Week ending 16 Oct 2026

The week came in two halves. Monday and Tuesday were quiet, and Tuesday was one of the calmest days of the year on the Spotlight Index. Then US inflation came in hotter than expected on Wednesday, at 3.7% a year, and Wednesday was the busiest day on the board since August.

Chip and AI hardware shares took the worst of it. Barclays cut Dell on Wednesday, saying its strong sales came from high memory-chip prices rather than real AI demand, and Dell fell 11% that day and 22.9% over the week. Samsung fell 17.7% as memory-chip shares sold off around the world, and on Thursday Korea's KOSPI dropped 7.6% and trading was halted for 20 minutes. Teradyne fell 19.3% in the same sell-off. Rocket Lab fell 25.5%. Midweek it said the first launch of its Neutron rocket slips into 2027, after a problem with a part of the first-stage tank.

Money moved out of tech and into safer consumer shares. Coca-Cola rose 6.6%, helped by news on Thursday that KFC in the US is switching from Pepsi to Coke from 2027.

China publishes its third-quarter growth figures on Monday at 10:00 Beijing. Results season gets busier from Tuesday, with Netflix and SpaceX after the close that day.

The one to watch is Meta on Wednesday after the close. After a week when doubts about AI spending hit chip shares, its results include how much it plans to spend on AI. Lam Research, Tesla, IBM and Texas Instruments report the same evening, and UK inflation comes out that morning at 07:00 London. On Thursday the Bank of Korea decides on interest rates, Nokia reports at 08:00 Helsinki, and Western Digital reports after the close.