The week of Oct 19–23, 2026: small caps gain 2%, Meta loses $170 billion and oil climbs again

The S&P 500 lost 0.47% in the five sessions to October 23, 2026, closing at 7,624, and the Nasdaq lost 0.71%, to 25,955. Smaller companies did better: the Russell 2000 gained 2.0% and the equal-weight S&P 500 (RSP) 1.14%. The week came in two halves. The S&P rose in each of the first three sessions, to 7,757 on Wednesday, then fell 1.21% on Thursday and 0.52% on Friday. Of the 167 companies worth at least $100 billion, 89 ended the week higher, with a median change of +0.39%.

The 10-year Treasury yield fell 19 basis points on Thursday alone, to 4.95%, and ended the week at 4.99%. Oil rose for a second week; both contracts are the December delivery on both dates, because November WTI expired on October 20. Gold fell 4.1% and is down 10.9% in 2026.

Communication services fell, energy and health care rose

Among companies worth $100 billion or more, the biggest gainers were CrowdStrike (+13.3%), ServiceNow (+12.0%), Palo Alto Networks (+11.3%), Blackstone (+10.7%), Spotify (+10.1%) and Cloudflare (+9.9%). The biggest decliners were Lam Research (−12.8%), KLA (−12.2%), GE Vernova (−11.5%), AT&T (−10.7%) and Meta Platforms (−9.4%). CrowdStrike, ServiceNow, Palo Alto, Cloudflare, KLA and GE Vernova filed no 8-K during the week, and the filings of the others do not explain the moves.

The twelve largest companies lost $366 billion of market value between them. Alphabet fell 6.0%, a loss of $249 billion, and Meta 9.4%, or $170 billion. Tesla (+4.9%, +$69 billion) and Apple (+1.2%, +$62 billion) gained the most.

Earnings: Meta, Lam, Tesla, AT&T

Meta Platforms reported after the close on October 21: third-quarter revenue of $64.6 billion, up 26%, and earnings of $3.83 a share, which include a $9.89 billion charge related to an agreement with 52 state attorneys general; without it, earnings would have been $7.40 a share. The company expects fourth-quarter revenue of $73 billion to $76 billion. On October 22, the first session after the report, the stock fell 6.98%.

Lam Research, Tesla, IBM and Texas Instruments also reported after the close on October 21. In the next session Lam fell 11.76% (revenue of $8.22 billion in the quarter to September 27, and a forecast of $8.60 billion, plus or minus $400 million, for the next one), Tesla fell 3.08% (revenue of $28.05 billion and 486,532 deliveries, down 2%) and IBM rose 0.26%. Most of IBM’s 9.2% weekly gain came before its report. AT&T reported on the morning of October 21, raising its 2026 adjusted earnings outlook and lowering its long-term capital investment outlook; the stock fell 6.45% that day. Netflix fell 5.31% on October 21, the session after its report.

Lockheed Martin reported a record backlog of $292.0 billion, including $52.5 billion from a multi-year PAC-3 award, and raised its 2026 outlook; it rose 6.96% on October 22. In deals, Tradeweb agreed on October 19 to buy Trumid for about $1.97 billion, and CRH completed its purchase of Arcosa on October 23.

A quiet week for insider buying

The largest open-market purchase filed during the week was by Applied Digital president Jason Zhang, who bought $5.66 million of stock at an average of $18.86 on October 16. FB Financial director Orrin Ingram bought $1.54 million on October 20. Two larger filings were not open-market buys: $11.5 million at Iambic Therapeutics and $3.06 million at City Therapeutics were bought by venture funds at the IPO price.

Crypto: the weekly close

Bitcoin closed the crypto week — Sunday, October 25, at midnight UTC — at $80,053 on Coinbase, down 2.38% from the previous Sunday. Over the same Friday-to-Friday window as stocks it fell 0.52%, and it lost another 1.26% over the weekend. Its high for the week, $84,856, came on Wednesday, October 21, the same day the S&P 500 peaked; the low, $79,107, came on Saturday. Ether fell 3.35% for the crypto week, to $2,326.75.

Crypto treasury companies: mNAV at the Oct 23 close

mNAV compares what the stock market pays for a crypto treasury company with the value of the crypto it holds. On enterprise value — market value plus debt and preferred stock, minus cash — two of the seven largest U.S.-listed treasury companies traded above their crypto at the October 23 close: Strive at 1.57 and Strategy at 1.11. The other five traded below it. Coin prices barely moved between the two Fridays (bitcoin −0.4% at 4 p.m. New York time), so the changes came from the shares.

Strategy bought 267 bitcoin in the week to October 18, bringing its holdings to 848,517, sold 140,872 shares and repurchased 1.94 million STRC preferred shares for $193.1 million; its board raised the preferred repurchase authorization from $2.0 billion to $3.0 billion. Strive’s October 16 snapshot adds 4,045 bitcoin and 13.7 million shares from exercised warrants. Its new SATS preferred stock — 7 million shares with a $100 stated amount, sold at $90 — closed on October 20 and is not in the October 16 figures; including it would move Strive’s ratio to about 1.59. The method and the snapshot limits for BitMine and Hyperliquid are explained in the full treasury analysis.

Stock prices are Yahoo Finance closes; oil and gold use the official settlement for the same contract on both dates; crypto uses the UTC-day close from Coinbase, and the mNAV coin prices are taken at 4 p.m. New York time on October 23, when the stocks closed. The documents behind each company fact are listed below. This is a description of the week, not a forecast and not investment advice.