Morning Watchlist: Saturday Edition
A quick note from Behind the Markets
It's Saturday morning, and the market crammed five days of news into four. Labor Day Monday, then a sprint: oil through $100 a barrel, two inflation reports running warm, a brand-new list of banned goods at the border, and the priciest iPhone lineup ever wheeled onto a stage.
Four stops on the tour. Let's get into it.
1) The Barrel Went Triple-Digit
The loud story first. On Tuesday the Dow gave up about 600 points as the Gulf escalated. On Wednesday morning, Brent crude pushed through $100. Thursday it kept going — Brent at $105.37, up another 3.6%, WTI at $100.10 — after Iranian missiles targeted a U.S. warship, five Iranian tankers were destroyed, and Houthi strikes forced Saudi Arabia to idle facilities in its south. By Friday morning the market was exhaling: WTI back near $99 and Brent under $104, both down more than 3% — still war prices, just less fevered. We spent the week deliberately placing calls around that fire, not in it.
Magnolia Oil & Gas — Thursday's fresh Buy, flagged at Tuesday's close of $27.42 after it rose 2.3% into a 600-point Dow drop. The thesis was that Eagle Ford barrels reprice with every Gulf headline while never seeing a strait or a war-risk premium — and the market spent Wednesday and Thursday writing that thesis into the price of crude itself. Friday morning's 3% give-back is the honest reminder we printed with the call: de-escalation is the cheerful way to lose this one, and we'd take that trade. Still Buy.
Darling Ingredients — Monday's Buy at $65.75 closed Wednesday at $67.51, up nearly 3%, with the record diesel market it sells into still setting records. Paid at both ends of the truck route, and the route got longer this week. Still Buy.
Murphy USA — here's a grade we promised. The named aisle risk arrived Tuesday night: Casey's beat estimates by 65 cents and fell roughly 10% anyway, because 40-times-earnings priced for perfection has no room for merely good. And Murphy USA? It closed Wednesday at $517.46 — above our $511 flag — while its glamorous neighbor got marked down. The 15.6-times seatbelt did exactly what we bought it for. Still Buy.
Royal Gold — Thursday's other fresh Buy, flagged at $261.37. Gold sat near $4,383 Thursday and was still holding there Friday morning, down half a percent after the CPI — giving up almost nothing in a week that pushed Treasury yields to their highest in nearly three years. And the buyers keep coming: about $18 billion flowed into gold ETFs in August, the second-largest monthly inflow on record. Royal Gold closed Wednesday at $262.54, right at the flag. The songwriter collects either way, and with $100 oil inflating every miner's diesel bill, we like the seat with no fuel surcharge more each day. Still Buy.
2) The Referees Ruled Against Our Reasoning — and For Our Calls
Last Saturday we promised to grade the Robert Half sell out loud once the jobs referee spoke. He spoke. Time to grade.
Our August 30th Sell near $39.50 named its own kill switch in writing: a payroll rebound, because staffing operating leverage is vicious on the way up. The August jobs report then delivered exactly that — 162,000 jobs against roughly 56,000 expected. By the strict letter of our thesis, we should have been wrong.
Instead, Robert Half fell from $42.90 the previous Wednesday to $38.48 by this Wednesday afternoon — a slide of roughly 10%, finally below our flag.
What happened? Strong jobs stopped being good news. A hot labor market plus hot inflation put a Fed hike back near the front of the odds, and a staffing company at 35 times trailing earnings — with a dividend costing twice its profits — deflates fast when the discount rate rises. We braced to be wrong for a respectable reason; the market skipped our script and agreed with our price anyway. We'll take the grade and note the humility: right call, partial credit on the reasoning. Sell stands.
The same referee graded our M/I Homes exit. We flipped that Buy to Sell on September 3rd near $146, refusing to bet on a jobs-report rescue. The rescue never came — hot payrolls, fresh yield highs — and the stock traded at $141.34 Wednesday, about 3% below our exit. Sold, and still sleeping fine.
Then the inflation referees spoke, back to back. Thursday morning, August producer prices rose 0.4% on the month with the annual rate jumping to 5.4% from 4.8% — energy doing the pushing. And Friday morning came the main event: consumer prices rose 0.4% on the month, in line with forecasts, with the annual rate at 3.4% — but core CPI ran 0.3%, a tenth hotter than expected. Not the cooling that calls off a hike. Futures held the odds of next week's hike near 70%, up from the coin flip that started the week, and stock futures actually edged higher Friday morning — relief, apparently, that it wasn't worse.
Which frames the rest of the rate shelf. Tradeweb, Sunday's Buy at $106, closed Wednesday at $102.94, down about 3% — the argument it hosts got louder all week and now runs straight into a live Fed decision; record August volumes were already in hand, and we're paying for patience while the fee-mix worry gets debated. Still Buy. Frontdoor sat right at our $81 flag on the latest tape we could verify, with the 30-year mortgage at 6.85% freezing its market into place. Still Buy. And Costco, Monday's Sell-into-strength near $930, traded at $903 Thursday — the deflating multiple deflating on schedule, business as wonderful as ever. Sell stands, for holders.
3) Bans, Bureaus, and the Border
Tuesday at 12:01 a.m., Canada's counter-tariffs went live. Wednesday, Washington answered with something blunter: an outright import ban on Canadian motorcycles, dairy, and most alcohol, effective September 29. The trade war stopped being a pricing story and became a seating chart.
Embraer — Wednesday's Buy at $73.81 on exactly that logic: the Brazilian planemaker already sits inside the room, tariff-exempt since February and assembling jets in Florida for fifteen years, while Trump threatens Bombardier's U.S. access by tweet. The stock closed Wednesday at $74.33 and ticked up to $74.70 Thursday morning. The ban is still a post, not a policy — and we still aren't paying for it; the record $34.5 billion backlog is the thesis and the ban stays a free option. Still Buy.
Polaris — Thursday's Watch near $61 closed Wednesday at $59.26, down about 3%. Notice what the market did there: handed the home-field powersports maker a protected market and sold the stock anyway, because 7% loan rates and record pump prices hang over every big-ticket toy. That's precisely why we asked to be paid to wait. The mid-$50s entrance we named is getting closer without us lifting a finger. Still Watch.
TransUnion — Tuesday's Watch at $79 drifted to $77.05 Wednesday. Director Pulte's "overcharging Americans" glare hasn't resolved into a rule, a retraction, or a washout — the referee is still swinging, so we're still outside the ring. Entrance unchanged: bi-merge resolved or shelved, or a washout toward $63. Still Watch.
4) The Exams Came Back — Oracle, Kroger, and the China Cabinet
Start with the one the whole AI aisle was bracing for. Thursday night, Oracle answered the funding question: cloud infrastructure revenue of $7.4 billion, up 121%, ahead of the roughly $7.19 billion Wall Street expected, with total revenue of $19.3 billion up 30%. The stock jumped in extended trading. The construction bill we wrote about Sunday is still getting paid — no blink, no retrench — and every building in that backlog still needs its gray box. Powell Industries, Sunday's Buy at $175, had already climbed 3% to $180.26 by Wednesday's close and traded at $176.88 Thursday midday while it waited for the verdict. The verdict came in for the thesis. Still Buy.
Friday morning brought the other half of the food-inflation referendum we paired BJ's to. Kroger — the country's biggest traditional grocer — reported identical sales excluding fuel of just +0.2%, against +3.4% a year ago, and cut its full-year comp-sales guidance to 0.2–0.8%. Read that next to BJ's +3.1% ex-gas comps and record 8.5 million members: the shoppers aren't disappearing, they're walking out of the supermarket and paying the club's cover charge instead. The honesty item stands: BJ's closed Wednesday at $88.51, down almost 5% from our $93 flag, the worst of the week's Buys — but Friday's evidence ran our way, not against us. Still Buy.
Apple's show happened Wednesday afternoon, and the premise we paired two stocks to was confirmed on stage: iPhone 18 Pro at $1,199, Pro Max at $1,299, and a folding iPhone the press couldn't even agree on a name for — Ultra, Fold, or Duo — expected to land between roughly $2,100 and $2,300. The priciest lineup in the company's history, as advertised. Cirrus Logic closed Wednesday at $110.72, a touch above our $109.51 flag — its chips ride along whatever the foldable ends up being called, and the in-housing scare we named didn't materialize on stage. Still Buy. Assurant closed Wednesday at $280.44 and ticked up to $282.76 Thursday morning — about 2% below our flag. The pricier the china, the more the bubble wrap costs, and the china just got officially pricier; September's storm season remains the honest watch item. Still Buy.
GameStop, graded as promised. Tuesday night's full report showed real discipline: record second-quarter operating income of $160.2 million, full-year EBITDA guidance raised past $650 million, $1.4 billion of convertible debt retired, collectibles up 57%. The stock jumped to $19.91 Wednesday — up 8% from our flag. And we still didn't move, because the entrance we named — the $2 billion buyback actually firing — stayed silent again. A discount you can't collect isn't a discount, even when it's rallying. Still Watch.
The rest of the patient shelf, quickly. Lululemon set a fresh 52-week low Thursday at $97.55 — the knife we refused to catch at $100 is still falling, and Heidi O'Neill's first week produced no reset yet; her plan plus flattening comps remains the entrance. Still Watch. Okta traded at $174.90 Thursday, up about 1% from Friday's flag; the $140s entrance stands. Still Watch. Aflac slipped to $114.19 Thursday, down about 2.6% — drifting toward the $110 entrance with the Bank of Japan's decision days away. Still Watch. TD SYNNEX eased about 2% to $258.30 with its own high-bar report due September 24. Still Buy. Tanger held at $37.82 through midweek. Still Buy.
So, your Monday checklist, in order. First, the main event: the Fed decides Tuesday and Wednesday with hike odds near 70% going in — it swings gold and Royal Gold, Tradeweb, Frontdoor, and every rate-sensitive call on our ledger. Second, the Bank of Japan right behind it Thursday and Friday — that's Aflac's entrance bell, or it isn't. Third, any first public words from Lululemon's new boss. Fourth, whether crude's Friday-morning exhale becomes a trend — that grades Magnolia and Darling from here.
Before You Go
The scoreboard. Nineteen calls this week — twelve Buys, six Watches, one Sell. GameStop up 8% (a Watch we didn't chase), Powell up 3%, Darling up 3%, Murphy USA and Embraer up about 1%. Paying tuition: BJ's down 5%, Tradeweb down 3%, TD SYNNEX and Assurant down about 2%. The Sells earned their keep: Costco is 3% below our flag, and Robert Half — after a 10% slide the week its own wrong-if scenario came true — finally sits below ours too.
And the discipline column, which never shows on a brokerage statement: six Watches, zero forced entrances. Refusing Lululemon at $100 looked smarter at Thursday's new low. Declining GameStop's 8% pop until the buyback bell rings. Letting Polaris drift toward the price we asked for instead of paying the one on offer. The system, same as every week: buy the story at the fair price, and let the exciting version go to somebody else.
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Written by Behind the Markets