The Opener, October 26, 2026

The volatility that closed out last session, an oil spike on Hormuz tensions colliding with jittery credit markets, has carried straight into premarket trading, but the sharpest move overnight has nothing to do with the Gulf. Brazil's Ibovespa-linked ETF, EWZ, is down 22.5% after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the presidential runoff with 51% of the vote over Flávio Bolsonaro, and the shock is rippling across the region: the Latin America 40 ETF, ILF, is off 9.0%, and Mercado Libre has dropped 8.1% to $1,664.

The Middle East backdrop remains tense even as oil itself cools slightly. Brent, which touched a five-month high over the weekend, slipped about 1% to roughly $115.60 a barrel, while WTI eased near $102. The retreat comes despite the US moving a third aircraft carrier strike group and 10,000 additional personnel toward the Persian Gulf, and fresh reporting that Iran's blockade-driven downturn is worsening, with rice prices up more than 60% and beef over 150% since the war began. Trump said on Truth Social that Iran "now has No Navy, No Air Force" and that inflation there has hit 301%. HSBC, meanwhile, cut global equities to neutral from max overweight and shifted oil to outright overweight, trimming its gold position.

Fair Isaac extended its slide into the new session, now down 5.5%, building on its after-hours drop from Thursday's close. Moderna is down 6.3% premarket. On the upside, Ross Stores is up 3.6%, Steel Dynamics up 3.4%, Sherwin-Williams up 2.9%, SK hynix up 2.6% and the short-term corporate bond ETF VCSH up 2.3%, a mix that suggests some rotation back into defensives and credit even as risk assets sell off elsewhere.

European markets are mostly higher, with Germany's Ifo business climate index topping expectations at 90.2, while France's bond yields eased slightly after Moody's held its sovereign rating. Elsewhere, SpaceX shares rose 1.2% premarket after Elon Musk said the company closed $40 billion in debt financing for GPUs, a reminder that the AI-financing questions from Friday's session are still very much alive alongside the geopolitical and electoral shocks driving the morning's biggest moves.