Markets spent the week finding out that a single earnings leak can move more money than an oil war. A Financial Times report that OpenAI's revenue was running some 20 billion dollars short of what had been signalled wiped out a fortnight of record highs in two sessions, even as tankers were getting hit in the Strait of Hormuz and the Fed's own officials were talking about more rate rises. That's why we built Winvesta Crisps, to cut through the noise and tell you what actually moved markets and why. 60,000+ investors from all over India are already in. What about you?
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This was the week the AI trade found out it could lose money two days running. The S&P 500 touched its first close above 7,800 on Monday and a fresh record on Tuesday. By Thursday the Nasdaq had logged its worst session since mid-August, oil was up more than 3 per cent on tanker attacks near the Strait of Hormuz, and the 10-year Treasury yield had touched its highest level since 2002. The Dow, propped up by energy and value names, barely noticed.
📊 Market recap
The index-level picture: the S&P 500 spent the week in the high-7,700s to low-7,800s, the Nasdaq Composite in the high-26,000s to high-27,000s, and the Dow in the low-51,000s. Three different stories, one week.
Monday brought the calm before it. The S&P 500 closed above 7,800 for the first time, helped along by tech gains and yields that had eased off their recent highs, per CNBC.
Tuesday was the high point. The S&P 500 climbed 0.58 per cent to a record close of 7,818.93, and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.45 per cent to close at a record 27,599.79, per CNBC. Nobody on the tape that day would have guessed what was two sessions away.
Wednesday turned. A Financial Times report said OpenAI's annualised revenue was running about 20 billion dollars below the figure that had been doing the rounds a month earlier, down to roughly 50 billion against a widely cited 68 billion, per CNN and CNBC. The Nasdaq fell about 1 per cent as the AI trade took its first real hit of the autumn. The same day, the Fed released the minutes from its 15 to 16 September meeting, where it had lifted rates 25 basis points to 3.75 to 4.00 per cent, its first hike since 2023.
Thursday was the reckoning. The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.25 per cent to 27,193.34, its worst day since mid-August, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped 3.39 per cent. The S&P 500 slipped 0.47 per cent to 7,765.36. The Dow, insulated by its heavier energy and consumer weighting, actually rose 0.1 per cent to 51,231.64, per CNBC and HDFC Sky. Brent crude jumped roughly 3.5 to 4 per cent on reports that Iran had stepped up attacks on tankers in and around the Strait of Hormuz, with a Gulf of Mexico hurricane shutting in a further slice of US production for good measure, per CNBC. Oil pared some of that gain after the Trump administration signalled it would not strike Iran before the midterms.
Friday opened with futures pointing higher. S&P 500 futures were up about 0.3 per cent and Nasdaq 100 futures were up roughly 0.5 per cent ahead of the bell, with prediction markets pricing a strong chance of a positive close. Delta Air Lines was due to report its September quarter before the open, with the Street looking for adjusted earnings up close to 15 per cent year on year.
The week's verdict: a genuine AI wobble, not a market-wide panic. The pain stayed concentrated in the names most exposed to the OpenAI story, while energy, staples and a handful of earnings winners carried the broader tape.
😶🌫️ Sentiment watch
The CNN Fear and Greed Index closed the week at 38, in "Fear" territory, down from 43 earlier in the week and 40 a week earlier, as cited by Benzinga's daily market wraps. The reading drifted between Neutral and Fear through the week rather than cratering in one move, which tells its own story: this was a sentiment bruise, not a sentiment collapse.
The VIX backs that up. It closed at 15.57 on Thursday, up 3.25 per cent on the day, having traded as high as 16.46 intraday, per HDFC Sky's market data and FRED's official series. That is a contained reading. It sits well below the year's September high of 17.84 and nowhere near the late-July spike above 20. Wall Street's own fear gauge is saying the OpenAI story is a stock-picker's problem, concentrated in a dozen or so AI-adjacent names, not a reason to hedge the whole market.
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🏆 Best performers
The week's winners clustered in two places: anything that benefits when oil spikes, and the one earnings beat strong enough to swim against a falling tech tape.
Accenture led the pack, up just over 6 per cent after news of a new tie-up with Dell, a rare piece of good news for a stock usually read as a bellwether for enterprise technology spending, per a Wall Street Republic market recap. PepsiCo climbed almost 4 per cent after reporting third-quarter net revenue growth of 5.6 per cent, a clean beat in a week when very little else in consumer-facing earnings was getting rewarded, per the company's own filing. The rest of the list, Marathon Petroleum, Valero and Chevron, is a straight read of the oil shock: refiners and an integrated major all catching the updraft from Brent's jump on the Hormuz tanker attacks, per CNBC's oil coverage.
The common thread: when one trade (AI infrastructure) gets hit this hard, the capital has to land somewhere else. This week it landed on energy and on the handful of companies that could point to a concrete, dated piece of good news.