> ## 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. # Talking Oil Down - URL: https://www.sharespective.com/sharespective-2026-11-03/ - Published: 2026-11-02T22:15:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-02T22:15:00.000Z - Description: Apple beat expectations in John Ternus's first quarter as chief executive. - 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 newsletterTue 3 Nov 2026 | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------ | | ![Today's edition](https://storage.ghost.io/c/02/71/0271df32-cec6-421f-9f13-b06ab90e54c1/content/images/2026/08/kicker-1.png)Talking Oil Down**Plus:** Apple beat expectations in John Ternus's first quarter as chief executive. | | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | **Good morning, and welcome to Tuesday.** Iran and the United States both signalled on Monday that they would rather talk than fight, and the oil price fell out of bed. Brent crude settled 7.6% lower and West Texas Intermediate gave up about 7.4%. The American market split on it. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.41% to 51,983.98 and the NASDAQ Composite fell 1.07%. Money is still walking out of the big technology names. Apple reported after the close. In other company news, Oracle fell 8.8% after filing to sell US$20 billion of new shares and bonds to pay for its data-centre buildout. Elsewhere, IDEXX Laboratories jumped 21.85% because the pet diagnostics company raised its full-year forecast after September-quarter revenue rose 10%. Finally, EVgo rose about 47% after LS Power offered US$2 a share for the rest of the charging network. Peace is deflationary. ### Market snapshot | S&P 5007,541.40**▼ 0.51%** | ​ | NASDAQ25,164.32**▼ 1.07%** | ​ | NZX 5013,698.63**▼ 0.71%** | | -------------------------- | - | ---------------------------- | - | ----------------------------- | | ​ | | | | | | ASX 2008,856.50**▼ 0.58%** | ​ | MarvellUS$171.41**▼ 12.72%** | ​ | LumentumUS$684.40**▼ 18.59%** | US index levels are Monday 2 November's closes in New York. The NZX 50 and ASX 200 are Monday's local closes. Marvell and Lumentum show Monday's closing price and that session's move. | ​ | ENERGY | | - | ------ | ## Oil fell more than 7% because Iran and the United States started talking Brent settled at US$104.77 a barrel on Monday and WTI at just over US$96\. Both had climbed for four months straight, and October alone added 13.6% to Brent. **Tehran did most of the talking.** Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had given his government more room to negotiate. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a deal is possible if Washington is serious about wanting one. October's gain came from fear. Tankers were attacked near the Strait of Hormuz through the month, one of them as recently as 30 October, and WTI rose 15.2% over the four weeks. Cheaper crude feeds straight into the inflation numbers. Futures now put the odds of a quarter-point Federal Reserve rise in December at about 76%, against more than 80% a week ago. The 10-year Treasury yield eased to 4.89%. | What to watchnothing has been signed. Iranian and Qatari officials have a draft proposal in front of them, and the tankers still have to get through the strait. I'd want to see war-risk insurance on those ships come down before treating US$104 oil as the new level. | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | ​ | BIG TECH | | - | -------- | ## Apple set a September-quarter record in John Ternus's first results as chief executive Apple reported revenue of US$114.5 billion for the September quarter, up 12% on a year earlier. Analysts had expected about US$113.4 billion. Earnings came in at US$2.10 a share, against the US$1.99 expected. **So what happened to the memory squeeze?** It arrived, and Apple absorbed it. Gross margin was 47.9%, at the top of the 47% to 48% Apple forecast in July. About one percentage point of that came from tariff refunds, and the margin was 50.1% in the June quarter. iPhone revenue was US$57.6 billion, a September-quarter record and ahead of the roughly US$56.5 billion expected. The quarter caught barely a week of iPhone 18 Pro sales, which began on 18 September. Services revenue reached an all-time high. Apple had also lifted the starting prices of the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max when they went on sale, which puts part of the higher memory bill on the customer. | Our takethe margin is the number we'd follow from here. Memory prices are set by what AI data centres will pay, and 47.9% already leans on a tariff refund that will not come round again. | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | ​ | DEALS | | - | ----- | ## Marvell agreed to buy Lumentum for US$115 billion, and both sets of shareholders sold Marvell Technology is buying Lumentum in an all-stock deal with an implied enterprise value of US$115 billion. Marvell shares fell 12.72% to US$171.41 on Monday. Lumentum fell 18.59% to US$684.40. **The target fell because the buyer did.** Lumentum holders are being paid in Marvell shares, 4.5 of them for each Lumentum share. On the 28 October closing prices that worked out at about US$1,132 a share, a premium of 23.9%. Marvell's price has moved a long way since. Lumentum makes the lasers and optical parts that carry data between AI servers at speed. Marvell designs the chips that let those servers talk to one another. Matt Murphy, Marvell's chief executive, called the shift to optical connections a once-in-a-generation opportunity. The deal is not expected to close until the first half of 2028\. Lumentum also reported quarterly results on Monday that beat forecasts, and nobody noticed. | The open questionMarvell shareholders are handing over a third of the combined company, and Monday's selling says the market thinks that is a lot for parts Marvell could have gone on buying. The case rests on optical connections becoming the real bottleneck in AI data centres, and that argument gets settled closer to 2028 than to this week. | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ### Newsworthy numbers | ​ | ​ | ​ | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | - | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | 148%how much Palantir's US commercial revenue grew in the September quarter. For the first time the company sold more to American businesses than to the American government. | ​ | US$479 billionApple's revenue for the fiscal year to September, an annual record, up from US$416.2 billion the year before. | | ​ | | | | ​ | ​ | ​ | | A$6.8 billionWestpac's full-year statutory profit, reported on Monday, down 1%. The final dividend is 77 Australian cents a share. | ​ | NZ$2.2 billionwhat more than 50,000 New Zealanders pulled out of KiwiSaver to buy a first home in the year to March, a record. | ### Worth a read | ​ | | | -- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | 01 | **[Housing policies: A capital gains tax to solar roll outs, rent controls and offsetting residential rental losses](https://www.interest.co.nz/property/140674/housing-policies-capital-gains-tax-solar-roll-outs-rent-controls-and-offsetting?ref=sharespective.com)** — Anna Whyte lines up every party's housing and tax plans before Saturday's election. Labour would tax property profits made after July 2027 at 28%, and ACT would scrap loss ring-fencing for rentals. | | ​ | | | 02 | **[Startups recalibrate Chinese AI for the West](https://restofworld.org/2026/western-startups-realigning-chinese-ai-models/?ref=sharespective.com)** — Rina Chandran and Viola Zhou on the small firms that edit Chinese open-weight models to strip out censorship before Western companies will touch them. CrowdStrike found DeepSeek's R1 was 50% more likely to write insecure code when the prompt touched a politically sensitive Chinese topic. | | ​ | | | 03 | **[The Fed Is Suddenly on Hold. When Could It Start Hiking Interest Rates Again?](https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/11/02/the-fed-is-suddenly-on-hold-when-start-hiking/?ref=sharespective.com)** — Matthew Benjamin on why October's pause reads as a pause rather than a finish. Futures put the odds of at least one rise during 2027 at 76.5%. | | ​ | | | 04 | **[A surprising vitamin A discovery is changing what scientists know about vision](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/10/261028234813.htm?ref=sharespective.com)** — Johns Hopkins researchers led by Robert Johnston found that blue cone cells in the centre of the retina convert into red and green ones between weeks 10 and 14 of development. The textbook answer for 30 years was that they simply moved away. | | ​ | | | 05 | **[Melbourne Cup 2026 field, horses, form guide and betting](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-31/melbourne-cup-2026-field-horses-form-guide-and-betting/107158416?ref=sharespective.com)** — Daniel Franklin's guide to the 166th Cup, run at Flemington this afternoon. Hopewell Rock is the $7 favourite, and Knight's Choice, who won at $91 in 2024, is back for another go. | ### Wrapping up The Bank of England decides at 1​am Friday in Auckland and 11​pm Thursday in Sydney, with economists expecting a rise to 4.00% from 3.75%. US private payrolls from ADP and the ISM services survey both arrive in the small hours of Thursday here. Qualcomm reports after Wednesday's US close, where handset chip demand is the line to watch, and McDonald's before the open, where it is US same-store sales. National Australia Bank's full-year result lands on Thursday morning in Sydney, and the final dividend is the line there. Both local currencies slipped against the US dollar on Monday. USD/NZD was at 1.78 and USD/AUD rose to 1.43. Good luck in the office sweep. See you tomorrow. ​ 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.