Earnings season may be over, but the occasional earnings reports are still trickling through, and moments ago we got the latest off-season report from the most indebted company in AI, Oracle, which reported adjusted revenue for the first quarter that beat the average analyst estimate, and which helped push the stock higher, but just barely above where it opened.
Here's what ORCL reported moments ago for its fiscal first quarter:
Oracle's cloud computing revenue growth topped analysts’ estimates, suggesting the company’s large AI data center projects are helping boost its financial results. Of note, sales in the cloud infrastructure business jumped 121% to $7.4 billion, above the median estimate of $7.19 billion, however this was all on the back of far greater capex spending (see below). As a reminder, this is the hockeystock the company projected for its Cloud Infra Revenue a year ago. Good luck with that.
The financial highlights visually:
A breakdown of ORCL's cloud revenue: the growth rates while material, are well below some of its largest - and far less indebted - peers.
Looking ahead, the company projects EPS to be between $1.83 and $1.91 in constant currency and between $1.85 and $1.93 in USD, which represents growth of 19% to 23% in constant currency and 21% to 25% in USD (excluding a one-time gain from Q2 FY2026.)
Including the investment gain, Q2 FY27 non-GAAP EPS is expected to decline between -19% and -15% in constant currency and decline between -18% and -14% in USD.
For the full fiscal year 2027, Oracle expects total revenue to be at least $90 billion (up 34% in constant currency), and non-GAAP EPS to be at $8.10 (up 18% in constant currency).
While we doubt the market will give it much credit for its RPO, especially since it comes with so much massive off-balance sheet debt, that if one were to actually look at how it is funded, the stock would crater,
The bigger question is when will ORCL's massive capex convert into actual revenues...
... and more importantly cash flow, as the company continues to burn billions every quarter and is forced to fund itself with ever greater amounts of equity sales and debt.
ORCL also said it completed an earlier-announced plan to sell $20 billion of equity from time to time at market value. Ahead of Thursday’s earnings, several analysts had raised questions about the timing of the at-the-market equity sale.
Oracle, traditionally a boring provider of database software, has refashioned itself as a provider of computing power for artificial intelligence work and is embarking on a major build-out of data centers for OpenAI and other customers. It has done so by spending massive amount of capital and taking on even more massive amounts of debt as its cash flow is deeply negative.
Wall Street is watching the scale of spending on these ambitious projects and how quickly Oracle can complete them. The company said it added 850 megawatts of data center capacity in the quarter.
In response to the beat, ORCL shares gained modestly, rising 4% in extended trading after closing at $152.94, sliding sharply into the earnings. In other words, the stock is now where it closed yesterday.
The stock had dropped 38% since its June 1 high for the year on concerns over financing needs, rising component costs and news reports on data center construction challenges, wrote Derrick Wood, an analyst at TD Cowen, ahead of the results.
And since there is little indication the cash burn will end any time soon, buying ORCL CDS here appears like the far more prudent thing to do than buying the stock and praying...
Tyler Durden Thu, 09/10/2026 - 16:46The U.S. Supreme Court blocked Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins on Thursday from using the state's Republican-drawn 2025 congressional map, an order that puts Missouri back under the districts adopted in 2022. The order ran one page, disclosed no vote, gave no reasoning, and drew no noted dissents.
In this photo taken with a smartphone, people opposed to a congressional redistricting plan rally outside the Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City, Mo., Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/David A. Lieb)Missouri Republicans drew the new map - known as HB 1 - during a 2025 special session called by Gov. Mike Kehoe, part of a wider redistricting push President Trump encouraged. It was intended to give Republicans seven of the state's eight House seats, reworking the Kansas City-based 5th District held by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, one of Missouri's two Democratic members.
Opponents submitted more than 300,000 signatures late last year to put the map to a statewide vote. Hoskins rejected the petition on Aug. 4 - the day of Missouri's primary - arguing the state constitution "does not authorize a referendum on congressional redistricting plans passed by the General Assembly."
The Missouri Supreme Court disagreed unanimously on Sept. 3, holding that the constitution "authorizes a referendum as to 'any act of the general assembly' and no exception applies." Because the petition was "legal, sufficient, and timely," the court concluded, the new map was never in effect and will not take effect "unless and until approved by the voters at the November 2026 general election."
The court also dismantled Hoskins' warning that abandoning the new map would cause confusion and expense, calling the argument "wholly unpersuasive" and noting that "these arguments are particularly misplaced given the secretary's delay created" the problems he was complaining about.
The constitutional argumentHoskins went to the U.S. Supreme Court that Friday night, telling the justices Missouri was "genuinely unsure whether it can switch its governing congressional map in time to run a timely federal election." His core claim was an elections-clause theory: that the Constitution gives state legislatures, not voters signing a petition, the power to set the "Times, Places, and Manner" of federal elections. He added that the state ruling disenfranchised "hundreds of thousands" of voters by moving them into districts where they would be "forced to vote on General Election candidates they had no role in choosing."
Richard von Glahn, who led the referendum committee People Not Politicians, argued the justices had no power to review a ruling resting purely on state law, and that on the merits Hoskins' "Elections Clause theory runs headlong into more than a century of precedent recognizing that state constitutional referendum procedures may constrain congressional-redistricting legislation."
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who handles emergency matters from Missouri, turned Hoskins down Tuesday afternoon without referring the request to the full court.
Then it got complicatedLess than an hour later, a federal judge ordered the opposite. Chief U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark issued a temporary restraining order requiring the state to use the 2025 map, in a case filed Sept. 4 by Rep. Robert Onder, a Republican representing Missouri's 3rd District, among others. Clark acknowledged that "conducting state elections in accordance with the Missouri Constitution undoubtedly qualifies as an important interest," but found the federal challengers faced irreparable harm "because many Missouri voters would have to cast their general-election votes for candidates whom they had no role in nominating."
Missouri spent the next two days under directly conflicting orders from its own supreme court and a federal one. Hoskins had instructed election administrators to implement the 2022 map immediately after the state ruling. On Sept. 8 he sent a second email telling them to use the 2025 map instead - the act that put him in contempt proceedings.
Von Glahn's team went to the Eighth Circuit Tuesday night. That court declined. They returned to Kavanaugh Wednesday afternoon with a 25-page filing, and this time he referred it to the full court. Attorney Abha Khanna told the justices Clark's order "has been in place for mere hours, but the chaos it guarantees has already taken root," and that leaving it in place would cause the disruption Purcell forbids "by subjecting election officials to irreconcilable judicial commands on the eve of an election, with a federal court inserting itself to wreak havoc on the State's elections."
Their central procedural argument: Clark lacked authority to act without convening a three-judge court, which federal law generally requires for constitutional challenges involving congressional apportionment.
What Thursday's order does and doesn't doThe order stays Clark's ruling - the second time the dispute reached the Supreme Court in a single week - and resolves nothing else. It does not decide standing, the three-judge-court question, or the merits. The stay holds while the appeal proceeds in the Eighth Circuit, and ends automatically if the justices decline to hear the case.
"The law is the law, the Missouri constitution is clear, as was the Missouri Supreme Court," von Glahn said in a statement, adding that Hoskins "has shown that he cannot effectively do the job he was elected to do."
Hoskins' lawyers had filed minutes before the ruling came down, warning that election authorities were already preparing ballots under the 2025 map and that switching back risked the Sept. 19 deadline for military and overseas ballots. The U.S. solicitor general joined the state in opposing the stay.
The order came the same morning Hoskins was due before the Missouri Supreme Court to argue why he should not be held in contempt over that Sept. 8 email. He had asked Clark to block the state proceeding. Clark declined.
Missouri's deadline to finalize general election ballots has already passed. Some counties paused work on congressional ballots entirely while others prepared the portions unaffected by the fight. Voters will decide the map itself in November as Proposition A. The first ballots go out Sept. 19.
Tyler Durden Thu, 09/10/2026 - 16:40Authored by Andre Billeaudeaux via American Thinker,
The NAACP is asking some of America's best black high-school football players to consider withholding commitments from public universities in eight states because of congressional redistricting. Current athletes are encouraged to consider transferring and using their NIL platforms to support the cause. The slogan is direct: "No Representation. No Recruitment. No Revenue."
The campaign followed the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision striking down Louisiana's intentionally created second majority-black congressional district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Rather than leaving that dispute in the courthouse and statehouse, the NAACP is asking black athletes to carry it into their college choices, campuses, and locker rooms.
That is a heavy psychological load to place on a 17-year-old who may have spent a decade developing the talent, discipline, and confidence required to be recruited by Alabama, Georgia, LSU, Texas, or another major program. Universities want him, NIL money may follow, and the NFL may eventually follow that. At the moment when his talent has given him control over his future, he is being encouraged to see himself as a victim and act on that grievance.
Black Studies professor Elwood Watson called it "grossly irresponsible and unfair" to enlist young athletes in such a political fight, warning against turning them into "athletic guinea pigs or pawns." Educator Rann Miller questioned asking young black athletes to sacrifice NIL and career opportunities when comparable sacrifices are not being demanded from the adults asking them to join the fight.
Sports psychology supplies another warning: mental fatigue. It is not simply being tired, but a state associated with sustained cognitive demands, reduced cognitive efficiency, impaired attention, and increased perceived effort. The athlete's body may be capable of performing while his brain is required to process too much.
Now consider the NAACP's ask, particularly the age of the people being asked. Research following decision-making from adolescence into adulthood has found that younger people place greater value on immediate rewards and that the capacity for planning ahead continues developing into young adulthood. The NAACP is asking athletes at this stage to weigh immediate political and social rewards against educational, financial, and professional opportunities that may not fully materialize for years - maps, representation, family expectations, teammates, transferring, and whether to use his NIL identity politically - all while coaches try to get him to read a defense and execute the next play.
A 2026 BMC Psychology meta-analysis involving 19 study records found mental fatigue associated with poorer reaction time, technical execution, and decision-making. The measured effects were roughly one-half of a standard deviation for reaction time, six-tenths for technical performance and two-thirds for decision-making, where the results were the most consistent.
Elite athletic performance seeks the opposite condition: flow. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described flow as complete absorption in an activity, where action and awareness merge, concentration intensifies and irrelevant thoughts are excluded. The athlete's attention is consumed by what he is doing now.
I was a student of Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who used Walter Mischel's famous marshmallow experiment to demonstrate the importance of time perspective. The child faced an immediate reward - one marshmallow now - or delayed gratification for two later. When researchers returned 14 years later, those who had resisted the immediate reward averaged 250 points higher on the SAT, got into less trouble and were described as better students, more self-confident, and determined. Zimbardo's point was that "they were future-focused rather than present-focused."
Put that against the NAACP's call. The immediate reward is obvious: take a stand, demonstrate solidarity, and receive the approval accompanying the cause. The delayed reward may be worth millions over a lifetime: choose the university and coach offering the best chance to develop talent, earn an education, maximize NIL value and perhaps reach the NFL.
The marshmallow has simply become considerably more expensive.
Elon Musk supplied the cultural shorthand "woke mind virus," warning against replacing individual "skills and integrity" with race and group identity and describing the constant injection of race into issues as "divisive and corrosive to society."
Former college coach Tommy Tuberville put the football problem this way: if a quarterback effectively takes himself out of the common mission, "that tends to tear down your team" and takes the "moral loyalty out of it." Before a game his players stood to honor America and afterward knelt to honor God. Coaches build common identity, loyalty and concentration because eleven individually talented players still have to perform as one.
Reverse that process - introduce distraction, immediate political reward, victimization and racial division - and then expect it to disappear when the ball is snapped.
Colin Kaepernick gave us an opportunity to see what happened next.
On August 26, 2016, Kaepernick sat during the national anthem before a preseason game against Green Bay, explaining that he would not stand for a flag representing a country that "oppresses black people and people of color." He subsequently began kneeling, turning an ordinary pre-game ritual into a national argument involving race, police and America.
The 49ers were already expected to be bad, with Las Vegas setting their preseason win total at only 5½ games. They finished 2-14, a 64% shortfall from that already miserable expectation. Kaepernick started eleven games and went 1-10, while his individual statistics - 16 touchdowns, four interceptions and a 90.7 passer rating - were hardly disastrous.
In 2015, the season before the kneeling controversy, San Francisco surrendered 387 points. By 2016 it finished 32nd in yards and points allowed, surrendering 480 points - 93 more than the previous season, a 24% increase. Kaepernick did not play defense, but his teammates shared the locker room, media attention, anthem controversy, and decisions about whether to participate, disagree or remain silent.
I began describing the phenomenon at the time as Self-Inflicted Degradation of Performance Syndrome, or SIDOPS - my term for grievance and resulting distraction degrading individual performance and spreading through a team's shared environment. Work I published in 2017 - 18 compared protesting teams against Vegas expectations and asked whether a victim-based mental state and social contagion might show up in athletic performance - years before the 2026 mental-fatigue research reported measurable degradation in reaction time, technical execution and decision-making.
"Hands Up, Don't Shoot" became a national rallying cry following the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, but Eric Holder's Justice Department later found no credible witness who could establish that Brown was shot while clearly surrendering. Witnesses supporting that account were contradicted by physical evidence, changed their accounts or recanted, while investigators found no eyewitness who said Brown uttered "don't shoot."
The slogan survived the facts, just as grievance can survive the event that created it.
Ten years later, Kaepernick says the NFL is still "actively blackballing" him and that he no longer watches professional football: "I watch college football."
Before the kneeling, Kaepernick had quarterbacked a Super Bowl team and earned a contract potentially worth more than $100 million. During the kneeling season he went 1-10 and never played another NFL game. Ten years later, he still describes himself as a victim of the league that once made him a star.
Now the NAACP is encouraging young black athletes to bring a similar grievance into decisions that may determine their own futures. Kaepernick's career cannot prove what SIDOPS predicts, but it provides a warning of what may follow.
Before asking another gifted young athlete to organize his future around grievance, look at the scoreboard - and remember what happened to the last quarterback who took a knee.
Image generated by ChatGPT.
Tyler Durden Thu, 09/10/2026 - 16:20Pennsylvania's Democratic senator made a surprise video appearance in Dallas on Wednesday night in front of a sea of Republicans at the GOP midterm convention.
In a short video message, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) condemned the rise of socialist politicians in the United States and welcomed his Republican counterpart, Sen. Dave McCormick, as the next speaker for the event.
"Yes, I'm a Democrat. Why am I here talking to you today? Because, well, I'm a common sense Democrat," he told the crowd.
"I'm always going to stand with America. I'm always going to reject the extremes of socialism and that anti-American way of life."
As Troy Myers reports for The Epoch Times, Fetterman has, for years, distanced himself from socialist policies promoted by people in his own party. His Wednesday appearance stoked further speculation that he may leave the party altogether. Democrats and Republicans are vying for the majority in Congress in the midterm elections on Nov. 3.
If the Democrats wish to achieve that, they will need to flip four seats in the Senate and hope that Fetterman doesn't vote with Republicans or switch parties before he is up for reelection in 2028.
Fetterman described his close relationship - both professionally and personally - with McCormick, despite their being from opposite parties.
"Dave McCormick is the kind of senator that gets the job done, and he's going to fight for Pennsylvania," Fetterman said. "I'm proud to count him as my friend."
Standing in front of a Pennsylvania steel mill in his video, the Democratic senator reaffirmed his and McCormick's combined goals in working together, along with President Donald Trump, to boost the steel industry in their state.
"That's exactly the kind of thing that will work together and will work with President Trump to fight and defend: the steel way of life right here in the Steel Valley," Fetterman said.
As the notoriously casually dressed senator has distanced himself from his fellow Democrats in Congress, he's seen a boost in support from Republicans in his state.
In fact, a recent New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena University poll found that Fetterman has more support among Pennsylvania Republicans than McCormick does.
The rift between Fetterman and his Democratic colleagues from other states has widened in recent years over his support for Israel. The Pennsylvania senator has maintained a staunch support for the country since the horrific Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas.
He has said he will leave the Democratic party if it ever officially adopts an anti-Israel position.
"If they put that in our platform - no aid for Israel - and officially become the anti-Israel party, then yeah, that's a red line for me," Fetterman told NBC News July 16. "Democrats, we always should support Israel. That's our special ally."
On July 27, he specifically distanced himself from progressives and socialists in the party's far-left wing.
"These people aren't Democrats. That's not a big tent situation," he told reporters.
Fetterman has also repeatedly voted with Republicans on major issues such as rejecting a war powers resolution on July 23 and July 30 to end U.S. military operations in Iran. On this topic, he was the only Democrat to join the majority on the other side of the aisle.
Tyler Durden Thu, 09/10/2026 - 15:40