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Stock Market Update
October 9, 2026
UPGRADES
Delta Air Lines slashed its 2026 profit outlook as high fuel prices persist, but CEO Ed Bastian said pricier fares aren’t turning off travelers.
Delta on Friday forecast full-year earnings per share of between $5.10 and $5.60 on an adjusted basis, compared with its outlook in July, when fuel prices were lower, of $6.50 to $7.50 a share. The company’s fourth-quarter guidance was below analyst estimates, too.
Delta cut its free cash flow outlook for the year to $2.5 billion, from as much as $4 billion it expected in July.
Still, Bastian said in an interview that fares have continued to tick up as the airline passes along much of a $6 billion increase in fuel costs this year, and that travelers keep booking. Jet fuel prices in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico region have almost doubled to $4.34 on Thursday from $2.19 a year earlier, according to FactSet.
DOWNGRADES
Telecommunications stocks sold off on Friday after Elon Musk’s SpaceX announced an agreement to purchase a nationwide spectrum portfolio, aiming to expand its Starlink internet into mobile service.
Verizon was down roughly 10% on the news, and was pacing for its worst day since 2002. Shares of T-Mobile were down 13% while AT&T fell around 10%, each pacing their own worst days since 2013 and 2000, respectively.
SpaceX stock climbed slightly, around 1% for the day.
The deal includes acquiring the spectrum from Grain Management, which SpaceX described as a “license portfolio of up to 14 megahertz of paired spectrum in the 800 MHz band,” in a Thursday statement.
NEWS
The ability of U.S. families to stay current on their debts worsened over the past three years, hitting levels not seen since the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the Federal Reserve reported Friday.
In the central bank’s Survey of Consumer Finances, researchers found that while wealth disparities narrowed somewhat, the ability to meet debt payments deteriorated significantly.
“Families were more likely to be behind on their financial obligations than at any point since the 2010 survey,” stated the survey, a data-rich document the Fed releases every three years to chronicle the nation’s financial health.
The country in 2010 was just emerging from what became known as the Great Recession, a period that ran from December 2007 to June 2009. A collapse in the subprime mortgage market resulted in contagion across the largest financial institutions in the U.S. and the world, sending unemployment at one point to 10%.