Markets
Wall Street's technology rally ran into one very large anchor on Tuesday. Semiconductor stocks surged on a $63 billion Broadcom-Anthropic financing deal and Tesla climbed again, lifting the Nasdaq 1.18 percent and the S&P 500 0.60 percent — while Boeing's 10.7 percent plunge after a wider-than-expected loss held the Dow to a 0.03 percent gain. Oil settled below $100 a barrel on the eve of the Federal Reserve's decision.
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The closing numbers
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 15.99 points, or 0.03 percent, to close at 52,377.57 — a gain that would have been far larger without Boeing. The S&P 500 added 45.85 points, or 0.60 percent, to 7,722.62, and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 308.43 points, or 1.18 percent, to 26,477.81. Small caps joined the advance: the Russell 2000 rose 1.17 percent to 2,818.98. The VIX volatility index eased to 17.56 from 18.39 on Monday, a sign that whatever nerves remain ahead of Wednesday's Fed decision, panic is not among them.
The 10-year Treasury yield slipped just below 5 percent to 4.99 percent. In commodities, West Texas Intermediate crude settled at $99.90 a barrel, down $1.86 or 1.83 percent — back below the $100 line — and Brent settled at $113.88, down $1.93 or 1.7 percent. Gold futures rose 0.9 percent to $4,075 an ounce, bitcoin traded around $80,600, and the dollar index added 0.3 percent to 102.29.
Chips did the heavy lifting
The day's engine was semiconductors. A chip gauge rose 3.02 percent and the SOXX semiconductor ETF gained about 4 percent, after a $63 billion financing package came together for Broadcom's custom-chip capacity dedicated to Anthropic: Bank of America, Blackstone, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are financing Broadcom XPU capacity for the AI company, with deliveries from 2027. Broadcom shares rose 4.1 percent, AMD was among the session's leaders, and Nvidia added about 1 percent — Nvidia also featured in the day's other big financing story, a reported $3 billion investment connected to Meta's equity offering. Technology was the leading sector, up 1.70 percent.
Tesla added 4 percent, extending Monday's 5 percent gain, and the MAGS big-tech ETF rose about 1 percent. But the leadership was narrow: six of the S&P 500's eleven sectors fell, and the equal-weight S&P 500 rose just 0.11 percent against the cap-weighted index's 0.56 percent — a gap that says the rally belonged to the giants, not the average stock.
Boeing's very bad day
Boeing fell 10.69 percent to $168.18, single-handedly capping the Dow, after a third quarter that missed on nearly every line that matters. The planemaker posted a core loss of $0.34 a share against expectations of roughly a $0.21 loss, on revenue of $24.19 billion; the net loss narrowed to $116 million from $5.34 billion a year earlier, free cash flow was $464 million, and the backlog stands at $745 billion — but 737 MAX deliveries are set to miss the roughly 500-aircraft target, and the stock paid for the miss. For a Dow priced on points rather than percentages, a fall of that size in a heavyweight component is arithmetic the index cannot outrun, and it is the main reason the Dow finished the day essentially flat while its sister indexes climbed.
Winners, losers and the Meta question
The gainers' list was led by earnings stories: JetBlue jumped 19 percent, SoFi rose 13 percent on a beat-and-raise, Celestica — which had headlined the morning's preview — gained 12.1 percent to $276.54, and Royal Caribbean (+6.5 percent), UPS (+6 percent), PayPal (+2 percent) and Novartis (+2 percent) all advanced. On the losing side, Whirlpool fell about 8 percent, Sherwin-Williams dropped 3 percent on a profit miss, Coca-Cola slipped about 1.5 percent despite raising guidance, Corning eased 1 percent, and Visa dipped 0.57 percent to $401.86 ahead of its after-the-bell results.
Meta fell 1.5 percent as investors digested its up-to-$95 billion AI equity raise — reported during the day as upsized toward $97.5 billion — the financing at the center of the market's running argument about how the AI buildout gets paid for. The bull case is visible in Tuesday's tape: the same AI spending that dilutes Meta's shareholders is revenue for Broadcom, AMD and Nvidia. The bear case is the dilution itself, and it will get its next hearing when Alphabet and Microsoft report on Wednesday.
Oil below $100, diplomacy in Tehran
Crude's slide back below $100 came as the diplomacy around the Hormuz crisis continued: Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani officials met Iranian leaders in Tehran on Monday under the Mecca Defence Alliance mediation effort, Hormuz exports are running at roughly 65 percent of pre-conflict levels, and Houthi attacks on Saudi targets continue. The market, for now, is pricing a crisis that is managed rather than resolved — oil down on the day, gold up, and neither moving like a market bracing for escalation.
What the data said
Tuesday's economic reports were quietly solid: September durable goods orders rose 1.8 percent, October consumer confidence printed 91.7, and new-home sales ran at a 676,000 annual pace. None of it complicates the Federal Reserve's decision, due Wednesday at 2 p.m. Eastern: a hold at 3.75 to 4.00 percent is widely expected, with CME FedWatch pricing only about a 7 percent chance of a hike — though markets still price two or more hikes by mid-2027, a path that keeps long yields near 5 percent and every rate-sensitive sector on a short leash.
The week ahead
Wednesday brings the Fed decision and, after the close, earnings from Alphabet and Microsoft; Amazon follows Thursday, alongside the ECB decision, US GDP and PCE inflation data; the Bank of Japan meets Friday. Visa and Seagate reported after Tuesday's close. The indexes sit near their highs with leadership narrowing, the 10-year knocking on 5 percent, and the week's biggest questions — the Fed's path and whether AI spending converts to earnings — both scheduled for answers within 48 hours.
Sources: Associated Press market wrap via TVNewsCheck; ChainCatcher/Gate index closes; CAMS market gauges; Finnhub; DTN settlement data; Investopedia market coverage; Zacks and MoneyCheck on Boeing's third quarter; CME FedWatch. Closing levels as of the 4 p.m. Eastern close on Tuesday, October 27, 2026. This article is reporting and analysis, not investment advice.