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Market Data Table

Breakfast News: Wall St. Wants Proof, Not Promises

September 3, 2026

Wednesday's Markets
S&P 500 7,667 (-+0.46%)
Nasdaq 26,218 (+0.45%)
Dow 53,062 (+0.56%)
Bitcoin $77,391 (+0.17%)

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1. Broadcom Sank, Snowflake Soared on the Same AI Bet

Chart comparing Broadcom's and Snowflake's market caps over the past five years, with Broadcom rising to $1.9 trillion and Snowflake remaining mostly flat at $102.4 billion.

Broadcom's (NASDAQ:AVGO) AI chip sales more than tripled last quarter, up 221% year over year to $16.7 billion. Investors punished the stock anyway. It fell about 6% after hours because Broadcom's revenue guide for this quarter, $34.8 billion, landed just under Wall Street's $35 billion target. Hours later, Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) reported product revenue growth accelerating to 37%. That's its third straight quarter of speeding up. Its stock jumped over 20%. Same industry, same night, opposite verdicts.

Two ends of the same stack: Broadcom's order book is a bet on how much compute hyperscalers want built years out. Snowflake's growth is proof that compute already built is getting used and paid for. One is a leading indicator. The other is trailing.
Usage is what the market wants now: Broadcom's chip sales tripled, but the stock still fell on a guide that missed Wall Street's target by a hair. Snowflake is far smaller, at around $1.5 billion in product revenue, but it beat forecasts. AI tools like CoCo and CoWork drove roughly half of that acceleration. If that broadening keeps going, it confirms real enterprise demand. If Broadcom's order book keeps growing while usage stays this narrow, that's the setup for an overbuild.

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2. Costco's Digital Sales Are Growing Twice as Fast

Costco (NASDAQ:COST) doesn't do surprises. Same rotisserie chicken, same $1.50 hot dog, year after year. So, when the stock barely moved after August net sales climbed 9.9% to $23.7 billion, that's no surprise. It's growing fastest online: Digital comparable sales rose 17.9% for the month, more than double the 8.4% gain in total comparable sales. That gap shows the membership model is squeezing more spend from existing shoppers, on top of whatever new warehouses add. The Stock Advisor recommendation by Team Hidden Gems is outperforming the S&P 500 by 34% over the past five years.

A gap that's held all year: This isn't a one-month fluke. Digital comparable sales grew 20.7% for the full fiscal year. Total comparable sales rose 6.6% over the same stretch. Both figures are adjusted for gas prices and currency. Costco now runs 939 warehouses worldwide, and its online channel is growing on top of that footprint.
Watch the ratio, not the headline number: The tell for investors is whether digital comps keep growing at roughly double the pace of total comps in the months ahead. If that spread holds, Costco is genuinely changing how members shop. If it narrows, credit a strong month more than a lasting shift.

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3. Uber Joins the Drivers It Fought for a Decade

Uber (NYSE:UBER) has joined driver unions in New Jersey and Washington, D.C., to push rules that keep human drivers behind the wheel for most self-driving rides. Uber's own president has admitted the position looks contradictory. The company spent a decade fighting driver protections before this.

The 85% human-driver rule: In New Jersey, Uber wants any robotaxi platform to keep a human driver behind the wheel for at least 85% of rides. That rule would run for three years. Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Waymo, running solo in several cities, argues the rule solves a problem that doesn't exist. Robotaxis are still under 0.5% of Uber's rides, so this fight is about who controls the market years from now.
Uber stock keeps paying off: Despite recent share-price weakness, Fool contributing analyst Neil Rozenbaum said last month, "I don't know what Uber needs to show the market, but I just know that they keep on executing every single quarter, whether it's mobility, delivery, or even their advertising business, which is a high-margin business that is also growing very quickly." The stock is outperforming the S&P 500 by 151% since the July 2022 Rule Breakers recommendation.

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4. Zscaler, Samsara, and Lululemon Report Later Today -- Each With Something to Prove

Three Stock Advisor recommendations report after today's close, and each one faces a different test of its growth story.

Zscaler (NASDAQ:ZS): Watch out for Zero Trust Everywhere adoption. This has been the standout growth metric -- customers on the platform surpassed 700 last quarter, up from 550 the quarter before and just 210 a year ago. Continued acceleration here for the Team Hidden Gems rec supports the "platform consolidation" thesis that's core to the bull case.
Samsara (NYSE:IOT): The Team Rule Breakers rec has also been consistently adding large customers ($1 million+ annual recurring revenue) each quarter. Watch tonight for updated ARR growth and large-customer additions, since that's the metric investors use to judge whether the premium valuation is earned.
Lululemon (NASDAQ:LULU): Q1 results triggered an 8.6% single-day drop after the Team Rule Breakers and Team Hidden Gems rec guided Q2 earnings per share (EPS) well below expectations. It cited gross margin compression from tariffs and other cost pressures and slashed full-year guidance. Results today will therefore be key to getting updates on performance and whether the bleeding can be stemmed fast.

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5. Those Who Know FIGS Best Keep Buying More

Team Rule Breakers

Trina Spear and Heather Hasson founded FIGS (NYSE: FIGS) on one idea: Medical scrubs could look good and still work well through a long shift. Fourteen years later, CEO Spear told analysts on the second-quarter call that "there are now more searches for FIGS than there are for scrubs." Their road to our Rule Breakers scorecard was long and bumpy. We recommended the stock in June 2026 at $12.22. We're already ahead of the market, a good start and nothing more. Credit Trait #4 of David Gardner's Six Traits of a Rule Breaker: good management and smart backing. Without both, FIGS would not have survived the ups and downs since its 2021 IPO.

The founders keep adding to their stakes, even after selling some right after the IPO: Spear and Hasson now own 7.02 million and 3.31 million shares. Hasson stepped away as co-CEO in 2022 and remains executive chairman. Spear still runs the company and has rejuvenated growth: Revenue rose nearly 29% year over year in the second quarter.
The smart backing has a name, Ron Baron: The famed growth investor bought just over 1 million shares at the IPO. He owns almost 60 million today, held through every rough stretch since.

Will FIGS get to 120 recommendations across The Motley Fool like Shopify (NASDAQ: SHOP)? Time will tell. But good leadership and smart backing will remain a timeless trait of Rule Breaker stocks that can outperform the market over the long term.

Team Rule Breakers has a 5-year price prediction of $35.

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6. Today's Question!

Quick portfolio check: Which part of the AI boom are you staying away from, and why?

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