COST flat on membership slowdown; ORCL -3.5% on Project Jupiter force majeure

The 10-year Treasury settled at 5.11% on Wednesday and the 30-year mortgage rate printed 7.03% on Thursday, the two reinforcing each other's message. WTI crude held at $96.41 and the VIX closed at 14.2 — low volatility, high cost of money, oil near $100. That is the frame for the week's final session.

Costco beats, stock holds flat

$COST reported fiscal 2026 results after Thursday's close: earnings grew 14% year-over-year, revenue climbed 10%, and estimates were cleared. The stock finished flat. The reason is legible in the detail: membership fee revenue growth has decelerated for three consecutive quarters. Those fees carry Costco's highest margin. A headline beat that leaves the membership engine unaddressed does not move the stock.

Meta +4.5%

$META gained +4.5% to close at a one-year high. Two catalysts: a keychain-sized AI device with an embedded camera, and two game-development tools — Horizon Create and Horizon Studio — that generate 2D and 3D games from AI prompts. The launch reinforces the thesis that Meta has closed the AI competitive gap that weighed on the stock in 2023. The company's Chief Product Officer filed a new sale of $28.5 million in shares — a second transaction in six days, following the $13.5 million sale covered here last Friday.

Intel +3.9%

$INTC gained +3.9%. The supporting thesis: persistent agentic AI workloads generate orchestration overhead that runs on conventional CPUs, keeping Intel relevant within the AI capital spending cycle. Intel's year-to-date run stands near 223%, a gain that has drawn valuation scrutiny. Thursday's move came despite intraday profit-taking pressure from those same concerns.

Oracle -3.5%

$ORCL dropped -3.5% after filing a force majeure notice on Project Jupiter, a data center campus under construction in New Mexico. The notice formally pauses Oracle's payment obligations, citing construction delays on AI infrastructure. Bloom Energy, named as an energy supplier to the campus, also fell on the news. An Oracle executive separately sold $1.74 million in shares following stock award vesting — the second Oracle executive sale in six days, extending the insider pattern we first noted September 18.

Filings desk

$V deposited $405 million for a pending legal settlement. $VST completed a $1.5 billion subordinated bond offering — $850 million at 7% and $650 million at 7.25%, both maturing in 2057 — to fund operations. Mitsubishi UFJ sold $284.9 million in $MS stock, the latest entry in an ownership story first flagged here on September 17. Qualcomm's CEO sold $1.95 million under a pre-arranged plan. SpaceX's President and COO sold $46 million in $SPCX stock. Nvidia's General Counsel added a $6.8 million sale, continuing the insider sequence that opened Tuesday with Mark Stevens' $300 million transaction. Coinbase's CFO sold $8 million — the second significant insider sale at the company since Marc Andreessen's $2.5 million transaction on September 10.

What we set aside

Fourteen filings were held back — disclosed today but tied to events more than 36 hours old. PSX was examined and produced nothing in the window.

The desk is watching Friday's PCE print and what it does to the 10-year.