> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.sharespective.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Tower Power - URL: https://www.sharespective.com/sharespective-2026-10-24/ - Published: 2026-10-23T21:15:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T21:14:59.000Z - Description: Brent crude closed at US$116.72, its highest since April, as attacks spread across Saudi Arabia. - Author: Shaun Botha - Tags: Daily | ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/02/71/0271df32-cec6-421f-9f13-b06ab90e54c1/content/images/2026/08/mark-light-3.png) | SharespectiveWall Street, before morning tea | Daily newsletterSat 24 Oct 2026 | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------- | | ![Today's edition](https://storage.ghost.io/c/02/71/0271df32-cec6-421f-9f13-b06ab90e54c1/content/images/2026/08/kicker-1.png)Tower Power**Plus:** Brent crude closed at US$116.72, its highest since April, as attacks spread across Saudi Arabia. | | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | **Good morning, and welcome to Saturday.** The Dow fell 652.82 points on Friday, or 1.23%, to 52,215.16\. The S&P 500 lost 0.52% and the NASDAQ Composite slipped 0.21%, leaving both with a second straight weekly loss. The phone companies had the worst of it. T-Mobile and AT&T each fell almost 8% after a report that SpaceX wants towers of its own. Oil jumped more than 3%, and cybersecurity stocks rallied on a broker's survey. In company news, American Express fell 3.68% after announcing it will cut about 5% of its workforce, roughly 3,500 jobs. Elsewhere, Bloom Energy dropped 11.24% despite beating forecasts, as investors worried about its cash flow. Finally, Deckers fell 4.91% because the maker of Hoka and Ugg cut its full-year sales forecast. Hold the line, please. ### Market snapshot | S&P 5007,623.68**▼ 0.52%** | ​ | NASDAQ25,955.34**▼ 0.21%** | ​ | NZX 5013,733.93**▼ 0.09%** | | -------------------------- | - | ---------------------------- | - | ------------------------------- | | ​ | | | | | | ASX 2008,795.20**▲ 0.02%** | ​ | T-MobileUS$146.54**▼ 7.71%** | ​ | CrowdStrikeUS$257.57**▲ 8.25%** | US index levels are Friday 23 October's closes in New York. The NZX 50 and ASX 200 are Friday's local closes, taken before Wall Street opened. T-Mobile and CrowdStrike show Friday's closing price and that session's move. | ​ | TELECOM | | - | ------- | ## T-Mobile and AT&T fell almost 8% after a report that SpaceX wants 80,000 cell sites T-Mobile closed Friday at US$146.54, down 7.71%. AT&T fell 7.96% to US$20.93, and Verizon lost 1.19%. **SpaceX wants to become America's fourth phone company.** Bloomberg reported on Thursday that it is in talks for access to at least 80,000 US cell sites. That is about half the country's purpose-built towers, and Crown Castle is one of the owners at the table. The tower owners had a very good day. Crown Castle rose 9.06% to US$85.97, and American Tower gained 4.08%. Crown Castle collects most of its rent from AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, so a fourth big tenant would be new money. This builds on a deal from earlier in the month. SpaceX agreed to pay US$8 billion for Grain Management's 800MHz licences, low-frequency airwaves that travel a long way and get through walls. The purchase still needs approval from the Federal Communications Commission. Towers would fix the weak spot in a satellite network. Verizon chief executive Dan Schulman has argued that physics stops satellites competing well in cities and suburbs. Equipment on the ground gets round that. | Not so fasttalks can end without a signed lease, as Truist analyst Matthew Niknam pointed out on Friday. Dish signed long-term tower leases for its own network, and its parent sold most of that spectrum in 2025\. I'd want to see signed contracts before treating Friday's falls as permanent. T-Mobile reports on Wednesday in New York. | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | ​ | ENERGY | | - | ------ | ## Brent crude closed at US$116.72, its highest since April, as attacks spread across Saudi Arabia Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, rose 3.14% on Friday to settle at US$116.72 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate, the American benchmark, gained 3.82% to US$103.27. **The fighting is getting closer to the oil.** Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are backed by Iran, have carried out a run of attacks across Saudi Arabia. A drone strike on the Shaybah oil field on Wednesday killed two people, according to Saudi state media. Traders have a second worry. The New York Times reported that the US and Israel have plans for fresh strikes on Iran after the US midterm elections. Brent rose 6.2% over the week, its third weekly gain in a row. Energy was the best of the S&P 500's 11 sectors on Friday, up 2.26%. ExxonMobil rose 2.79% to US$183.21\. SLB, which sells drilling services to oil producers, jumped 7.08% after beating profit forecasts and pointing to a recovery in Middle East work. The fuel buyers paid for it. Delta Air Lines fell 3.13% to US$76.78, and United and American Airlines fell with it. | The bigger picturedearer oil helps a handful of producers and costs almost everyone else. On Thursday, Procter & Gamble said its cost forecast assumes Brent at US$100\. Our read is that the longer Brent stays above US$110, the more company forecasts built on cheaper oil will need redoing. | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | ​ | CYBERSECURITY | | - | ------------- | ## CrowdStrike rose 8.25% after a survey found companies spending more on security CrowdStrike closed Friday at US$257.57, up 8.25%. Palo Alto Networks and SailPoint both rose more than 5%. **So what did the survey say?** Every quarter, the broker Evercore ISI asks the firms that resell security software how business is going. This time they reported budgets firming into the end of the year, with healthy pipelines and no sign of demand dropping off. The money is going to identity protection, data and AI security, and cloud systems. Evercore named CrowdStrike and Palo Alto as the leading beneficiaries of AI-driven security spending. A fresh scare helped. On 21 October, two serious flaws were disclosed in PHP, a programming language used by roughly 70% of websites. The flaws, nicknamed PHP2Shell, could let an attacker run their own code on a vulnerable server. Evercore flagged the flaws as a reason for companies to spend more. Research from VulnCheck finds that AI has helped double the number of software vulnerabilities discovered in 2026. | Food for thoughtAI is helping attackers find holes faster, and companies are paying for AI to close them. A reseller survey is a forecast of that spending. The proof comes when CrowdStrike reports its own quarter, and the number to watch then is how fast new business is growing. | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ### Newsworthy numbers | ​ | ​ | ​ | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | - | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | US$68.3 billionwhat Americans spent on food and treats for their pets in 2025, according to the American Pet Products Association. | ​ | 5.5%the share of Switzerland's glacier ice that melted in the year to 30 September, the second-biggest loss on record. Swiss glaciers have lost nearly a fifth of their ice since 2021. | | ​ | | | | ​ | ​ | ​ | | 0.41%how much the Dow rose over the week, Friday's fall included. The S&P 500 lost 0.47% and the NASDAQ Composite 0.71%. | ​ | 1,432 kgthe weight of Ron Wallace's pumpkin, now confirmed by Guinness World Records as the heaviest ever grown. The Rhode Island grower beat a record that had stood for just one week. | ### Worth a read | ​ | | | -- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 01 | **[Explaining the PIE advantage](https://www.interest.co.nz/personal-finance/140741/saving-through-pie-structure-can-give-your-after-tax-earnings-boost-we-have?ref=sharespective.com)** — David Chaston on why savers on a high tax rate may be better off in a PIE, which caps tax at 28%. For someone on 33%, a 4.00% PIE term deposit matches an ordinary one paying 4.29%. | | ​ | | | 02 | **[The delicate palates of pet food taste testers](https://thehustle.co/news/the-delicate-palates-of-pet-food-taste-testers?ref=sharespective.com)** — Danny Jensen on the science of making pets eat what owners buy. Royal Canin's research centre in France checks what dogs and cats prefer, and their stool quality too. | | ​ | | | 03 | **[Big Tech's thirst for water is sparking a global resistance](https://restofworld.org/2026/ai-datacenters-water-resistance-global/?ref=sharespective.com)** — Paris Marx on the towns in Chile, Uruguay and Brazil pushing back against thirsty data centres. One Google project in Chile planned to draw 169 litres a second. | | ​ | | | 04 | **[Nearly 3,000 Exploding Stars Challenge Our Understanding of the Universe](https://sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261021231244.htm?ref=sharespective.com)** — Ryan Camilleri and Tamara Davis at the University of Queensland combined 2,884 supernovae from three decades of observing. The data hints that dark energy changes over time. | | ​ | | | 05 | **[The Dominican Baseball Factory](https://longreads.com/2026/10/22/dominican-republic-major-league-baseball-investigation/?ref=sharespective.com)** — Gus Garcia-Roberts of ProPublica follows a teenage prospect through an unregulated recruiting system. Of his US$1.8 million signing deal, US$630,000 went to his agent. | ### Wrapping up The US publishes its first estimate of September-quarter growth on Thursday at 8.30​am in Washington, which is 1.30​am Friday in Auckland and 11.30​pm Thursday in Sydney. September's PCE inflation figure, the Fed's preferred measure, comes with it. The Bank of Japan decides on Friday 30 October. Verizon reports before Monday's open in New York, and T-Mobile after Wednesday's close. After Friday, the line to watch for both is what they say about SpaceX. Visa reports on Tuesday, and Alphabet on Wednesday after the close. USD/NZD held at 1.76 on Friday, and USD/AUD at 1.42. Happy Labour Weekend, New Zealand. Back on Monday. ​ General information and commentary only, not financial advice. It does not take account of your objectives, financial situation or needs, and reflects the author's own reading of public information at the time of writing, which may be wrong. Sharespective, its people and its clients may hold positions in the companies covered. Do your own research and talk to a licensed adviser.