Another week and another all-time high for US stocks, thanks in large part to Oracle’s (ORCL:NYSE) new forecast for cloud demand which stunned Wall Street analysts (for more, see below).
Such is the optimism that, despite US shares as a whole trading at their highest ever multiple of earnings and the market representing the largest ever share of the economy, investment banks have spent the week raising their full-year targets for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite.
In addition, new listings are flying off the shelf, with Swedish buy-now-pay-later credit provider Klarna (KLAR:NYSE) popping on its debut, while the frenzy to own anything crypto-related continues with shares in penny stock Eightco (OCTO:NASDAQ) surging 4,000% after it announced it would build the world’s first Treasury based on Sam Altman-backed Worldcoin.
Meanwhile, fear is non-existent, with the CBOE VIX index down 44% in the last six months and CNN’s Fear & Greed index reading Neutral, despite obvious signs of a melt-up in stocks and other assets.
ORACLE
Of all the tech companies to reinvent themselves through the power of AI, Oracle may be the most surprising, or at last, for many investors. Not Shares though.
The software giant had looked very yesteryear, having stumbled in software’s transition to the cloud, yet AI has breathed new life into the old dog, something we have been discussing for two years and leading us to pitch the stock as one of our ‘Great Ideas’ a year ago. Since then, the price has doubled.
This week, Oracle tore up growth expectations after announcing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of contracted revenue from cloud deals with AI giants, including OpenAI. It saw the stock jump 36% (9 September), its biggest single-day gain in more than 30 years, after its report left analysts ‘in shock’, according to CNBC.
It also made co-founder and chairman Larry Ellison the world’s wealthiest man, topping Elon Musk, on paper anyway.
Oracle is expecting to rake in $455 billion over the next few years for contracts booked last quarter, a fourfold increase from the same time last year. That’ll skyrocket its cloud infrastructure revenue from $10 billion last fiscal year to $144 billion by 2030, Oracle projected.
NEBIUS
Shares in IT services firm Nebius (NBIS:NASDAQ) jumped around 40% this week after the company announced it had signed a deal to supply Microsoft (MSFT:NASDAQ) with AI (artificial intelligence) infrastructure.
The agreement, which will see Nebius provide the Seattle-based giant with dedicated AI computing capacity from a data center in New Jersey beginning later this year, is worth at least $17.4 billion in revenue through 2031, with options which could increase its total value by another $2 billion.
For those unfamiliar with the Amsterdam-based firm, this week’s deal marks a major win for founder and chief executive Arkady Vozloh, who built up Russian internet giant Yandex, only to see the firm’s expansion plans nixed by the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Nebius, previously the holding company for Yandex, had to sell its Russian assets, while its New-York listed shares were suspended until October 2024, when they re-listed under the current name.
CHEWY
There was no pat on the head from investors for Chewy (CHWY:NYSE) this week after the online pet food retailer’s second-quarter print (10 September) disappointed the market, sending the shares down 15% to $35.1.
Chewy actually delivered a slight revenue beat and in-line earnings for the quarter ended 3 August 2025, but investors were looking for sequential active customer growth closer to 175,000 than the reported increase of 146,000.
Revenue at the online pet products-to-medications play scurried 8.6% higher year-on-year to $3.1 billion, while earnings per share of $0.33 matched Wall Street estimates and the Florida-based firm nudged up its full-year revenue guidance.
‘Chewy’s differentiated value proposition was once again on display, with both active customers and share of wallet (NSPAC) growing 4.5% year-over-year to reach nearly 21 million customers and $591, respectively,’ said chief executive Sumit Singh.
