GS Blekos Marketcolour + ASML BCP BNP RIO

GS Blekos - Marketcolour + ASML / BCP / BNP / RIO 14 Oct 2026 Ioannis Blekos · Goldman Sachs · FICC & Equities 14 Oct 2026

Good Morning, US equities finished Tuesday lower: SPX -2bps to 7805 (6/11 sectors -ve, Healthcare -1.33%, Financials -0.41%, Energy +1.74%), NDX -31bp

US equities finished Tuesday lower: SPX -2bps to 7805 (6/11 sectors -ve, Healthcare -1.33%, Financials -0.41%, Energy +1.74%), NDX -31bps to 30,569 (Semis 5th down day in a row, memory -4%), RTY -40bps to 2783. GS Cycs v Defs Pair has traded lower on 6 of 7 sessions. Big banks kicked off Q3 earnings season results were mixed, with several ending in the red: JPM -86bps missed on profit and revenue, but posted positive NII guidance, WFC -3.1% beat on EPS and missed on revenue, and C -5.6% lagged after cautious commentary. In Europe, the Semis space (GSSBSEMI -3.7%) tracked weakness in Asia (KOSPI finished -5.5%, NKY -1.8%) while Value (GSPEVALU +90bps) and Size (GSP3SIZE +40bps) outperformed.

Interesting / Wells Fargo on the call: “Wages and employment remain strong and are largely keeping pace with inflation, which supports current consumer activity levels. “ “Consumer spending remains strong, with debit card spending up 8% and credit card spending up 12% year-over-year” “Growth in card spending was broad-based across categories.” “Consumer credit remains strong, with charge-off ratios down from both the prior quarter and the prior year, and early-stage delinquencies at historically low levels.” “Lower-income households remain sensitive to financing costs” “High-income households continue to benefit from strong asset prices and stable labor income”

CPI Pre: We expect a 0.24% increase in September core CPI (vs. +0.2% consensus), corresponding to a year-over-year rate of +2.46% (vs. +2.5% consensus). We expect a 0.59% increase in headline CPI (vs. +0.6% consensus), reflecting higher energy prices. Our forecast is consistent with a slightly smaller 0.20% increase in core PCE in September.

Buybacks: Our desk corporate repurchase activity remained light last week as corporates remained largely sidelined in pre-earnings blackout. Our desk flows settled at 0.8X vs 2025 YTD ADTV and 0.8x vs 2024 YTD ADTV (in line with prior week run rates), with execution primarily concentrated across Financials, Health Care, and Energy sectors.

Flow Colour: CTA positioning in US equities is still just in the 27th percentile on a 1y and 54th percentile on a 5y lookback. CTAs have sold dramatically in Russell stocks and are the shortest they have been in the index since 2023. US L/S Gross leverage rose +3.8 pts to 213% (53rd percentile one-year), while US L/S Net leverage increased modestly for the first time in four weeks by +0.5 pts to 46.9% (2nd percentile one-

year). MF Year end: - $2.306 trillion worth of active fund assets and 678 active funds – and $1.736 trillion worth of passive fund assets and the corresponding 81 funds essentially have October as YE.

AI & Inflation: In short, the impact of AI demand on inflation is meaningful but moderate, still comes in large part from mismeasurement, and is likely near its peak. We estimate that AI price pressures are currently boosting core PCE inflation by about 45bp, of which about half reflects a genuine impact rather than mismeasurement, and we expect this to peak at 50bp by end-2026 before declining to 10bp by end- 2027.

ASML (TY Sean): Beat (look at the GM beat & this is before the recent price increases) and raise but what the market will like is it looking for further ways to raise its build capacity. Last quarter it gave guidance for FY27 low-NA EUV capacity of roughly 85 tools (with buy-side more like 90) and confirm potential capacity of more than 110 tools by 2028. Now it’s saying that “it's becoming very clear that 30% in 2027, 30% in 2028 will not allow us to meet our customer demand. So we have to do more and we are looking basically at ways, especially in 2028 and beyond, to further extend our capacity.” Gross margin in Q3 beat (57.4%) ahead of a price increase and its now guiding Q4 higher at 57% (this was an issue yesterday at AMAT as there was some disappointment on their gross margin guide).

BCP: UPGRADE to Buy (PT EUR1.35…