Fed rates, Jersey Mike’s IPO, and more: Week ahead

This week is likely to be an absolute doozy for the stock market. The Federal Reserve is announcing its interest rate decisions, a bunch of massive companies are announcing earnings, and other companies are going public.

This could easily be one of the biggest weeks of the year for the market. We all hope that the party continues, but either way, how things pan out this week will likely be our best indicators for what will happen in the back half of 2026. Let’s get into it.

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What you need to know is that investors pay close attention to these meetings. They will Sherlock Holmes every word this guy says, and use that to make predictions about the market.

What’s important to understand is that the Federal Reserve really only does one of two things. They either keep interest rates high in order to slow down inflation, or they reduce rates to support economic growth. Even if they announce that rates will remain unchanged for now, they may signal that they could go up or down in the future. Investors react to these signals, and in turn the stock market responds.

But the Fed’s decision on Wednesday isn’t the only factor at play. Additionally, some of the largest tech companies in the world will be announcing earnings this week.

Microsoft and Meta are announcing earnings on Wednesday, followed by Apple and Amazon on Thursday. These reports are going to give investors insight into whether massive AI spend has paid off. Factor in interest rate decisions, and this is going to be the most important week for the stock market in a long time.

What’s important to keep in mind here is that this isn’t some founder success IPO story. Everyone’s favorite demon-corp, Blackstone (the ones who keep buying your parents’ homes), acquired Jersey Mike’s in late 2024.

Make no mistake, this is Blackstone’s attempt to have exit options. This will without a doubt affect the outcome of the IPO. Of course they’re going to have a lockup period, but everyone and their mother is going to know that in the near future they could very easily dump shares. When you layer on the fact that many other retail IPOs have performed poorly in 2026, we could see major swings in the share price following their public offering.

Now the Jersey Mike’s IPO is a sure thing, but let’s get into some other potential IPOs that are more up in the air. According to our prediction markets, Anthropic, Oura, and Discord all have the possibility of going public in 2026.

Starting with Anthropic, this one is fairly obvious. They’ve had a meteoric rise in the commercial AI space, growing their annualized revenue from about $1B at the start of 2025 to reportedly $47B in May of 2026. These numbers are bonkers, and considering the company has confidentially filed IPO paperwork, many are highly anticipating an announcement soon.

It’s certainly not without risk; AI valuations are insanely high, and if they can’t maintain revenue numbers to match a crazy IPO valuation, they could get beat up in the long run.

Of the next two companies on our list, Oura and Discord, Oura is the next most likely candidate for a 2026 IPO. Health tech and longevity are very hot right now (thanks, Bryan Johnson). The wearable market is much healthier today than it was in 2024, and Oura is slotted nicely as a premium subscription revenue-generating wearable. While the conditions are favorable, it may make sense for them to rush towards an IPO.

In terms of negatives, they have to battle the unfortunate fact that hardware companies tend to get judged much harder than software companies during an IPO. Everyone has heard the saying that “Hardware is Hard,” and this can scare investors. You can’t get away with nearly as much, so if consumer spending decreases this fall, they may have to push the IPO out.

Lastly, we have Discord. This one really is a toss-up. There’s no doubt market observers have continued to include it in the list of potential 2026 IPOs. They have hundreds of millions of users, increasing monetization/subscriptions, and are starting to scale advertising revenue. This is sweet on paper, but the truth is that Discord’s management has proven themselves to be comfortable staying private. Unlike a company like Anthropic, they don’t have to compete in an AI race or battle massive hardware costs. They have plenty of funding and aren’t likely to feel the same pressure that other companies would.

We’d recommend watching this one closely. If their advertising revenue begins to surge, or investors push for liquidity, their odds of going public could drastically increase before the end of 2026.

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