Tech sells off, the Fed holds, and the FTSE quietly wins the week

A 29% slump in Intel and a weak Amazon outlook dragged the Nasdaq to its worst week since the spring, even as the Fed held rates on a split vote. London, light on technology, finished the week higher almost by default.

Abhineet RaiFounder · Wealth Adviser Week ending Friday 30 October 2026 About a four-minute read

The week in figures

Each figure as at its own date · sources below

Bank Rate 3.75% Unchanged29 Oct ECB refinancing rate 2.65% Unchanged30 Oct Fed funds target 3.75–4.00% Unchanged29 Oct UK 10-year gilt 5.31% −1 bps28 Oct US 10-year Treasury 4.94% −6 bps30 Oct US 2-year Treasury 4.56% −13 bps30 Oct GBP / USD 1.3399 +0.2%30 Oct GBP / EUR 1.1993 +0.4%30 Oct Brent crude $123.10 −4.1%27 Oct

UK CPI inflation 3.5% +0.4 pp30 Sept

This was a reckoning with AI capital spending, not with growth itself

The week's violence was concentrated in one place. Intel fell nearly 29% on a weak outlook tied to a slowdown in PC demand, and that came a day after Alphabet's quarterly earnings missed badly enough to pull Fortinet and ServiceNow down with it. Amazon added to the mood with third-quarter numbers that missed and a capital spending plan, $220 billion for the year, left unchanged even as free cash flow ran negative by $42.4 billion.1 None of this was a macro shock. It was a market deciding, stock by stock, that the money being spent on artificial intelligence infrastructure has not yet shown up as proportional revenue, and marking the most exposed names down hard.

The Federal Reserve's decision sat almost unnoticed inside that move. The Fed held its target range, but two of twelve voters wanted a hike, one of them Lisa Cook's first dissent since joining the Board.2 Chair Warsh's language shifted from "solid" to "strong" growth and he spoke directly about oil prices moving higher again.3 That followed a third-quarter GDP print of 3.4% at an annualised rate, ahead of forecasts, and PCE inflation running at 3.6% year on year.1 None of that supports a market selling off on growth fears. It supports one that is nervous about valuation in a narrow set of stocks precisely because the economy underneath them is not obviously slowing.

London's gain of roughly 0.4% on the week was not a vote of confidence in Britain so much as an accident of composition. A FTSE 100 heavy in pharmaceuticals, energy and consumer staples, and light in the technology names doing the damage elsewhere, was always going to look calm in a week like this.4 AstraZeneca's 7% jump on strong results and BP's record quarterly profit did the rest.5 That is a reminder about what an index is made of, not a judgement on whether the AI trade has further to fall or further to run. I would not mistake one for the other.

Abhineet RaiFounder · Wealth Adviser, Rai Wealth Management

Equities

US · UK · India

The Nasdaq fell 2.86% on Friday alone and closed the month down 5.2%, its worst month since March 2025, after Intel's near-29% drop and Amazon's disappointing outlook compounded Thursday's Alphabet-led slide.1 The S&P 500 fell 1.82% on the day, with energy stocks the exception as Chevron and ExxonMobil both beat earnings estimates on strong refining margins.6
The FTSE 100 closed at 10,729.78, up 0.4% on the week and its first monthly rise in three months, lifted by AstraZeneca and BT and weighed down by NatWest after weaker net interest income and higher loan impairments.5
India's Nifty 50 and Sensex both rose, led by IT stocks benefiting as the global unwinding of AI-related positions sent demand toward outsourcing names such as Infosys and HCL Tech, even as market breadth stayed negative.7

Rates & Fixed Income

US · UK

The Fed held its target range unchanged at 3.75–4.00%, but the vote split 10–2, with two dissents favouring a hike, and the Committee's language on growth turned firmer.2
There was no Bank of England meeting this week; the rate shown reflects the level set in September, when the MPC voted 6–3 to hold Bank Rate at 3.75%. The next decision falls on 5 November.8
UK gilts held steady after Wednesday's Budget, which avoided large unfunded giveaways, leaving the 10-year yield little changed and still close to its highest level since 2007.9

Commodities

Oil & gas · Gold

WTI crude fell 5.8% on the week to $103.37 a barrel, and Henry Hub natural gas slipped 0.7% to $2.76 per million BTU.10
UK-listed gold miners fell hard, with Endeavour Mining and Fresnillo both down more than 5%, as gold itself slid to a one-year low.4

Currencies

GBP

Sterling firmed against both the dollar and the euro this week, a move that owed more to a calmer domestic Budget reaction than to any shift in the rate outlook.

What I'm Watching

The week ahead

The Bank of England's rate decision on 5 November matters more than usual, with money markets now pricing a real chance of a hike rather than a hold.11
Any follow-through from this week's technology earnings, particularly guidance from the remaining large AI spenders, will show whether the sell-off was a correction in a few names or the start of something wider.
Oil's sharp weekly fall is worth watching for whether it continues, given its bearing on the inflation picture that both the Fed and the Bank of England are weighing.10

Sources

Market Snapshot figures from Bank of England, ECB Data Portal, New York Fed, US Treasury, EIA and ONS. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Abhineet Rai

Founder · Wealth Adviser, Rai Wealth Management

Abhineet founded Rai Wealth Management after more than two decades in banking, including spells as a Director in Private Banking at Credit Suisse, Bank of Singapore and HSBC Private Bank in London. He trained at the National Defence Academy in India before taking an MBA, and holds certifications in Investment Planning, Securities & Derivatives, and Regulated Mortgage advice.

20+ years in banking
Credit Suisse · Bank of Singapore · HSBC
NDA-trained, then MBA

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