Afternoon Report | Telstra outage; Iran strikes push oil up
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Welcome to the Fear and Greed Business News Afternoon Report for Wednesday, the 8th of July, 2026. I'm Michael Thompson, and every afternoon, we've got the five stories that happened today that you need to know about. Let's get going. Story number one, the local share market finished slightly lower today after US strikes on Iran and then retaliations by Iran reignited fears of a wider Middle East conflict. The S&P ASX 200 fell 0.2% to 8,785 points. After being down significantly more earlier in the session, it was down as much as 1.4% at one point and then recovered a lot of ground throughout the day. Oil prices jumped after the US launched what it called powerful strikes in response to attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, while also revoking a waiver that had allowed Iran to sell oil.
under the interim peace deal. Energy stocks locally rallied. Woodside up more than 3%. Santos almost 6% higher. But miners and tech stocks weighed on the market today. BHP fell more than 2% as it deals with strike action in WA. While WiseTech Global dropped 7%, the major banks helped limit the losses. All four finished higher. Story number two, Telstra says a timekeeping fault deep inside its mobile network was to blame for a national outage this morning. Chief Financial Officer Michael Ackland said a group of network nodes that keep time synchronized stopped working properly from about 4.30 this morning, causing intermittent call and data failures across the country. About 90% of services were working again by late morning.
Several police forces warned that some Telstra customers may not have been able to reach triple zero from their devices. The outage also stopped Victoria's regional passenger rail network with V-line services halted by a radio network fault. We'll have more on this tomorrow morning. Story number three, a bit of corporate news around today. ResMed has sold an underperforming software business focused on residential aged care to a US private equity firm for $707 million, about a third less than what it paid for the asset eight years ago in a move that analysts say reflects the risk that artificial intelligence renders it obsolete. ResMed's share price was down 0.8% today. Also today, retailer Adairs, its share price fell 1.3% after it warned that it expected to report a loss for the 2026 fiscal year.
That was driven by an impairment against its focus on furniture business. after earnings deterioration. And IFM investors $7.4 billion takeover offer for Atlas Arteria has closed with the global asset management group securing 67.43% of the ASX listed toll road company. Story number four, heading to Europe now. Prince Harry has lost his long-running privacy case against the publishers of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday. The Duke of Sussex and six other high-profile claimants, including Elton John and Liz Hurley, had alleged phone hacking and other unlawful information gathering, but the UK High Court ruled that they had failed to prove the specific articles in question were illegally sourced.
The decision could prove costly, with legal costs reportedly estimated at about $65 million. A hearing on who pays will be held later this month. Harry labelled the ruling a complete and obvious whitewash in a statement, but Associated Newspapers called it a vindication of its journalism. The judgment is a major setback in the Duke's years-long campaign against the British tabloids. And finally, for story number five, we'll jump across the Atlantic now to the US, where Donald Trump has claimed credit for retail giant Walmart cutting prices at its stores. The president said the retailer would lower prices, quote, by a lot. At his administration's request, including a cut of almost 15% to the price of ground beef, but Walmart's own statement announcing the price cuts made no mention of the Trump administration, saying the discounts were designed to help customers make the most of summer.
The retailer listed price cuts across beef, corn, cherries, ice cream, chips and soft drinks.
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