AI Stocks Week-Ahead — Sunday, October 25, 2026 at 5:00 PM

📅 AI Stocks Week-Ahead — Sunday, October 25, 2026 at 5:00 PM

Prior week recap: SPX -0.5% · NDX -0.7% · DJI +0.4%
Last week was a rotation week dressed up as a selloff — the Dow and the Russell 2000 (+2.0%) both finished green while the AI complex bled, capped by the Nasdaq's 2.9% drubbing on Thursday, its worst day since June. The driver wasn't demand, it was financing: Meta grew revenue 26% but raised the low end of capex guidance to $135 billion, Tesla trimmed its 2026 plan to roughly $20 billion, and the market started asking who actually funds the data centers. The S&P 500 Excluding AI index is up ~6.6% in October while the headline S&P is down ~0.4% — that gap is the whole story.

Sunday futures: S&P +0.4% · Nasdaq +0.6% · Dow +0.2% (~128 pts)
Futures firmed Sunday evening on two things: a quiet geopolitical weekend and oil backing off its six-month high — WTI near $101.85 (-1.4%), Brent $115.80 (-0.8%) after a 6%+ weekly surge. It stays headline-sensitive: President Trump told Fox News it's "getting to be decision time" on whether to cut a deal with Tehran or "finish it off," Saudi forces intercepted Houthi missiles aimed at the Yanbu oil hub, and a tanker spill closed UAE beaches Saturday. On the AI-financing side, OpenAI cut its target valuation to $1.25T (from $1.4T) for a raise of up to $30B led by Coatue and UAE investors, with commitments due October 30 — and Anthropic is reportedly aiming at a mid-November IPO near $1.5T. Neither trades yet; both are sentiment inputs for the listed AI names.

Earnings this week:
• Tuesday, Oct 27 — Boeing (BA), Seagate (STX), Corning (GLW), UPS, Novartis
• Wednesday, Oct 28 — MSFT (after close, call 5:30 PM ET), GOOGL (after close, call 4:30 PM ET), SK hynix, GE Vernova, Caterpillar (CAT), Visa (V), ADP
• Thursday, Oct 29 — AMZN (after close, call 5:00 PM ET), Intel (INTC), Samsung, SanDisk (SNDK), Eli Lilly (LLY), Mastercard (MA), Merck, Gilead
• Friday, Oct 30 — Exxon (XOM), Chevron (CVX), BP, Dominion (D)
542 companies above $2B in market cap report this week; Thursday is the peak at 202. Next Monday and Tuesday bring AAPL and PLTR (Nov 2) and AMD (Nov 3) — just outside the window but shaping positioning now.

Economic calendar:
• Tuesday, Oct 27 — Durable goods orders and Consumer Confidence: the capex line in durables is a direct tell on business equipment and tech spending.
• Thursday, Oct 29 — Q3 GDP advance estimate, 8:30 AM ET: consensus near 3.0–3.2% annualized vs 2.2% in Q2, with Atlanta Fed GDPNow at 3.5%. A hot print makes a December hike look locked.
• Thursday, Oct 29 — September personal income and outlays, including core PCE, 8:30 AM ET: the Fed's preferred gauge. A 0.4% core would be the hawkish tail.
• Thursday/Friday — ECB Thursday, Bank of Japan Friday. Five central banks decide in three days; a BoJ surprise is the classic carry-unwind risk for high-multiple tech.
Note: the October jobs report is not this week — that's Friday, Nov 6.

Fed events:
• Tuesday–Wednesday, Oct 27–28 — FOMC meeting. Decision Wednesday at 2:00 PM ET, Chair Kevin Warsh press conference at 2:30 PM ET.
• Expectation is a hold at 3.75%–4.00% following September's 25 bp hike — roughly an 8-in-10 chance of no move, with markets leaning toward a hike on Dec 9. The meeting lands hours before MSFT and GOOGL report, so Wednesday afternoon is the single most compressed window of the week.

Watchlist catalysts:
• MSFT — Wednesday, Oct 28 after the close. Azure growth and the capex-versus-free-cash-flow math are the whole print.
• GOOGL — Wednesday, Oct 28 after the close. Cloud backlog and TPU commentary; it's the best-funded capex story in the group.
• AMZN — Thursday, Oct 29 after the close. AWS reacceleration and 2027 capex framing; the last of the three to speak, so it gets the full weight of expectations.
• MU — no earnings, but SK hynix (Wed) and Samsung (Thu) report HBM and DRAM pricing this week. That's the cleanest third-party read on memory you'll get before Micron's own December print.
• NVDA — no earnings until mid-to-late November, so it trades purely on hyperscaler capex guidance Wednesday and Thursday. Highest beta to the week's headlines with no fundamentals of its own to defend.
• TSM, ASML, AVGO — already reported; they move on read-through from the hyperscaler capex numbers and from Intel's Thursday foundry commentary.
• SMCI — reports Tuesday, Nov 3 (5:00 PM ET). This week it's a pure sentiment proxy for data-center buildout and AI financing costs.
• PLTR, AAPL (Nov 2) and AMD, ARM (Nov 3–4) — next week, but expect pre-positioning into Friday.