Brent at $117 and AI Valuations Cooling: Markets Head Into Fed Week on Edge

October 25, 2026 · 52 sources

Quick Hits

Oil shock premium is back. Brent crude closed at $117.10 after Houthi strikes hit Saudi energy infrastructure and Trump told a rally crowd the US may run another operation against Iran — and a widely shared r/investing post warns the Strategic Petroleum Reserve "has nothing left to give" if supply deteriorates further.
Fed meets Wednesday, but capex may be the real event. Per an r/investing analysis, prediction markets and OIS pricing have the Oct. 28 FOMC as a hold at 3.75%–4% — and the day's hyperscaler capex guidance could matter more for equities than the rate decision: "a seesaw, bad for the spenders, potentially great for chips."
AI froth watch. A heavily upvoted r/investing "is this the top?" checklist cites a Fed rate increase, spiking long-duration yields, OpenAI lowering its target valuation from $1.4T to $1.2T, Anthropic trimming from $2T to $1.5T, and CoreWeave unsecured-debt concerns. Meanwhile, Meta (META) fell more than 7% Thursday despite a Q3 beat.
Berkshire's rare streak. BRK.B rose 10 straight sessions in October — a first since 2018 — closing at a record $539.82 on Oct. 20, with the company buying back its own stock again this year.

The S&P 500 (^GSPC) and Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) have each dipped about 2% from their records, stagnating after years of record-breaking growth; a Motley Fool piece argues one market metric suggests "history may be repeating itself" and sketches how the smartest investors are preparing.
Corporate capital returns are in focus: GM just announced a $20 billion buyback, and the Motley Fool pits it against Tesla (TSLA), which trades at 350 times earnings, in a head-to-head pick. Alphabet's (GOOGL, GOOG) two share classes trade about 1% apart, a spread Fool breaks down for buyers deciding between them.
Altria (MO), the ultra-high-yield tobacco giant, has doubled the S&P 500's returns this year, per Motley Fool.
Seeking Alpha's insider-trades tracker flags BlackBerry, Accenture, and Cleveland-Cliffs among the notable names this week.

Spotify (SPOT) saw Q3 headline net income fall and whiff on consensus — yet, as the Motley Fool frames it, the investor reaction wasn't what you'd expect, keeping the buy-case debate alive.
Meta beat Q3 expectations but the stock dropped more than 7% Thursday and has kept sliding; Fool weighs whether the dip is buyable.
Lockheed Martin (LMT) beat and raised full-year guidance for the second straight quarter in its Oct. 22 report.
SpaceX (SPCX) posted strong Q3 results on Oct. 20, with its "Super Intelligence" AI segment the standout.
The week ahead: Amazon (AMZN) reports Oct. 29, up about 8% year to date and trailing the market — a Fool prediction says the stock will skyrocket afterward on AWS growth. Microsoft (MSFT) posts fiscal Q1 results with shares near $530, about 2% off the Oct. 13 record close of $543.45.

All eyes on Wednesday's FOMC: prediction markets and OIS pricing point to a hold at 3.75%–4%, per r/investing analysis — though the same post argues the Fed has "much impact" questions to answer, noting most coverage wrongly frames Oct. 28 as a Fed day with earnings attached rather than the reverse.
The tariff-inflation fight is escalating: Trump proclaimed "Tariffs don't cause inflation, they cause wealth," but a Motley Fool review of Federal Reserve economists' data concludes otherwise — even as Wall Street has, statistically, enjoyed the Trump era, COVID-crash volatility included.
A projected 3.6% Social Security COLA for 2027 would top this year's 2.8% bump, which inflation quickly eroded; the Motley Fool flags an "unwanted surprise" lurking behind the 2027 number.

AI chips: AMD (AMD) has narrowed its technology gap, but Fool cites one red flag keeping it out of the stock; in the Nvidia (NVDA) vs. Micron (MU) debate, Fool argues the AI revolution is "big enough for both." A Fool podcast also debates "cracks in the AI boom" spanning flying cars and smart homes, and the site names three AI stocks it expects to beat the Nasdaq Composite in 2027. Palantir (PLTR) trades near $198, about 5% below its Oct. 9 record close of $209.05, and Fool maps where shares could go once revenue hits $10 billion.
AI power: Fool ranks Constellation Energy (CEG), Vistra (VST), and GE Vernova (GEV) from worst to first for the AI power boom — CEG and Vistra both hold large supply contracts with tech companies building data centers.
Nuclear: The Global X Uranium ETF (URA) is down roughly 15% year to date amid sector malaise, and Fool backs a nuclear-fuel pick-and-shovel play as the contrarian entry.
Space: SpaceX's blockbuster June IPO lit up the whole space economy; Rocket Lab (RKLB) postponed its Neutron launch yet again — though Fool argues it's "not really so horrible." Elon Musk floated giving every American child a share of SpaceX, and Fool sizes the cost and what it would mean for everyone else holding the stock. Separately, Seeking Alpha's latest "SA Asks" poll probes how much Tesla could be worth in a merger deal.

Wednesday is the fulcrum. The Fed decision and hyperscaler capex guides land the same day, and the r/investing seesaw thesis — pain for big spenders, upside for chip suppliers — offers a framework for trading the print rather than the headline rate.
Top-or-not is the defining argument. The Reddit checklist of late-cycle signals (rate hikes, duration selling, private AI markdowns, CoreWeave credit worries) sits against a bullish sell-side contingent still publishing buy-the-dip cases on Meta, Microsoft at named entry prices, and AI winners into 2027.
Elections next: Voters head to the polls Nov. 3 for midterms, and a Fool prediction calls for stocks to soar afterward, based on historical midterm patterns.
For the long-termers: Fool runs the math on turning $300 a month into $1 million, projects dividend income from $1,000 a year into Morgan Stanley (MS) at its ~2.5% yield, and compares Amgen (AMGN) vs. Gilead (GILD) as rare biotech dividend stocks — a reminder that not everyone is trading the Fed.