Dow -1.23% as Brent hits $116.72; AT&T -8% on SpaceX; Verizon today
Oil's highest settlement since April took the Dow down 1.23%; 70 of our 100 names fell. SpaceX tower talks cost AT&T and T-Mobile 8%. Verizon before the open.
Friday undid Thursday. The Dow fell 1.23% as Brent settled at $116.72, its highest since April, the consumer staples and telecoms that caught Thursday’s money gave it back, and 70 of the 100 stocks and funds we track fell, while the chipmakers that lost 8% on Thursday edged higher. The two stories with names on them were a Bloomberg report that SpaceX wants access to at least 80,000 US cell sites, which cost AT&T and T-Mobile about 8% each and lifted the tower owners, and a 7% to 8% jump across cybersecurity. Overnight, oil gave back about 2% on reports of Qatari mediation in Tehran, Tokyo fell for a third day, US futures are higher, Verizon reports before the open and the Fed decides on Wednesday.
Friday: oil at a six-month high, and the rotation reversed
The Dow fell 652.82 points, or 1.23%, to 52,215.16, the S&P 500 0.52% to 7,623.68 and the Nasdaq Composite 0.21% to 25,955.34, with the Russell 2000 down 0.29% at 2,775.90, per CNBC and CappNotes’ closing figures. For the week the S&P 500 lost 0.5%, the Nasdaq posted its second straight weekly loss and the Dow its third straight weekly gain. The VIX rose 2.21% to 19.45 and the 10-year Treasury yield rose 5 basis points to 4.999%, back at the 5% line it had closed below on Thursday for the first time in a month; the long-bond fund TLT fell 0.49% to $81.34 and the gold fund GLD 0.65% to $366.61, with gold futures down about 1.3% near $4,008 an ounce. In our 100, the S&P 500 fund SPY fell 0.52% to $759.97, the Dow fund DIA 1.24% to $521.37, the small-cap fund IWM 0.33% and the Nasdaq-100 fund QQQ 0.01% to $704.40, within seven cents of Thursday’s close. 70 of the 100 stocks and funds we track fell.
Oil drove the index. December WTI settled up 3.80% at $103.27 and Brent up 3.14% at $116.72, its highest settlement since April 29, on fears of renewed US-Iran fighting after Thursday’s tanker attacks in the Strait of Hormuz. Energy was the only sector that clearly rose, up 2.60%; the energy fund XLE rose 2.60% to $69.33, Exxon Mobil (XOM) 2.79% to $183.21 from $178.23 and Chevron (CVX) 2.88% to $233.21 from $226.68, and SLB, not in our 100, rose 7.08% after adjusted earnings of $0.64 a share beat $0.62 and the company pointed to a stronger 2027. The movers feed’s gainers list was heavy with offshore services: Noble (NE) +8.58%, Tidewater (TDW) +7.93%, Hornbeck Offshore (HOS) +7.75%, Oceaneering (OII) +7.27%, Expro (XPRO) +8.17% and Helix (HLX) +8.07%.
Thursday’s winners were Friday’s losers, by sector. Consumer staples fell 1.92%, the worst sector: Procter & Gamble (PG) fell 2.76% to $161.02 from $165.59 after Thursday’s 5.58% post-earnings gain, Coca-Cola (KO) 2.76% to $92.71, PepsiCo (PEP) 2.20%, Altria (MO) 2.31% and Walmart (WMT) 1.02%. Health care fell 1.11%: Eli Lilly (LLY) 2.54% to $1,273.46, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) 1.42%, UnitedHealth (UNH) 1.62% and Merck (MRK) 1.34%. Home Depot (HD) fell 2.41% to $319.83 after Thursday’s 4.33% gain, again with no news of its own we could find. Industrials fell 1.27%, with GE Aerospace (GE) down 2.69% to $285.64, Caterpillar (CAT) 2.42% to $687.00 ahead of its Thursday report and RTX 1.90%, and financials 1.32%: Morgan Stanley (MS) fell 2.44%, Goldman Sachs (GS) 1.75%, JPMorgan (JPM) 1.47%, BlackRock (BLK) 1.67%, Visa (V) 1.55% and Mastercard (MA) 1.52%. The brokers and fintechs fell further: Coinbase (COIN) 2.74% to $164.45, Robinhood (HOOD) 1.56%, Block (XYZ) 3.24%, Affirm (AFRM) 3.20% and Uber (UBER) 3.43% to $66.70.
Technology was the other sector in the green, up 0.49%, because the chipmakers bounced. Micron (MU) rose 2.46% to $877.55 from $856.49, AMD (AMD) 1.74% to $516.79, Texas Instruments (TXN) 1.86% to $284.69, Qualcomm (QCOM) 1.78%, Intel (INTC) 1.72% to $86.96 on 71.8 million shares, Applied Materials (AMAT) 0.44%, Arm (ARM) 0.11%, and Nvidia (NVDA) fell 0.59% to $210.96 with Broadcom (AVGO) down 0.48%; the technology fund XLK rose 0.49% to $183.23. Microsoft (MSFT) rose 0.66% to $524.51, IBM (IBM) 0.58% and Cisco (CSCO) 1.53%, while Alphabet (GOOGL) fell 1.24% to $320.21, Meta (META) 0.96% to $642.62 after Thursday’s 6.98% drop, Amazon (AMZN) 0.95% to $248.00 and Tesla (TSLA) 0.63% to $372.22. A half-point recovery after an 8% fall is a pause, not a reversal, and Monday’s session in Tokyo and Seoul, below, says the selling in chips is not finished abroad.
SpaceX and the carriers: 80,000 towers, two 8% falls, and the owners of the towers
AT&T (T) fell 7.96% to $20.93 from $22.74 on 99.7 million shares and T-Mobile (TMUS) 7.71% to $146.54 from $158.79, after Bloomberg reported that SpaceX is in talks for access to at least 80,000 US cell sites, which analysts read as a step toward a fourth nationwide carrier, per CNBC, 24/7 Wall St. and Invezz. Verizon (VZ) fell 1.19% to $44.66 from $45.20 on 51.1 million shares, after opening at $43.60, 3.5% below Thursday’s close, and recovering through the session; it reports before today’s open, covered below. This is the second telecom hit of the month: on October 9, the day after SpaceX’s spectrum purchase, Verizon fell 8.75%, T-Mobile 13.27% and AT&T 9.81%, and Thursday’s bounce in all three is gone. AT&T had beaten estimates and raised its full-year outlook on Wednesday, so this is a valuation call on competition, not a quarter: Bernstein cut the stock to Market Perform on Friday, citing Starlink competition, softer pricing and seasonal fourth-quarter headwinds, per Trefis and Timothy Sykes’ coverage.
The tower owners were on the other side of the same report. American Tower (AMT) rose 4.08% to $188.97 from $181.57, but the close understates the day: it opened at $200.72, 10.5% above Thursday’s close, touched $202.50 and gave back more than half of the gain. Crown Castle (CCI), not in our 100, rose 9.06% per CappNotes, with other outlets quoting 11.6% to 12%, and SBA Communications (SBAC) about 4.6%, per Reuters-sourced coverage. Citi’s read, per Yahoo Finance, is that the carriers face valuation pressure while the tower operators stand to gain either way, since a fourth carrier is a new tenant. The caveat is that nothing is confirmed: Bloomberg’s sources are unnamed, SpaceX has not commented, and Crown Castle’s CEO said only “you can assume that we’re talking to all parties” on the company’s call. American Tower reports on Tuesday at 7:00 a.m. ET, per its September 29 notice, so the first management comment from a tower owner on the record is a day away.
Cybersecurity: a 7% to 8% day on a PHP flaw and a budget survey
Four of the five biggest gains in our 100 were security companies. CrowdStrike (CRWD) rose 8.25% to $257.57 from $237.94 on 13.4 million shares, Cloudflare (NET) 7.29% to $325.73 from $303.61, Palo Alto Networks (PANW) 7.22% to $380.55 from $354.92, and Zscaler (ZS), in the movers feed, 7.35% to $255.32, with SailPoint (SAIL) up 8.60% and Netskope (NTSK) 9.24% there too. Two things are being cited. CappNotes says US security agencies warned of critical PHP vulnerabilities, following the PHP Foundation’s disclosure on Wednesday of flaws found with AI’s help and Palo Alto CEO Nikesh Arora’s warning that more are coming; TradingKey reports the flaw disrupted European government websites and that Deutsche Bank named CrowdStrike and Palo Alto as likely beneficiaries. Separately, 24/7 Wall St. and Yahoo Finance report an Evercore ISI survey of channel partners showing security budgets strengthening, which lifted Okta about 5% as well.
The data-infrastructure names that fell with the AI trade on Thursday went with security on Friday: Datadog (DDOG) rose 4.62% to $269.65 from $257.75 after Thursday’s 5.62% fall, Snowflake (SNOW) 3.65% to $325.43, MongoDB (MDB) 2.44% to $371.09 after its 7.30% fall, and ServiceNow (NOW) 1.25%, while Adobe (ADBE) gave back 2.49% of Thursday’s 6.07% gain, Salesforce (CRM) fell 0.69% and Palantir (PLTR) rose 0.29%. Worth holding in mind: security software spending is the part of the enterprise budget that an AI-found vulnerability makes larger, which is the opposite of the “AI eats software” reading that has weighed on the group this month, and Friday’s buyers took the first side.
American Express, Robert Half and the other reports
American Express (AXP) fell 3.67% to $313.22 from $325.17 on 4.1 million shares despite a beat and a raise. Adjusted earnings were $4.68 a share, 13% higher than a year earlier, where the estimates ranged between $4.47 and $4.58 depending on the survey, on revenue of $20.06 billion, up 9% and a record, but a hair under the $20.13 billion Zacks consensus, per the company’s release, Yahoo Finance and Investing.com. Reported earnings of $5.42 included a $982 million pre-tax gain on the sale of its Global Business Travel stake and a $336 million restructuring charge for cutting about 5% of the workforce; legal reserves added $0.51 a share, including a reserve for an OCC civil money penalty. The company raised full-year reported earnings guidance to $18.30 to $18.60 a share and set adjusted guidance at $17.60 to $17.90. The stock fell 4.3% on its last beat in July too, and Friday’s tape, with financials down 1.32%, did not help.
Robert Half (RHI) topped the movers feed, up 21.80% to $45.90, after net income of $50 million, or $0.49 a share, on revenue of $1.359 billion, against $0.43 and $1.354 billion a year earlier, per its 8-K; CappNotes notes its Talent Solutions unit returned to growth. Instacart’s parent Maplebear (CART) rose 9.24% to $56.46 and GrafTech (EAF) 13.50%, Gentherm (THRM) 9.50% and Bandwidth (BAND) 9.14%, none with a story we could confirm, so they stay as data. Reddit (RDDT) fell 4.00% to $144.25 and Netflix (NFLX) 1.79% to $65.85, giving back part of Thursday’s recovery from its two-year low. Nike (NKE) fell 2.66% to $37.30 on 25.9 million shares with no report of its own.
Overnight: oil gives back 2%, Tokyo’s third fall, Brazil’s runoff, futures up
Brent is down about 2% this morning. Goodreturns, citing Trading Economics and Reuters, has Brent at $114.30, down 2.07%, and WTI at $100.90, down 2.29%, after Qatari mediators were in Tehran on Sunday working to de-escalate tensions with the United States, and some profit-taking after Brent’s gain of about 6% last week; Trading Economics notes President Trump said he would soon decide whether to pursue a deal with Tehran or restart military operations, which is why the price is still near $115 rather than lower. CNBC’s Sunday-evening figures had Brent down about 2.2% near $114.52 and WTI near $101.
Asia was mixed and the chip selling continued. The Nikkei 225 fell 0.80% to 62,189.65, its third straight decline and its lowest close since late July, with Advantest and Tokyo Electron the drags and energy shares up, Inpex 4.90%, per IBTimes and Reuters-sourced coverage. The Kospi opened 0.92% lower at 5,499.05 and closed below 5,500, with Samsung Electronics down 1.1% and SK Hynix higher, per TradingKey and Yonhap-sourced reports; we are not quoting a Kospi close because the intraday figures we found disagree. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.5% to 23,206.82 and the Shanghai Composite 0.2% to 3,697.52, per the AP, as China’s Fifth Plenum opens today and runs through Thursday. India’s Nifty fell on oil, per Reuters. In Brazil, President Lula was re-elected in Sunday’s runoff, and Reuters reports investors expect Brazilian stocks and the real to fall when trading opens. In Europe on Friday the DAX fell 0.8%, the FTSE 100 0.3% and the Stoxx 600 0.3%, per ABC’s market snapshot.
US futures were higher on Sunday evening: Dow futures up 0.3%, S&P 500 futures 0.4% and Nasdaq-100 futures 0.6%, per CNBC; a later reading via ABC had S&P 500 futures up 0.2%, Dow 0.3% and Nasdaq 0.1%, so the gain is modest and fading. The after-hours feed shows none of Friday’s movers extending: AT&T $20.97 after hours, T-Mobile $146.96, CrowdStrike $258.40, Palo Alto $382.00, Exxon $183.28, American Tower $189.27 and Microsoft $524.91, each within 1% of its close.
What to watch today
- Before the open: Verizon (VZ), consensus earnings of $1.27 a share, up from $1.21 a year ago, on revenue of about $34.8 billion, with postpaid phone net additions the number that matters after the SpaceX report; its last quarter was $1.30 and full-year guidance is $4.99 to $5.04, per Barchart, Hudson Labs and 24/7 Wall St. Also Cemex (CX), Bank of Hawaii (BOH) and MakeMyTrip (MMYT), per Market Chameleon and eOption.
- Data: Chicago Fed National Activity Index for September at 8:30 a.m. ET; Dallas Fed Texas Manufacturing Outlook for October at 10:30 a.m.; Treasury auctions at 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m., per CappNotes. The Fed is in blackout before Wednesday.
- After the close: Cadence Design Systems (CDNS), Nucor (NUE), Welltower (WELL), Public Storage (PSA), Celestica (CLS), Hartford (HIG), Rambus (RMBS) and Amkor (AMKR), per CappNotes and Earnings Whispers, which counts 55 reports today, 13 before the open and 42 after.
- The opens: AT&T, T-Mobile and American Tower after the SpaceX report and flat after-hours quotes; the cybersecurity names for follow-through; American Express after its 3.67% fall; the chipmakers after Tokyo’s and Seoul’s third down day.
- Oil and the Gulf: Brent near $114 after the $116.72 settlement, with the Qatari mediation and the pending US decision on Iran as the live headlines; the 10-year at 4.999%.
- This week: the FOMC decision Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. ET with the funds rate at 3.75% to 4.00%; Reuters polled 100 economists and 94 expect a hold, and CME pricing puts a hike near 10%, per Newsquawk. The Bank of Canada also decides Wednesday, the ECB Thursday and the Bank of Japan Friday. Third-quarter GDP, consensus 3.0% annualized against 2.2% in the second quarter, and September PCE, consensus 0.5% headline and 0.3% core on the month, both land Thursday at 8:30 a.m. American Tower reports Tuesday at 7:00 a.m.; Microsoft and Alphabet are listed for Wednesday and Amazon and Intel for Thursday after the close, per TipRanks, with Intel’s date confirmed by the company; Caterpillar is Thursday; Boeing reports this week, per Yahoo Finance, on a date we have not confirmed.
Not financial advice. iTrading Buddy summarizes publicly available market data and news; every figure above is sourced from the reporting available before the US open on the date shown. Verify anything you act on.