Tuesday, September 9, 2025
A series of big events today, on what had been expected to be fairly mild in actionable market news, actually kicked off late yesterday with news that Amsterdam-based GPU creator Nebius NBIS is engaging in an AI infrastructure deal with Microsoft MSFT worth $17.4 billion through 2031. Shares of the former spinoff from Russian tech giant Yandex shot up +49% today.
UnitedHealth UNH was the Dow’s biggest mover today, +8.5%, on news that 78% of its Medicare Advantage enrollees should qualify for bonus payments from the federal government. These include plans rated 4-stars or higher. UNH shares remain down -31% year to date.
Apple’s AAPL iPhone 17 event — today’s unveiling of the slimmer iPhone Air model — failed to prod investors toward buying the stock. Though the sleek design may be a selling point for some customers, the lack of any major enhancements with AI technology, etc. Shares of AAPL were down -1.5% today, even as the Nasdaq closed at new all-time high.
The Dow finished the day up +196 points, +0.43%, while the S&P 500 gained +17 points, +0.27%. The Nasdaq’s record day took it to 21,879, up +80 points on the session, +0.37%. The small-cap Russell 2000 was the only major index to give back recent gains today: -13 points or -0.55%.
After today’s close, Oracle ORCL reported lackluster earnings in its fiscal Q3 report today: earnings of $1.47 per share just met the Zacks consensus, while revenues of $14.93 billion missed expectations of $15.01 billion. Yet shares have zoomed ahead +22% upon the release as its cloud revenue growth has gone into a new orbit.
Without getting too deep into the weeds, Oracle services excess cloud demand for other Big Tech players, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc. And business has been booming: Cloud Infrastructure grew +55% year over year to $3.3 billion, Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) backlog gained +359%, and Multi-cloud Database Revenue expanded +1529% from a year ago. These aren’t the high-margin businesses that serve organic Oracle customers, but it’s hard to argue with +1500% growth.
Last year, when 12-month revisions to employment numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) came out, it demonstrated a massive disconnect with initial job reportage, to the tune of -818K. (This was subsequently revised to -598K at a later date.) It turns out this extraordinarily high number was not a one-off: today’s 12-month BLS revision was -911K — the largest such revision ever.
This accounted for the year from April 2024 through March 2025, which saw the highest number of jobs reduced per sector in the Leisure & Hospitality space, -176K. Professional/Business Services dialed back job gains by -158K for that time period, Trade Retail subtracted -126K and Trade Wholesale shed -110K. Trade/Transportation/Utilities grew +6600 jobs and Utilities gained +3700 on the revision.
These revisions depict the antiquated method of telephone surveys to gather jobs data. Last month, President Trump fired the Director of BLS because he said the jobs numbers were “rigged.” The White House doubled-down on this sentiment following the data’s release today without mentioning that jobs numbers since March of this year have taken yet another step lower. Trump’s choice to take over as BLS Director is E.J. Antoni, who hails from the right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation.
