Real estate led the S&P 500 on 9 October. Three tower stocks did 62% of it.
Published · 1 min read
Real estate rose 1.95% on 9 October, the S&P 500's best sector. American Tower, Crown Castle and SBA supplied 62% of that gain on the day SpaceX bought spectrum for Starlink Mobile.
Real estate was the S&P 500's best sector on Friday, 9 October, up 1.95% market-cap weighted while the index rose 0.67%. Three of its 30 stocks, the tower owners $AMT, $CCI and $SBAC, supplied $13.2 billion of the sector's $21.4 billion gain, or 62%. Without them, real estate rose 0.79% and would have ranked fifth of eleven sectors.
The towers rose on the day SpaceX said it had acquired low-band 800 MHz spectrum for its Starlink Mobile service.
The other side of the same deal
The three national wireless carriers moved the opposite way, and by much more. Together they lost $57.5 billion of market value, more than four times what the tower stocks added. Communication services finished as the S&P 500's worst sector, down 0.21%, even though $GOOGL rose 0.97%.
| Stock | Change | Market value |
|---|---|---|
| $TMUS | -13.27% | -$24.4B |
| $VZ | -8.75% | -$16.6B |
| $T | -9.81% | -$16.5B |
| $AMT | +9.30% | +$7.2B |
| $CCI | +15.60% | +$4.7B |
| $SBAC | +7.34% | +$1.3B |
How unusual the day was
The site holds daily closes for these stocks back to March 2025. In those 19 months, Crown Castle's 15.6% gain and American Tower's 9.3% gain were each stock's largest one-day move in either direction. T-Mobile's 13.27% drop was its largest too, ahead of an 11.2% fall in April 2025.
See it on the site
Sources
- Explainer: What is the low-band spectrum that SpaceX acquired for Starlink Mobile — Reuters (9 Oct 2026)
- Verizon posts worst day since 2002 as SpaceX U.S. network plans whack cell provider stocks — CNBC (9 Oct 2026)
- Why Are American Tower, Crown Castle And SBA Communications Stocks Surging Friday? — Benzinga (9 Oct 2026)
- These Stocks Are the Hidden Winners of SpaceX's Spectrum Binge — Barron's (9 Oct 2026)
New posts as they go up: subscribe to the feed, or turn on the market close email.