The Oracle of RPO

Investors were positively surprised by Oracle’s (ORCL) earnings for the first quarter of fiscal 2026, released after the market closed on Tuesday, September 9; shares rose 36% the following day. However, it wasn’t the reported revenue or profit that shocked investors — both of those metrics missed analyst expectations. The excitement was due to the forward-looking guidance provided by the company in its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure segment, and specifically the 359% year-over-year increase in remaining performance obligations, aka RPO. No, that is not a typo. ORCL’s reported RPO was $455

A key theme dominating global financial markets in recent weeks has been the general upward pressure on sovereign bond yields, particularly at the long end of government bond market curves. This move reflects a complex interplay of macroeconomic factors, but increasingly, political instability is emerging as a driver — most notably in Japan and France, where recent leadership shakeups have introduced fresh uncertainty into the policy outlook and fiscal trajectory.

In Japan, the political landscape was rattled over the weekend when Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced his resignation. His departure has triggered a leaders

With just a week remaining until the highly anticipated September Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, Wednesday’s wholesale inflation print and Thursday’s consumer inflation results for August are the last major hurdles lying between the expected resumption of the FOMC easing cycle. Fed fund futures have fully priced a 0.25% rate reduction next Wednesday — and are currently priced for a full percentage point of easing before Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Jerome Powell’s term ends in May (with roughly two-thirds of this priced in for 2025). Baring the unlikely chance Fed Chair Powell warns of a recession or outs

Key Talking Points:

• The bad news is that recent revisions have been largely to the downside. The good news is investors have alternative data sources.

• Unemployment in August rose to 4.3% from 4.2% the previous month. This is what a soft landing looks like, but we are in the early innings of the slowdown.

• Payrolls grew by 22,000 in August, but employment in June and July combined is 21,000 lower than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.)