September 11th Pre-Market Brief

Good Morning

Here is what will confuse people today. Inflation came in firm, a rate hike announced Wednesday is close to 100%, and stocks are up.

The market has been staring at this coin flip for weeks and it finally landed on heads (or hikes). The market loves certainty and we just got at least a little.

Let's dig in...

Today's Big Picture

1. The Coin Flip Ended

Core prices rose three tenths in August against two tenths expected, and stocks opened higher anyway. Odds of a hike Wednesday went from 72 percent yesterday to the high eighties this morning, and the fear gauge dropped more than nine percent. A coin flip turned into a decision, and that is worth more to stocks right now than a soft number would have been.

2. The Leader Has The Most To Lose

Small caps have been the best trade of 2026, with the Russell 2000 up about twenty percent against roughly eleven for the S&P 500. Goldman Sachs puts floating rate debt at about 32 percent of Russell 2000 companies and 6 percent of the S&P 500, so Wednesday lands hardest on the index that has led all year. Fitch already has the private credit default rate at a record 6.1 percent through July, measured before any of this. What has been working is what is most exposed to what happens next.

3. Diesel Crossed Six Dollars

The national average hit about $6.07 a gallon for the first time, up more than sixty percent in a year. Gasoline rose 3.9 percent in August by itself and accounted for more than a third of the entire increase in consumer prices. Two wars have taken roughly 5 million barrels a day of refining capacity offline, and US refiners are already running at ninety-eight percent of what they can process. Crude fell 3% this morning and none of that changes, because the shortage is in refineries and those take years to build.

Market Overview

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Stock Spotlight (pre-market)

Oracle $ORCL ( ▼ 5.38% )  
Up about seven percent at $164.38. Revenue and earnings both beat, but the line moving it is cloud infrastructure, which more than doubled to $7.4 billion against $7.09 billion expected. First quarter that shows the $100 billion of data center debt producing something.

Adobe $ADBE ( ▼ 2.38% )  
Down about two percent despite a record quarter and raised full year targets. The move is fourth quarter guidance, where the $6.80 to $6.85 billion midpoint sits under consensus, tied to the same freemium push that got them past a billion users. Down twenty-nine percent this year, it is the read on whether free AI tools take share from paid software.

Copart $CPRT ( ▲ 0.07% )  
Up . Copart is buying rival vehicle marketplace ACV Auctions for roughly $1.9 billion, and fourth quarter revenue of $1.15 billion beat by a hair.

RH $RH ( ▲ 2.19% )  
Up almost seven percent after revenue of $922 million beat the $915 million expected. The guidance did more, with a full year growth midpoint near 6.25 percent against the 5.6 modeled, from a furniture retailer facing mortgage rates near seven.

National Beverage $FIZZ ( ▼ 3.01% )  
Down more than five percent on 50 cents a share and $331 million of revenue. The company named tariffs, weaker consumer sentiment and higher packaging and ingredient costs, which is the same squeeze sitting inside this morning's core number.

Kroger $KR ( ▲ 0.9% )  
Down about three percent. Earnings of $1.09 beat the $1.06 estimate and revenue missed by six hundredths of a percent, which does not normally cost a grocer three percent, so something in the detail is doing the work.

GameStop $GME ( ▲ 3.95% )  
Up more than three percent on a filing. Ryan Cohen bought 1 million shares at an average of $20.375, roughly where the stock closed, so he paid the market instead of buying a dip.

What to Watch

Want to Know about this years upcoming IPO’s?
MarketBeat did an excellent job on this free IPO guide on IPO’s happening this year

Fed Hike

Wednesday is close to settled. Odds of at least one hike by year end are now 90 percent, and Principal and Franklin Templeton both said this morning they do not expect the Fed to stop at one. Warsh has argued the Fed should not tell markets what comes next, so the thing to listen for Wednesday is whether he breaks that habit.

Hormuz, Over The Weekend

Crude fell three percent on a Financial Times report that ministers are working toward a temporary shipping arrangement with Iran. Nothing is signed. Saudi output is 6 million barrels a day, the lowest in more than thirty years, and Hormuz ran seven vessels Thursday against a fifteen-vessel average, so the barrels have not changed at all.

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