What Happened Yesterday
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
The 30-second version: chip stocks had a huge day, the S&P 500 rose for a second day, and Boeing fell more than 10% after pushing its cash goals back a year. The Fed announces its rate decision at 1:00 PM CT today. If you own a basic index fund, your 401(k) had a good Tuesday and is now waiting by the phone like the rest of us.
Market | Tuesday close | Move | Mood |
|---|---|---|---|
S&P 500 | 7,722.60 | +0.60% | Dressed up |
Nasdaq Composite | 26,477.81 | +1.18% | Gave a toast |
Dow Jones | 52,377.57 | +0.03% | Held the coats |
Chip index (SOX) | 11,482.50 | +3.60% | Open bar |
VIX (fear gauge) | 17.52 | -4.73% | Two drinks in |
Small caps (IWM, fund) | $280.18 | +1.15% | Came along |
Gold (GLD, fund) | $372.28 | +1.21% | Bought a gift anyway |
U.S. oil (USO, fund) | $163.88 | -1.41% | Left early |
10-year Treasury rate | 4.99% | down from 5.00% | Barely blinked |
Bitcoin | $80,805 | +1.0% | Uninvited, showed up |
The fund rows (IWM, GLD, USO) are there for the move, not the price. USO tracks U.S. crude, not Brent. 10-year rate from the Treasury's daily curve. Bitcoin is a 24-hour close.
The $1,000 test: $1,000 in an S&P 500 fund made about $6 on Tuesday. $1,000 spread across the chip index made about $36. $1,000 in Boeing lost about $107. Same day. Very different dinners.
Wall Street lent Anthropic $63 billion, and the chip stocks heard "open bar"
The SOX, a basket of 30 big chip stocks, jumped 3.60% Tuesday. That's +6.5% in two days. AMD rose 5.45%, Broadcom 4.00%, Intel 3.61%, and Micron 2.77%.
The spark: Bank of America, Citi, Morgan Stanley, and Blackstone lined up $63 billion to pay for Broadcom AI chips that Anthropic will use (Reuters, Quartz). The setup is a company built just for this deal. It buys Broadcom's chips and networking gear, then leases them to Anthropic, the way you lease a car instead of buying it. Deliveries start in 2027.
Quick reality check before anyone books the honeymoon: the chip index is still about 21.5% below its June 22 high. This is a bounce, not a record.
When banks will lend $63 billion so one company can rent chips, nobody is worried about AI demand this week. The question for 2027 is who's on the hook if the renter can't make the payments. For now, that's a 2027 problem, which is Wall Street's favorite kind.
Boeing has $745 billion in orders and just moved its payday back a year
Boeing fell 10.69% to $168.18.
The report itself: sales of $24.2 billion, a loss of 26 cents a share, and a record $745 billion backlog, which is the pile of planes customers have ordered but not received (Boeing's SEC filing). Strip out one-time items, and the loss was 34 cents a share. Analysts expected a loss of about 21 cents a share (LSEG, via CNBC).
The bigger hit was the forecast. Boeing now expects about $3 billion of free cash flow, the cash left after paying the bills and buying equipment, in 2027. Analysts had penciled in about $5.6 billion (Reuters, citing LSEG). Its plan to build more 737s a month also slipped into 2027 (CNBC, Quartz).
Boeing is the restaurant with a years-long waitlist that still can't turn the waitlist into a profit. Customers want the planes. The kitchen just can't make them fast enough yet, and now it says the money shows up a year later than promised. A long waitlist doesn't pay the gas bill.
Shoppers cheered up, which is either great news or a problem for the Fed
The Conference Board's consumer confidence index, a monthly survey of how people feel about jobs and money, jumped to 91.7 in October from 84.2 in September. That's back to June levels. Forecasters expected it to slip to about 80.5 to 81.
The Fed asked how everyone's doing, and everyone said, "Honestly? pretty good." That's sweet. It's also the answer that keeps a rate hike on the December menu.
Quick hits
Tesla +4.04% to $407.46, up about 9.5% in two days. No fresh headline we could pin on Tuesday. Monday's jump came from an analyst daydreaming about a SpaceX tie-up. There is still no deal.
UPS +5.75% and Coca-Cola -1.64% after their reports. Coke's CEO spent part of the day being asked about Diet Coke's "fridge cigarette" nickname (Yahoo Finance).
Oil: Brent, the global price, settled at $113.88, down $1.93, on talks involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan (Reuters). Overnight, it climbed back to about $115.60 in Asian trading (CNBC, AGBI) after the Houthis claimed a missile strike on Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura refinery. Saudi Arabia hasn't confirmed any damage, and the Saudi-led coalition says it shot down three missiles.
After the bell: Robinhood fell somewhere between 3.5% and 7.6% in after-hours trading, which happens after the 3 PM CT close, depending on when you checked (Investing.com, Benzinga). Profit dropped 14% to $476 million. Trading hit records, but interest income fell 9%. Visa posted record yearly revenue of $45.9 billion and raised its dividend, the cash it pays shareholders, 16% to 78 cents a quarter (Visa's SEC filing).
What to Watch Today
Overnight, Korea threw its own party
South Korea's Kospi closed up 6.63% at 6,012.44 after chipmaker SK hynix said quarterly operating profit (profit from the actual business) jumped more than sevenfold from a year ago (Reuters, AFP). Early Wednesday, futures, which are bets on where the market opens, had the Nasdaq 100 up about 0.4%, the S&P 500 up 0.1%, and the Dow down 0.2% (Reuters, at about 4 AM CT).
The calendar (all times CT)
Time | What | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
Before the open | Earnings: GE Vernova, Vertiv, ADP, Etsy | GE Vernova and Vertiv sell power gear to data centers. Watch whether orders keep climbing. |
7:30 AM | Goods trade gap + wholesale inventories (September) | Tariffs make this one jumpy. Watch for a big swing either way. |
8:45 AM | Bank of Canada rate decision | Our neighbor goes first. Watch which way it leans. |
9:30 AM | Weekly U.S. oil inventories | With Brent near $115, watch for a surprise drop in supplies. |
1:00 PM | Fed rate decision (press conference 1:30) | Watch the wording on December, not the decision itself. |
After the close | Earnings: Microsoft, Alphabet, ServiceNow, Ford, Chipotle, KLA, eBay | Watch how much Microsoft and Alphabet plan to spend on AI, and whether investors cheer or flinch. |
The Fed: the target range is 3.75% to 4.00%. Betting sites, where people bet real money on events, give about 95% odds of no change (Polymarket and Kalshi, about 7 AM CT). CME FedWatch, which reads futures traders, shows about 92% (Reuters). For December, Polymarket puts a hike at about 77% to 79%. Polymarket also gives about 76% odds that at least one of the 12 officials who vote on rates votes against today's decision. On Kalshi, Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack alone is priced at about 3 in 4 to dissent.
The one thing that could ruin everyone's day: Fed Chair Kevin Warsh hints that one hike in December might not be enough, a couple of hours before Microsoft and Alphabet tell us how much more they plan to spend. Two days of chip-stock celebration are built on borrowed money and big spending plans. Today tests both.
Bottom line: the market already had the rehearsal dinner. At 1 PM the Fed decides whether it's a wedding or just a really expensive Tuesday.
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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 RSVP to a stock rally you saw on a Tuesday.