Oil-services ETF rises 5% as Brent settles at its highest since April

VanEck Oil Services ETF, BOIH, rose 5.4% and led Friday's ETF gainers as Brent crude settled at its highest price since April. Engine makers Safran and Rolls-Royce sold off on worry that airlines are cutting capacity because fuel is expensive, Reuters reported. State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF, ASPY, fell 0.5%.

Brent settled at $116.72 a barrel, up 3.1% on the day and 6% on the week, the highest close since April 29, Reuters reported. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark, settled at $103.27, up 3.8%.

Reuters said fears of a supply disruption drove the advance after Iranian-backed Houthi attacks across Saudi Arabia. A drone strike on the Shaybah oil field Wednesday killed two people, the Saudi Press Agency said, CNBC reported. American forces last struck Iran in early September, Deutsche Welle reported Thursday, and CNBC said traders expect the United States to resume those strikes in the coming weeks.

Services stocks rose more than the oil majors

SLB, nearly a fifth of BOIH, rose 7.1%, and Halliburton and Baker Hughes rose 5.2% and 4.2%. State Street Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF, AXLE, rose 2.6%, so BOIH beat it by 2.8 percentage points. Exxon Mobil and Chevron, together more than 40% of AXLE, each rose less than half as much as SLB.

Fuel costs hit the engine makers

Select Funds' Select STOXX Europe Aerospace & Defense ETF, CEUAD, fell 4.1%. Safran fell 10% in Paris, and Rolls-Royce fell 7.6% in London, its biggest one-day drop since April 2025, Reuters reported. The two are about two-fifths of the fund. Airbus, 18.5% of it, about as large a holding as each of them, fell 1.2% in Paris.

Safran said third-quarter revenue rose 14.7%, and that civil-engine spare parts "continue to perform well."

Reuters said investors worried that a slowdown in aftermarket growth, the spare-parts and maintenance business, could continue into 2027 as airlines cut capacity because fuel is expensive. Jefferies said propulsion aftermarket growth had already slowed and fell short of expectations, Reuters reported.

Cybersecurity rose on a reseller survey

Global X Cybersecurity ETF, CBUG, rose 5.0%, and Amplify Cybersecurity ETF, CHACK, rose 4.2%. The gains ran through CBUG's largest names. Okta, the biggest holding at 10.3%, rose 5.8%. CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks, 7.8% and 7.5% of the fund, rose 8.2% and 7.2%.

Evercore ISI's quarterly survey of channel partners, the resellers who sell the software, found a firming budget outlook into year-end, with identity protection, AI governance and cloud security among the top priorities, Investing.com reported Friday.