Morning Preview: October 26, 2026

Early Look

Monday, October 26, 2026

U.S. futures are looking slightly higher to kick off a week dominated by the FOMC and corporate earnings after falling last week where the S&P 500 fell -0.47%, the Nasdaq declined -0.71%, yet the Dow climbed 0.41%. There are several key items up this week include: the FOMC rate decision next Wednesday the 28th (2 day meeting starts Tuesday) – widely expected to hold rates steady; earnings from AMZN, BA, KO, V, GOOGL, MSFT, LLY, SBUX, ABBV, CVX, XOM among many others; also GDP and core PCE inflation data late in the week; ECB and BOJ holding Central bank policy meetings and also in the AI space, Oracle (ORCL) holding its Ai event midweek. In news overnight, shares of neoclouds/data centers are under pressure (NBIS, CRWV, IREN, CIFR, HUT) after Elon Musk warned in a post on social media platform “X” that tighter credit conditions could accelerate failures and consolidation among smaller AI infrastructure companies, highlighting financing risks across the sector. U.S. listed Brazilian stocks are tumbling (EWZ, PBR, MELI, NU, XP, and others) after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva clung to power in Sunday’s runoff election. Also, a large M&A deal in the natural gas energy sector after EQT Corp (EQT) said it would acquire Range Resources (RRC) in an all-stock deal valued at more than $50 billion. In Asian markets, The Nikkei Index declined -503 points to 62,189, the Shanghai Index rose 7 points to 3,697, and the Hang Seng Index gained 118 points to 23,211. In Europe, the German DAX is up 200 points to 25,381, while the FTSE 100 is up 39 points to 10,729. Oil prices fell on Monday after surging last week to near six-month highs, amid hopes of easing hostilities between the United States and ‌Iran. The US 10-Year Treasury yield tumbled below 5% last week and is holding on track to end around that level as fears about AI boom sustainability flare, boosting safe-haven appeal of government debt.

• The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell -653.35 points, or 1.24%, to 52,214.63
• The Nasdaq Composite slipped -53.52 points, or 0.21%, to 25,955.34
• The Russell 2000 Index declined -8.15 points, or 0.29% to 2,775.88

• 10:30 AM ET                Dallas Fed manufacturing Index for October
• 1:00 PM ET US Treasury to sell $69B in 2-year notes

• Earnings After the Close: AGYS AMKR ARE BLX BRO BRX CBK CDNS CINF CLS CLW CTOS DORM FLXS FSBC FSUN GBX GGB HIG HTO HWKN KFRC NE NUE NWBI PDM PECO PFG PSA PSMT RMBS SSD TRTX VLRS WELL ZDGE

• Tesla (TSLA) was upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Barclays and raised tgt to $450 from $370 citing Tesla’s merger opportunity with SpaceX (SPCX), stronger core business outlook, and signs of Robotaxi inflection for the upgrade. The potential merger is driven by vertical integration and Elon Musk’s ownership considerations, but a shareholder vote is required.

• Ovintiv (OVV) announces agreement to acquire Montney oil producer, Logan energy Corp. in a proposed deal for total consideration of approximately $890M; the deal expected to be accretive including 5% non-Gaap cash flow per share accretion in 2027; proposed deal for C$1.40 per share in cash and expects net debt to be below $4B after deal closing in Q1 2027.
• SpaceX (SPCX) has secured $40 billion in debt financing to purchase graphics processing units (GPUs) scheduled for delivery in the first and second quarters of 2027. The debt is largely callable, allowing repayment before maturity under specified conditions. Musk also warned that tighter credit conditions could accelerate failures and consolidation among smaller AI infrastructure companies, highlighting financing risks across the sector.

• Surgery Partners (SGRY) shares rise 20% pre-market after the Financial Times reported US-based not-for-profit health system Bon Secours Mercy Health is in late-stage talks to buy a majority stake in SGRY in a deal that would value the company at roughly $6 billion including debt. Private-equity group Bain Capital, which has been a minority shareholder since 2017, will retain its almost 40% shareholding in SGRY as part of about $20-a-share take-private deal https://tinyurl.com/yc55tpb6

• Anthropic’s Claude AI model accessed publicly available aggregate vote-count data through a restricted Georgia state dashboard without human authorization, according to a company statement reported by Reuters. The incident occurred during an internal statistics project, with the model working around a restriction that typically required a token or payment.
• Apollo Global Management (APO) Chief Economist Torsten Slok said AI investments have yet to produce measurable financial gains for most companies outside the technology sector. Revenue per worker and profit margins are rising among the Magnificent Seven but remain flat across the other 493 S&P 500 companies.
• Two Ai Chipmakers, Nvidia (NVDA) and Micron (MU) make up 34% of America’s earnings boom, the WSJ reported while noting only 10 companies, including Broadcom (AVGO) and Meta (META), account for two-thirds of the profit growth, demonstrating how the U.S. stock market has begun depending on a handful of companies tied to AI.
• SK Hynix Inc. (SKHY) plans to return about 80% of the gains from selling down its stake in Japan’s Kioxia Holdings Corp. to shareholders through a special dividend of about 16 trillion won ($12 billion), the DongA Ilbo newspaper reported.
• Meta Inc. (META) files for mixed shelf offering; size not disclosed