBC). The reason: Saudi Arabia's defense minister met Iranian leaders in Tehran, and Saudi, Pakistani, and Turkish officials agreed to keep security talks going.
The catch: the same day, Iran's Revolutionary Guards again declared the Strait of Hormuz "closed," per Iran's Tasnim news agency. That's a declaration, not a new blockade, and how much oil actually gets through is disputed. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that shipments had "recovered substantially." The 10-year Treasury yield sat still at 5.00% (Treasury.gov).
Oil heard two stories on Monday. Talks over coffee in Tehran, threats on the evening news. Prices dipped on the nice part. One talk doesn't fix a war, and your gas price still has a long drive home.
What to Watch Today
Overnight: the glow fades
Futures, which are bets on where the market opens, were slightly lower early Tuesday, with Nasdaq futures off a few tenths of a percent (Investing.com, about 3 AM CT). The Anthropic glow is wearing off, and Big Tech's own report cards don't arrive until Wednesday night.
The calendar (all times CT)
Time | What | Why you care |
|---|---|---|
Before the open | Earnings: Boeing (already out), UPS, Coca-Cola, PayPal, SoFi, HCA, Royal Caribbean, Corning | Planes, packages, soda, payments, hospitals, cruises. A lot of real economy in one morning. |
7:30 AM | Durable goods orders (September) | Orders for stuff built to last, like machines and planes. A gut check on business spending. |
8:00 AM | Case-Shiller home prices (August) | Are house prices still rising? |
9:00 AM | Consumer confidence (October) + new home sales (September) | How people feel about money, and whether they're buying new houses with 30-year mortgage rates above 7% (Freddie Mac, last week). |
After the close | Earnings: Visa, Robinhood, Seagate, Waste Management, Enphase | Visa shows if people are swiping. Seagate makes the hard drives that store AI data. Watch whether it says AI customers are still ordering more than it can build, which would back up Monday's memory excitement. |
Boeing already reported. It lost 26 cents a share on $24.2 billion in sales and delivered 161 planes in the quarter (Boeing's SEC filing). Analyst forecasts ran from about breakeven to a loss of about 24 cents a share (Hudson Labs, Investing.com), so the stock's reaction at the open will tell you more than the headline.
The Fed starts its two-day meeting today. The decision lands on Wednesday at 1:00 PM CT. The current target range is 3.75% to 4.00%. On betting markets like Polymarket and Kalshi, sites where people bet real money on events, traders give about 93% odds of no change and about 7% of a hike. CME FedWatch, which reads the odds from futures traders, shows about 88% to 90% for a hold (Benzinga, CNBC). For December, they put a hike at roughly 75% to 80%. So Wednesday is less about what the Fed does and more about what it hints.
The one thing that could ruin everyone's day: the Fed raises rates on Wednesday anyway. It's roughly a 1-in-10 to 1-in-14 shot, depending on whose odds you read. But this Fed already raised rates by a quarter point on Sept. 16, and Big Tech reports Wednesday night. A surprise hike plus a wobbly Microsoft or Alphabet report would undo Monday's bounce fast.
Bottom line: the AI boom finally posted a real profile. Wall Street swiped right. Now we find out if it shows up on the second date.
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Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. We are a newsletter with opinions and a spreadsheet. Do your own homework, and maybe don't pick a stock off its dating profile.