🌙 Closing Wrap · Friday, October 16, 2026
Chip Stocks' Longest Slide Since 2008, CoreWeave and Anthropic, Oil at $110, Tesla Reverses
22:06
🌙 Closing Wrap · Friday, October 16, 2026
22:06
As of 10/16/2026, 4:03:16 PM ET
Good evening. This is Trade and Ticker. Friday, October sixteenth, twenty twenty-six. Your evening company deep dive after the close.
Four stories tonight, and they all tie back to a rough week for the A-I trade. First, Broadcom and the chip stocks. The Philadelphia semiconductor index just fell for an eighth straight day, its longest losing streak since twenty oh-eight. Second, CoreWeave and Anthropic, and the big question hanging over A-I right now: who pays for all of this, and how fast does the money come back? Third, oil. Brent crude touched one hundred ten dollars a barrel for the first time since May, and that lifted Exxon and Chevron while it knocked down the airlines. And fourth, Tesla, which showed off a rocket-powered Roadster, jumped before the bell, and then gave it all back, just days before its earnings report. Let's get into it.
First, a quick look at the board. This was a down day, and tech took the worst of it. The S-and-P five hundred fell about one-point-one percent. The Nasdaq fell about two-point-one percent. The Dow held up better, down about a third of a percent, or roughly one hundred seventy-five points. Small companies had a rough day too, with the Russell two thousand down almost one and three-quarters percent. The Nasdaq led the way lower, and the Dow was the safest place to be.
The groups tell the story. Six of the eleven sectors in the S-and-P actually finished higher. Energy was the best, up about two and a half percent. Utilities rose about one and four-tenths percent, and consumer staples rose about one percent. Technology was the worst group, down about three percent, and communication services, home to Meta and Alphabet, fell almost two percent. The VIX, Wall Street's fear gauge, jumped more than twenty percent, to about twenty. A jump like that tells you traders were paying up for protection heading into the weekend. Trading was busy too, with more shares changing hands than on a typical day lately.
Now the week, because that's the bigger picture. The Nasdaq fell about four and a half percent this week. That snapped a run of four straight weekly gains, and it was the Nasdaq's worst week since June. The S-and-P fell almost two percent for the week, which wiped out the gains from last week, when it set an all-time high. And the Dow went the other way. It rose about seven-tenths of a percent for the week, as money rotated out of tech and into banks, healthcare, and retailers.
It's worth remembering how the week unfolded, because each day added a new worry. Early in the week, a Chinese memory chipmaker spooked investors in the memory stocks. On Wednesday, a hotter than expected consumer price report landed, and CoreWeave fell more than fifteen percent as investors worried about its debt. On Thursday, the producer price report was even hotter, with prices up one-point-three percent in a single month. The Dow still jumped more than five hundred points that day, as investors piled into drugmakers, retailers, and banks. And today, oil spiked and the A-I selling came back. So by Friday, investors had three things on their minds at once: inflation, interest rates, and whether the A-I spending boom pays off on time.
One strategist summed up the Friday mood well. Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, said, quote, "There is some fear in the market." End quote. He said high oil prices tend to weigh on how much investors are willing to pay for stocks, and that investors were looking to be cautious into the weekend rather than take more risk. Put simply, when oil climbs, investors worry about inflation and higher rates, and they become less willing to pay up for stocks.
On the Fed, Chair Kevin Warsh spoke at the I-M-F meetings in Bangkok. He sounded upbeat about the U.S. economy, and said he was surprised by how well economies around the world have been, in his words, "hanging in there," even with an energy shock and central banks raising rates to fight inflation. But he gave no hint about what the Fed will do at its next meeting. Traders now see a fairly small chance of a rate hike this month, only about one in six, according to futures markets. The bigger debate is about later this year. Barclays now expects quarter-point hikes in both December and January. The ten-year Treasury yield ended the day about where it started, near five-point-one percent.
Now, our first deep dive: Broadcom and the chip stocks.
The Philadelphia semiconductor index fell about three-point-eight percent today. That's its eighth straight down day. The last time the chip index lost eight days in a row was October of twenty oh-eight, in the middle of the financial crisis. That's how unusual this run is.
Broadcom was one of the names that took the hit. Broadcom designs custom A-I chips for the biggest tech companies, along with the networking chips that tie giant data centers together. It's one of the most valuable chip companies in the world. Today it fell about four and a half percent, to about three hundred twenty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents.
And it had plenty of company. A-M-D fell almost six percent. Intel fell almost six percent too. Micron, the memory maker, fell more than five and a half percent. Arm Holdings, which designs the chip blueprints used in most phones, fell almost seven percent. Marvell Technology fell more than five and a half. Nvidia held up better than most, but it still slipped about one and a half percent. And the U.S.-listed shares of Taiwan Semiconductor fell more than two percent, one day after the company posted a record quarter.
The storage names were hit hardest of all. Seagate fell seven and a half percent. Western Digital and Sandisk each fell almost seven percent.
So what's going on? There isn't one single reason. It's a pile of worries that all point the same way.
The first worry comes from China. Early this week, China's leading memory chipmaker, ChangXin Memory Technologies, which goes by C-X-M-T, said it plans to roll out a server memory product built on a new design. That design could pack more memory into the same space. And investors started asking whether a Chinese company could take market share away from the big three memory makers: Samsung, S-K Hynix, and Micron.
Not everyone buys that worry. A number of analysts questioned whether C-X-M-T can actually make this new technology in large volumes. Ben Barringer, global head of technology research at Quilter Cheviot, put it plainly on CNBC. He said, quote, "You can make the chips, but what yield are you getting? If you're only getting a fifty percent yield, you're literally putting half the chips in the bin because they don't work very well." End quote. Kevin Cassidy at Rosenblatt Securities said, quote, "We don't think this is going to swing the supply-demand equation at all." End quote.
The second worry is about the future supply of memory. A column in a major South Korean business newspaper suggested the memory market could see a flood of new supply around twenty twenty-nine, as every big maker builds new factories. Elon Musk weighed in on social media, saying China, quote, "will be making a lot of RAM in twenty twenty-eight." End quote. Here's why that matters. Memory chips have always been a boom and bust business. Prices soar when supply is tight, and they crash when new factories come online. Right now, A-I has made memory incredibly scarce, and prices have gone way up. If investors start to believe the bust is coming, even a few years out, they sell first and ask questions later.
Not everyone sees a bust coming. The research firm Counterpoint Research expects a key type of memory to get about twenty-three percent cheaper in twenty twenty-eight compared with twenty twenty-seven. But even after that drop, prices would still be up about two hundred thirty percent from twenty twenty-five. And memory makers and their big customers now sign long contracts, three to five years, with upfront payments and price floors. One analyst at Counterpoint called this a new normal, and said the next downturn should look different from the past.
The third worry ties the chip story to our next deep dive. Chips are the shovels of the A-I gold rush. If investors start to doubt how fast the gold rush pays off, they sell the shovel makers. And that doubt grew this week.
So here's the takeaway on the chip stocks. Nothing changed today in the companies' actual businesses. Demand for A-I chips is still strong, and Taiwan Semiconductor said so loudly just yesterday. What changed is the mood. After a huge run, investors are taking money off the table, and they're looking at every bit of news through a nervous lens. The real tests come in the next two weeks, when the chip companies start reporting. Texas Instruments and Lam Research report on Wednesday after the close. Western Digital reports Thursday after the close. And Intel reports the following week.
That brings us to our second deep dive: CoreWeave and Anthropic.
Let's start with CoreWeave. It's what Wall Street calls a neocloud. It buys huge numbers of Nvidia chips, puts them in data centers, and rents that computing power to big tech companies and A-I labs. It has borrowed heavily to do it, with about fifty billion dollars in debt. And it's still losing money.
Thursday, CoreWeave bounced almost six percent after Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang, said the company's financial strength was improving. That bounce didn't last. Today CoreWeave fell about twelve percent, to about sixty-one dollars and forty cents. Over the past five sessions, the stock is down about twenty-five percent. And the bond market is still flashing stress. Yields on CoreWeave's bonds have climbed above fifteen percent this week. That's the kind of yield investors demand when they're worried about getting paid back. Remember, when a bond's yield goes up, its price goes down. So a fifteen percent yield means investors have marked those bonds down a long way.
The selling hit the other neoclouds just as hard. Nebius fell about twelve percent, and Iren fell about eleven. Oracle, which has borrowed heavily to build its own A-I data centers, fell more than four and a half percent.
Here's the interesting part. While investors were selling, a lot of Wall Street analysts were telling them to buy. Brent Thill at Jefferies called the selloff "overdone" and stuck with his price target of one hundred fifty dollars, more than double where the stock was even before today's drop. He admitted the risk. He wrote, quote, "It's a valid concern that new debt deals could price at higher rates." End quote. But he argued that the prices CoreWeave can charge for its computing power are rising much faster in the near term.
JPMorgan also called the fears overdone. Its analyst, Samik Chatterjee, wrote, quote, "Datacenter demand is robust and has improved in recent months, rather than moderated." End quote. He also pointed out that CoreWeave's capacity is already sold under long-term contracts. Many of them are what's called take-or-pay, meaning the customer pays whether or not it uses all the capacity. In plain words, the customers have already promised the money. The question is whether that promise holds if the A-I boom cools. And Brett Knoblauch at Cantor Fitzgerald went even further, saying, quote, "We believe this is one of the most attractive times to add to or enter into a C-R-W-V position, as we think the market is getting it wrong." End quote.
Not everyone is convinced. Some analysts warn against treating a backlog of signed contracts as money in the bank, and some lawyers who work on these deals expect disputes over how iron-clad those take-or-pay contracts really are.
Now, Anthropic. Anthropic is one of the biggest A-I labs in the world, and it's preparing to go public, with a share sale expected in November. Reuters reported that some current investors, and some who might buy into the I-P-O, are now weighing a lower valuation, around one-point-five trillion dollars. That's a big step down from the roughly two trillion dollars investors had expected.
Why the change of heart? It's not that the business is weak. At an investor day on Wednesday, according to that Reuters report, Anthropic told investors its third-quarter revenue jumped forty-five percent from the second quarter, to sixteen-point-eight billion dollars. It also said it was profitable on an adjusted basis. Those are big numbers. The problem is the comparison. In the second quarter, revenue had more than doubled from the first quarter, to eleven-point-six billion dollars. So growth is still fast, but it's slowing. And when a company is priced for perfection, slowing growth is enough to make investors think twice.
Some big investors are still bullish. Gavin Baker of Atreides Management pointed to Anthropic's positive cash flow, and said its growth sped up again in October.
So why does an I-P-O that hasn't even happened yet move the whole market? Because a lot of investors see the Anthropic share sale as the big test of how much public investors will pay for A-I, with a possible OpenAI listing to follow next year. If the biggest names in A-I get a cooler welcome, that ripples down to the chipmakers, the data center builders, and the companies borrowing billions to keep up.
You could see that ripple across software and the biggest tech names today. Palantir fell more than seven percent. ServiceNow fell more than four percent. Meta fell almost four percent, Alphabet fell about two and a half, and Microsoft and Amazon each fell almost two. Apple was the exception, up a little less than half a percent.
So here's how to think about CoreWeave and Anthropic. Nobody is arguing that demand for A-I isn't real. The argument is about timing and price. How fast does the revenue show up, how much does it cost to borrow in the meantime, and how much are investors willing to pay today for profits that come later? This week, with rates high and growth at Anthropic cooling, the answer was: a little less than before.
Now our third deep dive: oil at one hundred ten dollars.
Brent crude, the global benchmark, touched one hundred ten dollars a barrel today for the first time since May. It settled up three dollars and ninety-four cents, or about three-point-seven percent, at one hundred nine dollars and eighty-six cents. That's its highest close since May nineteenth. U.S. crude rose about three and a half percent, to one hundred one dollars and forty-one cents, its highest close in about a month.
The main driver is the Middle East. A big share of the world's oil normally sails through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage out of the Persian Gulf. When ships can't get through safely, that oil can't reach buyers, and prices go up. Attacks around the Strait of Hormuz have surged over the past ten days. Iran says it's stepping up strikes in response to the U.S. blockade of its ports and tougher sanctions. The research firm Kpler said in a report Thursday, quote, "Intensified Iranian attacks drove Gulf crude flows sharply lower." End quote. And it said it expects a slower and more uneven recovery in flows through the strait without a broader political deal.
Then there's Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile launched toward Yanbu, a Red Sea port city. That port matters a lot right now, because it's how Saudi Arabia keeps oil moving to the world while avoiding the Strait of Hormuz. Oil had been lower early in the day, and then it turned. The research firm Energy Aspects said prices reversed as escalation fears resurfaced, amid rumors of attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure.
There's a Russia piece too. Ukraine has been hitting Russian oil refineries again, and investors are trying to figure out how much diesel Russia can actually send to the world. In Washington, lawmakers introduced a bill to block the Trump administration's diesel deal with Russia, which adds more doubt about that supply.
One analyst framed the one hundred dollar mark for U.S. crude this way. Antonio Di Giacomo, senior market analyst at X-S dot com, said, quote, "Holding above that level would reinforce perceptions of supply pressure, although it would not guarantee further gains." End quote.
Now, who wins and who loses when oil does this? The winners were obvious. Exxon rose about two and a half percent, and Chevron rose about two and six-tenths. ConocoPhillips rose more than three percent, Occidental rose almost three percent, and the oil service company S-L-B rose more than two percent. Energy was the best sector in the S-and-P by a wide margin.
The losers were the companies that burn the most fuel. For airlines, jet fuel is one of the biggest costs they have. United Airlines fell about five percent. Delta fell about three and a half percent, and American Airlines fell more than three. And it's not just airlines. Higher oil feeds into shipping costs, plastics, and the price at the pump, and that's a tax on consumers.
And it goes right back to the Fed. This week brought hotter than expected reports on both consumer prices and producer prices, and they showed price pressure spreading beyond energy. When oil climbs on top of that, it makes the Fed's inflation fight harder. That's why oil and the A-I selloff are connected. Higher oil means a bigger risk of higher rates, and higher rates hit the most heavily borrowed A-I companies hardest.
So here's the takeaway on oil. The price is being driven by what happens to tankers and pipelines in the Middle East, and that can change fast, in either direction. A peace deal or a reopening of shipping lanes could knock prices down quickly. But for now, every new attack keeps a premium in the price. Next week brings a closer look at how the energy and airline companies are handling it. United Airlines reports Tuesday after the close, and Valero, the big refiner, reports Thursday morning.
Now our fourth deep dive: Tesla.
Thursday night, Tesla finally unveiled its long-delayed new Roadster, the two-seat sports car Elon Musk first promised years ago. And it was quite a show. The event was held at a SpaceX test site in Texas, and the car was built with help from SpaceX. It uses rocket-style thrusters, powered by cold gas, and a suction system under the car that presses it to the road. In the demo, the car lifted off the ground. Tesla claims it can go from zero to sixty miles per hour in under a second. But there's a catch. Musk said production won't start until twenty twenty-eight.
The stock loved it at first. Before the bell, Tesla shares were up close to five percent. Then the regular session started, and sellers took over. Tesla opened at about three hundred sixty-eight dollars and fifty cents, and slid all day. It closed down about two percent, at about three hundred fifty-four dollars and seventy cents. That kind of reversal, a big gain before the bell that turns into a loss, is often a sign that investors were using the good news to sell.
Why did the excitement fade so fast? Analysts mostly saw the event as a showcase, not a money-maker. JPMorgan kept its neutral rating on Tesla and its four hundred fifteen dollar price target. Its read was that the event showed off engineering more than a business plan, with few details on how many cars Tesla will actually sell, at what price, or when. A car that doesn't arrive until twenty twenty-eight won't do much for profits over the next year or two. And the stock was already falling with the rest of tech.
The event also stirred up talk about Tesla and SpaceX, the two biggest companies Musk runs. A car developed together by both companies has fed speculation that the two could one day combine. That's speculation, not a plan anyone has announced. SpaceX shares fell almost two percent today, along with the rest of the market.
The bigger test for Tesla comes next Wednesday, when it reports third-quarter earnings after the close. Part of the story is already out. Tesla delivered four hundred eighty-six thousand five hundred thirty-two vehicles in the third quarter, a little more than the four hundred eighty thousand it delivered in the second quarter. What investors don't know yet is how much money those cars made. Analysts expect earnings of about twenty-one cents a share, down from thirty-seven cents a year ago. That's the number to watch, along with anything Musk says about robotaxis, cheaper models, and the energy storage business.
So here's the takeaway on Tesla. Thursday night was about the dream. Wednesday will be about the business. And in a market this nervous, investors want to see the numbers first.
Now, a few other movers from today.
Travelers, the big insurance company and a member of the Dow, reported a strong quarter. Core earnings were nine dollars and eighteen cents a share, up from eight dollars and fourteen cents a year ago. Its investment portfolio earned a record amount, helped by higher bond yields, and it bought back about one-and-a-half billion dollars of its own stock in the quarter. The stock fell before the bell, then turned around and closed up about one and a half percent.
Truist, the big regional bank, also turned around. It fell early after its revenue came in light, then closed up about one percent. M-and-T Bank fell about one and a half percent. JPMorgan rose more than one percent, and Alcoa, the aluminum maker, rose about two and a half percent after its earnings beat forecasts.
And Netflix fell almost three percent after naming a new content chief. Peter Rice, a former top executive at Disney and Fox, takes over as chief content officer on October twenty-sixth. He replaces Bela Bajaria, who is leaving after almost ten years. Netflix reports its earnings on Tuesday, so investors will get to hear more about the change soon.
Here's what to watch into next week.
First, the biggest week of earnings so far this season. General Motors, G-E Aerospace, R-T-X, and Three-M report Tuesday morning, and Netflix, Capital One, and United Airlines report Tuesday after the close. Wednesday after the close is the big one, with Meta, Tesla, I-B-M, Texas Instruments, and Lam Research. Procter and Gamble and Union Pacific report Thursday morning, and American Express wraps it up on Friday.
Second, Meta. It's the largest company reporting all week. Meta guided third-quarter revenue to sixty-one to sixty-four billion dollars, and it expects to spend between one hundred thirty and one hundred forty-five billion dollars this year, much of it on A-I. After this week, the spending number may get as much attention as the revenue.
Third, the chip stocks. The chip index has fallen eight days in a row. Watch whether buyers step in on Monday, or the streak keeps going into the first chip earnings on Wednesday.
And through all of it, watch oil and the ten-year yield. If Brent holds above one hundred ten dollars, inflation worries could keep pushing rate-hike bets higher, and that pressure falls hardest on the most heavily borrowed A-I companies. On the economic calendar, we get housing starts on Tuesday, weekly jobless claims on Thursday, and consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan on Friday. And the Fed's next meeting is the week after, on October twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth.
That's the wrap for Friday, and for the week. The chip stocks fell for an eighth straight day, the longest streak since twenty oh-eight. CoreWeave gave back its rebound, as Anthropic's cooling I-P-O valuation added to the worries about A-I money. Oil touched one hundred ten dollars, lifting Exxon and Chevron and sinking the airlines. And Tesla's flying Roadster wowed the crowd but couldn't hold up the stock. For the week, the Nasdaq fell about four and a half percent, while the Dow still eked out a gain. We'll be back Monday morning with the futures and everything you need before the opening bell. Enjoy the weekend. Thanks for listening. I'm Trade and Ticker.