Markets closed Saturday; October selloff lingers, with Apple in focus Monday

Markets closed Saturday; October selloff lingers, with Apple in focus Monday
U.S. stocks midday report | Saturday, 31 October 2026 (Hong Kong time; cash markets closed Friday, 30 October, U.S. Eastern time; U.S. and European stock markets are closed Saturday and stock-index futures have not opened, so this edition is anchored to Friday’s close and weekend news)

On Friday, the S&P 500 fell 1.82% to 7580.07 points, the Dow fell 1.09% to 51770.31 points, the Nasdaq fell 2.86% to 25437.00 points, and the equal-weight S&P ETF (RSP) fell 0.79% to 218.31 dollars (The Wall Street Journal). The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield was about 4.93%, WTI crude about 104.12 dollars a barrel, gold futures about 3885.70 dollars an ounce, and the dollar index was little changed at about 101.9 (The Wall Street Journal) (Reuters).

Market theme
There is no fresh trading on Saturday to “verify” Friday’s selloff, but two pieces of weekend news extend the same theme: The market is no longer punishing growth that is too slow, but spending that is too high and cash recovery that is too slow. The Nasdaq 100 fell 3.46% on Friday, nearing correction territory, while the S&P 500 fell only 1.82%, indicating that this remains a reckoning concentrated within technology stocks, rather than capitulation across the whole market. China’s official manufacturing PMI slipped into contraction territory on Saturday morning, adding a backdrop of uncooperative demand to Monday’s open; OpenAI’s reduced fundraising target, meanwhile, extended the question of whether external financing can keep paying the AI bill indefinitely from listed companies’ earnings reports to unlisted AI laboratories (Reuters) (CNBC). Monday’s test is therefore clear: will Apple’s and Palantir’s after-hours earnings arrest the selloff, or spread the “cash-flow reckoning” to the last names yet to report?

I. European trading and Friday’s close: Europe follows lower but losses are limited; October’s divergence is set

• European markets also closed lower on Friday under pressure from the AI selloff, but their losses were much smaller than those in the U.S.: the pan-European STOXX 600 fell 0.36% to 646.75 points, Germany’s DAX fell 0.85% to 25818.21 points, the eurozone STOXX 50 fell 1.23% to 6131.31 points, Britain’s FTSE 100 instead rose 0.07%, and France’s CAC 40 was little changed (Reuters, republished). European technology stocks fell 2.75% for their worst day since 7 July; AT&S, Soitec and Technoprobe fell between 9% and 13%, while Universal Music rose 7.89% on a recovery in third-quarter subscription streaming revenue, leading the STOXX 600 gainers (Reuters, republished). Europe’s smaller losses show that Friday was not a story of a failing global economy: the AI bill first weighed on U.S. technology stocks, while Europe largely followed them lower rather than suffering a local shock.
• The monthly divergence is now set: the Nasdaq fell 5.3% in October, its largest monthly decline since March 2025, and was down 7.8% from its closing high on 6 October; the S&P 500 fell 0.9% for the month, while the Dow rose 1.7% (The Wall Street Journal). Reuters noted that the Nasdaq 100 fell 3.5% on Friday and was nearing correction territory, defined as a 10% decline from a recent high; the four largest hyperscalers’ combined capital spending over the past 12 months has exceeded one-third of total capital spending by S&P 500 constituents, and the share may keep rising (Reuters). The monthly divergence is October’s most important legacy for November: resilience remains at the index level, but the “cash-flow stratification” within technology stocks is already irreversible.
• Saturday morning’s Chinese data was the first hard news of the weekend: China’s official manufacturing PMI fell from 50.1 in September to 49.3 in October, below the 50.0 expected in a Reuters poll and marking the fastest contraction in three months. Reuters said weak demand, including export demand, weighed on manufacturers (Reuters). This data alone does not determine the U.S. market open, but it closes off the comforting explanation that Chinese demand will provide a floor for the global technology supply chain, leaving the market less room for error before Monday’s open.

II. Bonds, the dollar and commodities: Treasuries finish a strong month; oil and gold move in opposite directions

• Friday’s bond-market signal was cleaner than the stock market’s: the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield fell 6 basis points to 4.928%, the 2-year yield fell 7.5 basis points to 4.579%, and the 10-year yield fell about 37 basis points in October, on course for its largest monthly decline since December 2023. The Wall Street Journal said safe-haven buying offset inflation concerns arising from oil’s return above 100 dollars (The Wall Street Journal). The dollar index was little changed for the week as safe-haven sentiment and repricing after the Federal Reserve held rates steady offset each other (The Wall Street Journal).
• Oil prices continued to rise: December Brent crude futures rose 2.4% to 117.64 dollars a barrel, briefly touching 118 dollars intraday; WTI rose 2.08% to 104.12 dollars a barrel; Brent rose 13.6% in October and WTI rose 15.2% (Reuters). Reuters reported Friday that a tanker continued sailing after it was hit by mines in the Strait of Hormuz and a fire broke out in its engine room, the first successful attack using mines since the U.S.–Iran conflict began in February; the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ navy said the same day that two tankers had been intercepted in waters south of the strait for ignoring radio warnings (Reuters). Oil is rising on supply risk rather than demand—and that is precisely what makes it difficult to manage: the higher oil prices go, the harder it is to rule out a rate increase in December entirely, and the more fragile safe-haven buying in bonds appears.
• Gold and silver both fell sharply that day: spot gold dropped 3.5% to about 3881 dollars an ounce, its lowest since October 2025; silver fell about 6% and slipped below 50 dollars an ounce (Reuters). Gold and U.S. Treasuries fell on the same day, breaking the simple “buy gold for safety” script: when inflation expectations and selling occur together, gold is first sold as a source of liquidity rather than treated as a haven.

III. Stock and sector moves, including earnings: chip stocks lead losses, while energy provides support

• Intel plunged 28.6% to 65.76 dollars, its largest one-day decline since 1974, because its fourth-quarter revenue guidance was far below market expectations; the company also attributed the outlook to continued weakness in the PC market. Reuters added that Intel expected fourth-quarter revenue of 15 billion to 16 billion dollars, below analysts’ average forecast of 17.07 billion dollars, and its chief financial officer said it would not achieve positive cash flow this year (The Wall Street Journal) (Reuters). Intel’s plunge best illustrates this week’s logic: current-quarter numbers need not be bad for weak guidance to bring severe punishment; the market is now paying only for confidence in what a company will commit to for the next quarter.
• Chip stocks fell across the board: Nvidia dropped 4.2%, AMD fell 10.9%, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index declined 7.2%. Reddit plunged 29.2% to 91.73 dollars, its largest one-day drop since listing, because its fourth-quarter revenue guidance fell short of Wall Street expectations; Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet each fell between 1% and 2% on Friday (The Wall Street Journal). Amazon closed down only 1.4% at 240.35 dollars, sharply narrowing its premarket loss of about 7% (The Wall Street Journal). Amazon’s narrowing loss alongside Intel’s plunge draws the dividing line: investors still believe in cloud growth, but no company can use a “growth story” to escape scrutiny of cash flow.
• Energy and value stocks continued to move against the trend: Exxon Mobil and Chevron both reported better-than-expected third-quarter profits and rose 2.2% and 2.8%, respectively. Financial stocks came under pressure, with Goldman Sachs down 4% and Jefferies down 6%; cryptocurrencies were also hit, with Coinbase falling 11% to 143.54 dollars and bitcoin falling 1.8% to 76353 dollars, after reports that hackers had stolen more than 6.3 billion dollars from Binance (The Wall Street Journal). The combination of rising energy stocks and falling financials reminds us that Friday was not a simple switch in risk appetite: capital was repositioning among oil prices, interest rates and the AI bill.

IV. AI news: funding cools too, as OpenAI cuts its target by 10 billion dollars

• The Financial Times reported that OpenAI had reduced its latest fundraising target from 30 billion dollars to 20 billion dollars, with its valuation remaining at 1.25 trillion dollars, below the initially proposed 1.4 trillion dollars. Reuters, citing the report, said the company had set last Friday as the deadline for investor commitments, some investors had reduced their subscriptions, and the first closing was expected to come in below 20 billion dollars (CNBC). The significance is not the 20 billion itself—it would still be one of the largest private fundraisings ever—but the timing: it came after a 2.9% one-day decline in the Nasdaq, indicating that even the leading unlisted AI company is starting to feel public-market pricing pressure over the AI bill.
• Financing methods remain another underlying concern: CoreWeave fell 9.7% to 54.87 dollars, less than 4 dollars from its low for the year, while credit derivatives tied to its data-center debt had previously sounded a warning. Views cited by The Wall Street Journal summarized this week’s debate as two camps: bears argue that hyperscalers spend too much, earn too little and borrow to fill the gap, while bulls point out that chipmakers’ AI orders are still growing exponentially, with visibility extending years into the future (The Wall Street Journal). These positions are not mutually exclusive: the orders can be real and so can the bills. The market is debating whether orders can be monetized faster than bills come due.
• A Bloomberg market wrap noted that the S&P 500 briefly approached its 100-day moving average, a key technical level, on Friday, and that the Nasdaq 100 had lost more than 1.2 trillion dollars in market value in October (Bloomberg, republished). With the technical level and financing news in play, the first hour of trading on Monday may be more revealing than the earnings reports themselves: will dip buyers return first, or will stop-loss selling push the index through its 100-day moving average?

V. Looking ahead: calendar (Hong Kong time)

• 2 November (Monday), 23:00: U.S. ISM manufacturing PMI for October; after the close (early 3 November Hong Kong time): Apple and Palantir report earnings; about 135 S&P 500 companies report next week (Barron’s).
• 3 November (Tuesday): AMD reports earnings after the close; U.S. midterm elections (Barron’s).
• 4 November (Wednesday): U.S. ISM services PMI for October; Arm and Qualcomm report earnings (Barron’s).
• 6 November (Friday): U.S. nonfarm payrolls report for October (Bureau of Labor Statistics), the week’s key economic release; Barron’s also lists Nvidia’s 17 November earnings and Anthropic’s expected IPO as potential catalysts (Barron’s).
• Note: The U.S. has entered standard time. Next week, regular U.S. stock trading hours correspond to 22:30 to 05:00 the following day in Hong Kong time, with the open one hour later than during daylight saving time.