The Weekly Edge: Week-Ahead & Look-Back, Mon 12 – Fri 16 Oct 2026

Welcome to this week's edition of The Weekly Edge, our look back at last week's moves across global indices, FX and commodities, and a look ahead to the events that matter for the week to come.

Last week's highlights

• Equities split in two: the Nasdaq 100 fell 5.48% (its worst week since June), the S&P 500 fell 1.95%, the Russell 2000 fell 3.04% and the Nikkei 225 fell 5.34%. Money rotated rather than fled: the FTSE 100 rose 3.03%, the DAX 2.08%, the CAC 40 1.93%, the Nifty 50 2.78% and the Dow 0.65%.
• Inflation and yields: hot US September CPI (3.7% y/y against 3.6% expected) lifted the 10-year yield as high as 5.33% before it settled near 5.09%.
• FX: the dollar softened (DXY down 0.42%), sterling led (GBP/USD up 0.76%) and the Swiss franc was the strongest major (USD/CHF down 0.93%).
• Commodities: WTI rose 10.41% to a $101.41 settle, with Brent touching about $110 on Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea supply threats. Gold eased 0.74% to $4,164.75 and silver fell 6.13% to $57.31.

The week ahead

There is no scheduled decision from the Fed, ECB, BoE, BoJ, BoC or RBA, as all six meet between 27 October and 5 November. The drivers are instead UK CPI (Wednesday), Meta and Tesla earnings (Wednesday, after the US close), China Q3 GDP (Monday), Japan CPI (Friday) and the October flash PMIs (Friday). Overall bias: cautious and defensive, with event risk skewed to the AI and inflation themes.

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Educational only, not financial advice.