Weekly Market Notes — October 18–25, 2026

Weekly Market Intelligence · Compiled by Albert Tang · Issue date: October 25, 2026 ℹ️ NOT FOR FINANCIAL ADVICE — FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT USE ONLY Market Snapshot (Friday, Oct 23 close) Instrument Level Week S&P 500 7,623.68 ▼ 0.5% Dow 52,215.16 ▲ 0.4% Nasdaq Composite 25,955.34 ▼ 0.7% Russell 2000 2,775.90 ▲ 2.0% Brent Crude $116.72 ▲ ~6.3% 10-Yr Yield ~4.99% ▼ ~11 bps Bitcoin ~$80,700 (Fri. AM) ▼ ~1.5% Weekly Overview The AI-spending anxiety that cracked CoreWeave last week spread to the biggest tech company of all. Meta beat Q3 revenue estimates by a wide margin and still watched its stock fall nearly 7% after raising its 2026 capex guide toward $145 billion, reviving the exact question the market thought it had shelved: whether AI infrastructure spending can be justified by the cash flow backing it. The selloff dragged the Nasdaq to its second straight losing week, but it also triggered a flight into Treasuries sharp enough to pull the 10-year yield down roughly 19 basis points in a single session, its steepest drop in recent memory, even as hot jobless and inflation signals argued the other way. Oil, meanwhile, refused to read the memo on cooling growth fears: Brent crossed $116 for the first time since April as reports surfaced that the U.S. and Israel are drawing up plans to strike Iran's energy and nuclear infrastructure once the midterms and Israel's own election have passed. That leaves the Fed walking into its October 27–28 meeting with a disinflationary tech scare in one hand and an inflationary oil shock in the other — a sharper version of the same bind it faced a week ago. Tesla and Netflix both beat on earnings and both sold off anyway, while small-cap and value stocks quietly outperformed, a rotation this issue's second half tracks in detail. Estimated reading time: 8–9 minutes Headline 01 of 06 · Meta's Capex Guidance Reignites AI-Spending Fears, Sends the Nasdaq to a Second Losing Week AI Infrastructure · Meta Platforms · Capital…