The Trading Day · Friday, October 23, 2026

Chips — the washout hits 7%, Asia refuses to follow, and oil jumps to a five-month high

Thursday took Wednesday's after-hours verdict and wrote it across the whole tape. The chip ETFs fell six to seven percent — SOXX −6.8%, SMH −6.0% — with the equipment and optics names worst: Lam Research −11.8%, Coherent −12.5%, Lumentum −11.5%, Fabrinet −10.8%, Applied Materials −8.2%, ASML −6.9%. Meta, the one print the market had paid on Wednesday night, gave the whole gain back and more, closing 7.0% lower. The Nasdaq 100 lost 2.9%, the S&P 500 1.2%, and the VIX jumped 14% to 19.

The Morning 10

1 The washout — chip ETFs down 6–7%, VIX at 19, Meta's payment confiscated
2 Wednesday's five earnings windows — one in every corner of the record
3 Asia — the washout stops at the water's edge
4 Oil — Brent above $110, the ETFs close at 52-week highs
5 The defensive bid — staples +3.3% on a red day
6 Inside the Rubin 100 — the layer map of a targeted de-rating
7 The divide — cloud, cyber and the AI users untouched while hyperscalers and chips sold
8 Gold — the notable weakness: sold 2.6% on a risk-off day, near its 52-week low
9 Calendar — flash PMIs, AXP and SLB today; the big spenders land next week
10 Outside View — Dan Niles

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On the tape

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