U.S. stocks edged higher Thursday, snapping a three-session losing streak, even as oil stole the show. Brent crude jumped 4.4% to $102.31 a barrel after the Wall Street Journal reported the U.S. is sending a third aircraft carrier strike group and up to 10,000 more troops to the Middle East, a possible prelude to renewed strikes on Iran after the midterms.

Breadth was split: five sectors green and six red. Energy led at +2.0% while Health Care lagged at -1.3%. The bond rout kept bleeding into the real economy, with the average 30-year mortgage rate jumping to 7.28%, its largest weekly increase in four years, according to Freddie Mac. The 10-year settled at 5.26%.

Stocktwits heat clustered around $NKE, $BA, and $XRPN. Next up: the jobs report Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Today's Briefing: Powered by Stocktwits Community API.

Nike reported fiscal first-quarter results Thursday, and the turnaround under CEO Elliott Hill just got harder to pitch. Revenue fell 4% to $11.2 billion, a slight miss against the $11.32 billion analysts expected, according to Reuters, as China and EMEA kept shrinking. Net income of $712 million beat estimates and gross margin expanded 60 basis points to 42.8% on lower warehousing costs.

The RIP: $NKE closed the regular session down 0.7% at $35.15, then dropped about 4% after hours to $33.69, a fresh 52-week low. The stock is down 43% this year.

The guide was bad. Fiscal 2027 revenue is shown declining in the high-single digits, with adjusted EPS of $1.15 to $1.35. A new "Pace" transformation program targets $2.5 billion in cumulative savings by fiscal 2031.

The turnaround is further away, not closer. The savings are back-loaded to 2031 while the sales decline is front-loaded, and Nike's own forecast says next year is worse than this one. The bull case at a 52-week low is that everything bad is priced in. Management just argued the opposite.

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The Funds that use modest leverage of 25% do so to enhance exposure, directly or indirectly, to the underlying stocks. This places them within the category of liquid alternative ETFs.

The use of leverage increases the return volatility, meaning it will amplify both gains and losses.

Accenture just gave the AI-will-kill-consulting crowd a rough Thursday. The consulting giant reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of $18.7 billion, up 6% and above the high end of its own guidance range, with EPS of $3.29, according to its release.

New bookings hit $22.2 billion, and CEO Julie Sweet flagged a record 141 client bookings of $100 million or more. Fiscal 2027 guidance calls for revenue growth of 3% to 6% in local currency and GAAP diluted EPS of $14.39 to $14.81.

The RIP: $ACN ( ▲ 15.78% ) jumped 15.8% to $212.30 on 4.5x normal volume, on pace for its best day on record, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The stock was down 32% heading into Thursday.

The number that moved it wasn't the beat. It was the bookings. Three months ago Accenture trimmed guidance on a corporate spending pullback and fell 18% in a day, according to Barron's. Thursday's $22.2 billion in new business said the pipeline is back. The consulting revenue beat, $9.28 billion against $8.86 billion expected, told the rest. AI isn't eating the business. For now, it's feeding it.

Mattel, the toy maker behind Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Fisher-Price, became the market’s newest takeover target Thursday. The Wall Street Journal reported that Authentic Brands Group approached the company and discussed an offer worth more than $20 per share, or roughly $6B-plus.

The RIP: $MAT ( ▲ 18.8% ) closed +18.8% at $15.04 after touching $17.23. Volume hit 35.6M shares, nearly 10 times its one-month average. Even after the jump, the stock finished about 25% below the reported $20 level.

That gap says plenty. No formal proposal, financing package, board response, or agreement has been announced. Traders got a takeover report, not a takeover.

The timing adds another wrinkle. Mattel filed Wednesday that CEO Ynon Kreiz would leave Friday, with Roger Lynch taking over no later than November 2. Any buyer would be approaching a company in the middle of a leadership handoff.

$MAT ticker talk is bullish, split between a bidding war and rumor fade ->

Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, is targeting an initial public offering as soon as mid-November, Bloomberg reported Thursday. Formal marketing could start the week of November 9, putting the shares on track to trade before Thanksgiving. The AI developer had pushed back earlier plans to list after the summer.

The RIP: Prospective investors put a fair valuation at $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion, and Anthropic expects to match or beat the size of SpaceX's record IPO. Deliberations are ongoing and the timeline could still shift.

Anthropic lost almost $42 billion in 2025 on $4.6 billion of revenue, though more than $34 billion of that was an accounting charge on the fair value of its liabilities rather than cash burned running the business. It still wants a $2 trillion valuation while chief rival OpenAI just decided going public now would be ill-advised, and this year's IPO class is averaging a 4% loss excluding SpaceX and SK Hynix. Anthropic is betting it is the exception.

1.2K WATCHERS · EXTREMELY BULLISH · EXTREMELY HIGH ACTIVITY

Armada shareholders approved the Evernorth combination, clearing the XRP treasury company to close the deal on October 7 and begin Nasdaq trading under its new identity on October 8.

26.8K WATCHERS · BULLISH · NORMAL ACTIVITY

Paramount’s new debt weakened after it raised roughly $52B through bonds and bank loans to finance its $81B Warner acquisition, pushing yields on some bonds above 10%.

4K WATCHERS · BEARISH · LOW ACTIVITY

McKesson reached an agreement in principle to extend its CVS pharmaceutical distribution partnership through June 2032 while reaffirming fiscal 2027 adjusted EPS guidance of $44.20 to $45.00.

Bearish 🐻 | Bullish 🐮 | It’s Complicated 😵‍💫

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💰 The number behind Accenture's best day ever

✈️ Boeing dodged a strike at the perfect moment

📈 The bond sell-off hit a 24-year extreme

🌾 Corteva's $42B drop isn't what it looks like

🏠 Investors are dumping mortgage ETFs

🐕 Dogecoin is getting into DeFi

🪙 The crypto move you missed today, explained before you wake up to it

Macro: Nonfarm payrolls report (8:30 AM ET), State Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report (9:00 AM ET), Factory orders (10:00 AM ET). 📊

Pre-Market Earnings: $WALD Waldencast plc - Ordinary Shares - Class A. ☀️

P.S. You can listen to all of these earnings calls on Stocktwits.

Want to see some change? Respond to this email and reach me, Kevin Travers, with feedback. Follow me on Stocktwits. Send me charts and ideas! Refer a friend for this quarter’s edition of The RIP Forecast 😎

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