May 25, 2026
The Holiday Numbers Don’t Add Up
NKE and CCL Are Priced Like They’re Losing
BREAKING: Elon’s New “Super Startup”
It has nothing to do with electric vehicles, space, social media, crypto, biotech, robots or AI…
99.99% of Elon’s own followers have no idea it exists.
It sits at the center of what Blackstone calls a $23 trillion investment opportunity.
And on July 22, Elon is expected to pull back the curtain and reveal exactly what he’s building.
The investors who get positioned before that date could walk away wealthier than they ever thought possible. Everyone else will be reading about it after the stocks have already run.
Go here now for the details, while you still have time to position yourself
At first glance, the Memorial Day weekend numbers look like a clean win for the U.S. consumer. Record TSA screenings. Thirty-nine million cars on the road. Gas at $3.17, the lowest in four years. Malls with people in them. You could read that and feel good.
I don’t entirely.
Here’s what I keep coming back to: planned spend per person fell off a cliff. Average Memorial Day spending intentions dropped from $289 to $86 year-over-year according to a RetailMeNot survey. More bodies through the door, dramatically less money leaving wallets. Indoor mall visits were up 6.7%. Outlet center visits up 3.9%. But the income profile of those visitors skewed lower than last year. That combination, higher traffic, lower spend, lower income mix, is not the story of a consumer firing on all cylinders. It’s the story of a consumer showing up because prices finally got cheap enough to justify it.
Slight tangent worth noting: gasoline demand hit 9.542 million barrels per day in the week leading into the holiday, the highest of 2025. That’s not strength. That’s just what happens when gas gets cheap enough that people drive again. Demand responding to price is not the same as demand reflecting confidence.
What’s interesting is where that leaves two stocks that have been left for dead.
Nike is at $44. Down 73% from its 2021 high. Wholesale revenues have now grown in back-to-back quarters, 8% in Q2 FY2026 and 5% in Q3. North America posted positive growth across every channel simultaneously for the first time in two years. The World Cup kicks off in less than six months. The stock yields 3.6% while you wait. The market is still treating it like the turnaround isn’t happening. The numbers say otherwise.
Carnival is a different animal. Twelve times trailing earnings. 85% of 2026 already sold at record prices. A $2.5 billion buyback just announced. Record EBITDA last quarter. Twenty-five analysts with a consensus target of $34 on a stock trading near $26. The $26.6 billion debt load is real and deserves respect. But the booking data has not flinched.
Both stocks live and die with the higher-income consumer. That cohort is holding right now. Whether it holds through year-end is the only question that actually matters here.
The 10 AM Trade Pulling Triple-Digit Winners
Stop chasing complicated systems and expensive software. A top trader discovered one repeatable setup that fires almost every morning and has delivered gains of 113% on GOOGL, 240% on META, and more. The Opening Bell Trade Guide breaks it all down and it’s free right now. Don’t wait. We won’t keep it free forever.