Global shares are mixed as investors await central bank rate decisions
[October 27, 2026] By
ELAINE LAI
HONG KONG (AP) — World stocks were mixed Tuesday ahead of major
corporate earnings reports and central-bank decisions.
In early European trading, Germany’s DAX slipped 0.1% to 25,373.71,
while the CAC 40 in Paris dropped 0.3% to 7,824.83. Britain’s FTSE 100
fell 1% to 10,664.58.
The future for the S&P 500 lost 0.1%, while that for the Dow Jones
Industrial Average was little changed.
Asian shares mostly gained as benchmarks in Tokyo and Seoul were lifted
by buying of AI-related stocks.
South Korea’s Kospi briefly gained more than 4% and closed 3.1% higher,
at 5,638.34. Computer chipmaker SK Hynix rallied 5.2% and Samsung
Electronics gained 4.2%.
SK Hynix is set to release its third-quarter earnings Wednesday, a day
before rival Samsung Electronics reports its results. Samsung has
estimated its operating profit for the last quarter will be up nearly
eight-fold from a year earlier.
Strong global demand for semiconductors is driving strong growth, and
the South Korean economy expanded at a better-than-expected 3.4% annual
rate in July-September, according to data released Tuesday.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 added 1.7% to 63,268.37. Testing equipment maker
Advantest jumped 9.6% and OpenAI investor SoftBank Group climbed 5%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gave up early gains, slipping 0.7% to 23,041.32,
while the Shanghai Composite dropped 1.3% to 3,648.30.
Traders were watching for any major announcements from a closed-door
meeting in Beijing of top leaders of China’s ruling Communist Party.
Taiwan’s Taiex rose 0.1%. India’s Sensex slipped 0.5%.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 advanced 0.5% to 8,852.10.
On Monday, the S&P 500 rose 0.7% and more than recovered its losses from
last week, pulling within 1.8% of its all-time high set earlier this
month. The Dow added 0.3%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.8%.
The strongest lift for the market came from Nvidia, which rose 2.4%.
That helped the chip company recover some of its drop from three
straight losing weeks, its longest such streak since June.
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A dealer watches computer monitors at a dealing room of Hana Bank in
Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
 But stocks elsewhere in the
artificial-intelligence industry remained unsettled. They’ve been
swerving on worries about whether their industry’s boom is under
threat because of how expensive it’s become for companies to borrow
money to build data centers and buy more AI chips.
Anthropic, one of the key players of the AI boom, gave details
Monday about how much money it’s losing as it prepares to sell its
stock on the publicly traded U.S. market for the first time.
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company that also runs the xAI business,
had similar swings after it announced a roughly $40 billion deal
with an entity managed by Apollo Global Management to lease AI
computing power.
Profit reports from huge tech companies this week could offer more
details about how spending on AI is going, and whether it’s
producing the profits and productivity that proponents promised.
Alphabet and Microsoft will report their latest quarterly results on
Wednesday, with Amazon to follow on Thursday.
The Fed last month hiked the fed funds rate for the first time in
three years in hopes of slowing inflation, which has remained much
higher than anyone would like.
In other dealings Tuesday, Brent crude oil, the international
standard, rose 0.7% to $111.54 a barrel. U.S. benchmark crude gained
0.7%, to $102.47 per barrel.
The dollar rose to 157.75 Japanese yen from 157.50 yen. The euro
slipped to $1.1154 from $1.1176.
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