I can tell when a grocery bill has changed my mood. I start comparing unit prices with the intensity of a forensic accountant. I decide that every errand should happen on the same trip because gasoline has apparently become a luxury purchase. Then I walk into Costco for coffee and detergent and leave wondering whether I have enough room at home for forty-eight rolls of paper towels. That last part is funny until I look at Costco’s latest quarter. The company is benefiting from the same pressure that has households planning their shopping more carefully. Its fourth-quarter revenue rose about 11% to $95.72 billion, ahead of the $94.86 billion analysts expected. Comparable sales, excluding gasoline and currency effects, increased 6.7%, beating the 6.11% estimate. Costco also reported adjusted earnings of $6.60 a share after removing a one-time, 15-cent benefit from tariff refunds, compared with expectations of $6.53. Reuters Those numbers tell me Costco had a strong quarter. The more inte...
Stock Futures Are Falling as Treasury Yields Surge, and Wall Street Is Learning That 5% Changes Everything
There are mornings when the stock market wakes up worried about earnings. Other mornings, it worries about oil. Sometimes investors become obsessed with whatever artificial intelligence company has discovered a new way to spend $80 billion building something nobody can adequately explain. And then there are mornings like this one, when the bond market walks into the room, kicks its shoes onto the table and reminds everyone that it still has the ability to ruin the party. That is essentially what I am watching on September 24, 2026. U.S. stock futures are falling again as Treasury yields push into territory we haven't seen in years. Early Thursday morning, Dow futures were down roughly 0.3%, S&P 500 futures were off about 0.5%, and Nasdaq-100 futures were falling around 0.7%. Those numbers were moving as the morning developed, but the message was fairly clear: investors were not exactly racing toward the opening bell with party hats. And I understand why. The benchmark 10-year T...