Monday, October 26th, 2026
The big news out 25 minutes before Monday’s opening bell, Claude AI parent Anthropic has filed for its public Initial Public Offering (IPO). The San Francisco-based company will trade under the ticker ANT on the Nasdaq, and the IPO will be underwritten by Goldman Sachs GS and Morgan Stanley MS. No valuation or offering size is yet available in the company’s first S1, but estimates are around $1.5 trillion in market cap — perhaps as high as $2 trillion.
The key for the company — as well as for other agentic AI companies like OpenAI, which is also expected to go public at some point — is how they will navigate the hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure commitments, and whether the AI buildout will be slowing. The amount of compute looks to bring impressive margin expansion for the company, as we’ve seen in the years the company has remained private.
What to Expect from the Trading Week: PCE, Mag 7 Earnings
Our market headlines may be dominated by Anthropic news this week, but otherwise the biggest news is likely to be the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) report out on Thursday. This had been routinely cited as the most important inflation metric for the Fed, and expectations are for higher inflation levels as of September: +3.7% on headline and +3.1% on core (minus food and energy expenditures), above the +3.4% and +3.0%, respectively, from the prior week.
Speaking of the Fed, Wednesday afternoon will also give us a new decision on interest rate policy from its two-day Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting. Expectations are for no move following recent economic data, holding at a range of +3.75-4.00% after September’s 25 basis-point (bps) hike. (Odds are much higher for another raise by 25 bps in the final FOMC meeting of the year, in December.)
Three “Mag 7” companies will be reporting this week, as well: Microsoft MSFT and Alphabet GOOGL on Wednesday after the close, and Amazon AMZN Thursday afternoon. While Microsoft and Amazon currently carry Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) ratings, Alphabet is a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at this hour. All expect growth on both top and bottom lines, with most of these (all but Amazon’s earnings growth) expected in double digits.
Q3 Earnings at a Glance: VZ, ARLP
Ahead of the opening trading session for the week, Verizon VZ beat bottom-line estimates by 4 cents to $1.31 per share, on slightly weaker-than-expected $34.31 billion in revenues, -1.43% from the Zacks consensus. The telecom giant raised future guidance, but analysts are considering whether SpaceX’s (SPCX) will be competing in Verizon’s area before long. Shares are down -0.9% but still up +9% year to date. For more on VZ’s earnings, click here. https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/3014551/verizon-communications-vz-q3-earnings-surpass-estimates
Coal energy provider Alliance Resource Partners ARLP posted a strong +34% positive earnings surprise, to $1.10 per share from expectations for $0.82 in the quarter. Revenues of $603.0 million easily beat the $588.8 million projected. Coal grew +7.9% quarter over quarter, +13.1% year over year. Oil and gas revenues came in at record levels, following recent acquisitions in the space.
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