By Nicholas Thomas Friday, September 25, 2026 · Before the open · Durable goods 8:30, Michigan final 10:00 A force majeure notice is not a delay. It is a letter about who pays for one. Oracle sent that letter to the developer of its largest announced data center on Wednesday; the market read it as a delay on Thursday, and by the close the stock had given back more than half of what it lost at the worst of the morning.
The question for this morning is not whether Project Jupiter is late. Nobody outside the project can know that yet. The question is what Oracle has told two different audiences about the same building, and whether the two accounts fit.
Here is what happened and what it means for stocks. Overnight, sworn in Thursday's closes are sworn in on two feeds. The S&P 500 finished at 7,704.13, down 1.90 points, or 0.02 percent (Associated Press at 4:18 p.m.; The Motley Fool's close story at 5:33 p.m.; Trading Economics' change field agrees).
The Dow closed at 51,349.98, down 161.61, or 0.31 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite at 26,939.37, up 3.34, on the same three feeds. The Russell 2000 closed at 2,835.57, down 3.09, on the Associated Press alone. For the week so far, the S&P 500 is up 53.63 points, and the Dow is down 332.66, per the same wire, which is the arithmetic behind every "fourth straight weekly loss" headline you will read today: last Friday's Dow close was 51,682.64, and the index needs to gain 333 points today to avoid it.
That is not a fact yet. It is a fact at four o'clock. The ten-year closed Thursday at 5.192 percent, up 7.8 basis points, a new fifty-two-week high (TheStreet, 3:08 p.m. and again at 3:46).
The two-year was 4.918, up 2.3, and the five-year 5.052, up 4.7, from the same table at the same minute. This morning the ten-year is quoted at 5.194 by Trading Economics (7:31 a.m., up 1.1 basis points) and at 5.225 by TheStreet's pre-market note (undated within the hour, read at 7:34). Those are different minutes, not a disagreement, and the direction is the same: higher.
The thirty-year is 5.502 on TheStreet, which it calls the highest since 2004. That comparison is right; the ten-year's is 2007. They are different records on different maturities, and yesterday's Brief logged a preview that swapped them.
Asia split along the seam it has kept all week, with one change: the seam has moved from chips to rates. Tokyo rose. The Nikkei 225 closed at 66,364, up 1.3 percent (Trading Economics' narrative, 7:30 a.m.), a level that reconciles with Thursday's 65,514 to within a point when the 850.21-point change beside it is applied.
The same page's quote field said 66,572, which doesn't reconcile with anything and is addressed in the sources. Tokyo's own ten-year pulled back from a 1996 high, oil eased on the Hormuz reports, and the banks led: Mitsubishi UFJ up 4 percent, Mizuho 4.2. The chip names rose less, Advantest 2.8, Kioxia 2.2.
Hong Kong fell. The Hang Seng closed at 24,510, down 251 points, or 1.0 percent, a third straight loss, with the same page naming the ten-year Treasury near 5.20 as the reason and Tencent, AIA, Xiaomi and Meituan as the casualties. Seoul was shut for the Chuseok holiday; Trading Economics' Kospi page still carries Wednesday's close of 7,081, and nothing printed this morning as a Korean session should be believed.
Europe, an hour in, is following Tokyo rather than Hong Kong. The Euro Stoxx 50 is quoted at 6,309, up 0.5 percent from Thursday's 6,275 close (Trading Economics, 7:33 a.m.); the DAX future is up 0.79 percent and the FTSE 100 up 0.41 percent on Investing.com's futures board. Thursday in Europe was a down day on energy: the Stoxx 600 fell 0.5 percent to 637, Infineon lost 4.2 percent and Deutsche Bank 2.3 percent, while Dior rose 16 percent on the Arnault family's cash offer at €469 a share.
US futures are modestly higher. Investing.com's board has S&P 500 futures at 7,717.50, up 13.30, or 0.17 percent; Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.37; and Dow futures up 0.20, on a board stamped 02:55 on its own clock. TheStreet's morning note says only that futures "edged higher." Trading Economics' opening line said futures were down about 0.1 percent each, which was written earlier and before the Hormuz headlines improved.
Futures are not sworn in, and nothing below depends on them. Oil is lower, and the pair is printed on one page, one minute. WTI $92.525, down 2.20 percent; Brent $105.148, down 1.36 percent (Trading Economics, 7:31 a.m.).
TheStreet has WTI at $92.89 and Brent at $105.40 a few minutes later. The spread between the benchmarks is above twelve dollars on both feeds, which is where it has sat since the Gulf blockade. The reason for the fall is a report, not a document: Reuters' account at 1:30 p.m.
Thursday that US and Iranian negotiators are working on a phased arrangement under which shipping would transit the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for Washington lifting its blockade, and CNBC's report this morning that Iran's foreign minister offered to reopen the strait and restart nuclear talks within seven days if conditions are met. Both outlets frame them as proposals, and this desk does the same. The dollar index is 100.987, down 0.29 percent (Trading Economics, 7:35 a.m.), below 101 for the first time in five sessions and still up about one percent on the week.
The same page's dollar-yen line is in the sources, because it disagrees with itself. image.png The subject On Wednesday Oracle sent a force majeure notice to Stack Infrastructure, the Blue Owl Capital unit developing Project Jupiter in Doña Ana County, New Mexico. Bloomberg reported it Thursday morning; TechCrunch, Data Center Dynamics, the Albuquerque Journal and El Paso Matters followed with local and contractual detail through the afternoon. The published numbers are these.
Project Jupiter is a 2.45-gigawatt campus on 1,400 acres with four buildings planned, announced as an investment of up to $165 billion. It is financed in part by an $18 billion loan from about twenty banks, which Bloomberg Law reports is trading below 90 cents on the dollar. The site is meant to come online in 2028.
Its power comes from Bloom Energy fuel cells that burn natural gas, and the gas comes by an Energy Transfer pipeline whose in-service date has slipped from this month to 1 February 2027 after the New Mexico State Land Office denied its route twice. An air-quality permit for the fuel cells is pending, with a state deadline of 23 November. The notice, as every outlet that has seen or been told about it describes it, does one thing: it preserves Oracle's right to delay payments to its landlord if the facility misses its 2028 target.
It does not end the tenancy. Oracle's statement, given to the Albuquerque Journal by its spokesman Michael Egbert, says the notices "are commonplace in developments of this scale and are often used to preserve contractual rights among project partners," that they "do not, by themselves, establish a project delay or change delivery expectations," and that "Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule." Blue Owl told TechCrunch the notice "does not change the financial commitments to this multi-year project." Blue Owl declined to comment to Bloomberg. Now the check.
A published number has a place it should show up. Project Jupiter is a lease. Oracle is the tenant, not the builder, so the $165 billion is not on Oracle's balance sheet and never was; it belongs to Stack, Blue Owl's funds, and the twenty banks.
Oracle's side should show up in two places: in the remaining performance obligations it reports each quarter, because the capacity is presold, and in the lease commitments that will begin to run through operating expense when the buildings are delivered. Oracle's last reported remaining performance obligations were $664 billion, up $209 billion in a year, with more than $30 billion of new AI contracts booked in the quarter, per its fiscal first-quarter release as carried by 24/7 Wall St. and Yahoo Finance. That backlog is the thing the stock trades on.
Some part of it, an amount Oracle has never broken out, is meant to be served from New Mexico in 2028. So here are the two accounts, side by side. To the county, the press and the market, the schedule is unchanged.
To the landlord, in writing, the schedule is at enough risk that Oracle wants the right not to pay if it slips. Both can be true at once; a company that expected to be on time would still send the letter if its lawyers told it to, and its lawyers would, because the pipeline that feeds the plant is now dated five months after the plant was meant to have gas. But a reader is entitled to notice which account was volunteered and which was disclosed by someone else.
The reassurance went out on X. The notice reached Bloomberg through people familiar with it. The desk cannot grade this.
No document in the public record says when Project Jupiter's first building was contractually due, what Oracle owes per month once it is, or how much of the $664 billion depends on it. Until one of those appears, in a 10-Q lease note, in a county filing or in a lender's disclosure, the question stays open, and it is left open here. What can be said is where the cost of a delay now sits.
Before Wednesday, it sat with Oracle, which would have paid rent on a building it could not fill with customers until the gas arrived. After Wednesday, if the notice holds, it sits with Stack and Blue Owl and their banks, whose $18 billion is already quoted at a discount. That is the whole content of the letter.
It moves the bill. It does not move the pipeline. This matters beyond one site because Project Jupiter is the template.
The buildout's largest campuses are increasingly not owned by the companies whose names are on them; developers build them, private credit and bank syndicates finance them, and they lease them back to the tenant on long terms. That structure keeps the capital expenditure off the tenant's cash flow statement and puts it on someone else's. It works as long as the tenant pays on time.
A force majeure notice is the first public instance this desk has seen of a hyperscale tenant reaching for the clause that lets it not. What moved Oracle is the trade, and the settled number is smaller than the one that circulated. The stock closed at $139.54, down $5.02, or 3.47 percent, on Investing.com's dated table and stockanalysis.com's close field, both reconciled against a prior close of $144.56.
The day's range was $133.48 to $140.34. During the session, it was reported down 4.48 percent at 8:56 a.m., 6.44 percent at 9:51, 5.05 percent at 10:59, and 4.91 percent at 11:24, all on TheStreet and Benzinga's live coverage. Every one of those was true when it was printed.
TheStreet's 4:18 p.m. market wrap still carried 6.44, which was two and a half hours stale by then and is the figure a reader would have taken away as the close. The day's low, $133.48, is 7.7 percent below the prior close, so at worst the market took Oracle down by roughly what it later decided the letter was worth twice over. Oracle has lost 52.7 percent of its market value over a year, according to stockanalysis.com, and stood at $248 in June, per the Albuquerque Journal.
Pre-market this morning, stockanalysis.com shows $138.85, down 0.49 percent, on a stamp that reads 8:31 a.m., an hour ahead of the desk clock when it was read; it is not used. Blue Owl Capital, the landlord's parent, closed at $9.25, down 35 cents, or 3.65 percent, from $9.60, with a range of $9.02 to $9.51 (stockanalysis.com); it was down 4.69 percent at 11:24 a.m. on Benzinga. The after-hours quote was unchanged.
Its 52-week high is $18, per Investing.com, and it has lost 46 percent over the past year. Citizens' analyst kept a $17 target on it Thursday. A notice letting a tenant defer rent lands on the landlord, and the landlord's stock lost the same percentage as the tenant's.
Two moves that were not the trade and got swept into its coverage. Meta closed at $777.59, up $33.49, or 4.5 percent (The Motley Fool, 5:33 p.m.), after the launch of its VR glasses and a handheld device built for the Muse agent it announced on 8 September; it was the largest gain in the index's top tier on a day the story was Oracle. And Nvidia closed at $224.58, down 93 cents, or 0.4 percent, on the same feed, which is the number to hold against every headline that says the AI trade sold off Thursday.
It did not. One landlord and one tenant did. The other two moves of size were not AI at all: MGM Resorts down 9.98 percent after a buyout offer was withdrawn, and TD Synnex down 13 percent on record earnings, both on TheStreet at 4:18 p.m. and neither sworn in. image.png The calendar All times Eastern.
Consensus is from Trading Economics unless stated, with Investing.com's figure printed where it differs. Williams spoke at 5:15 a.m., before this Brief was built. Durable goods orders for August print at 8:30.
Trading Economics' page, read at 7:29, carried a consensus of minus 0.4 percent for the headline after a prior of plus 1.1 (Investing.com: minus 0.3 after plus 1.1), plus 0.4 percent for orders excluding transportation after plus 0.3 (Investing.com: plus 0.6 after plus 0.4), and 0.3 percent for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft after plus 1.6. The Trading Economics page also displayed a column of higher figures beside those, 0.9, 0.7, 1.4 and 0.6, which are its own forecasts and not the market's; the two columns are easy to confuse, and this desk has confused a prior with a consensus on this provider twice this week, so both are named here. Kansas City Fed President Schmid speaks at 9:20.
The University of Michigan's final September sentiment reading prints at 10:00, consensus 47.6 on Trading Economics, against a preliminary of 47.8 and an August final of 51.7; Investing.com carries 47.8 as its forecast, which is the preliminary. One-year inflation expectations are expected at 4.6 percent, five-year at 3.4. Baker Hughes' rig count is at 1:00 p.m., consensus 452 oil rigs.
Cleveland Fed President Hammack speaks at 2:00. Not today: personal income and outlays for August, with the PCE price index, is Wednesday, September 30; core consensus 0.3 percent on the month. Also next week: the Dallas Fed survey Monday, JOLTS and the Conference Board Tuesday, ADP and Chicago PMI Wednesday, and the ISM and September payrolls the week's close.
The next FOMC meeting is 27 and 28 October, with no projections; then 8 and 9 December. The election is 3 November. The TrendyVest Championship opens at the bell on Thursday 1 October.
Presidents Trump and Xi hold a second day of meetings in Washington today; Thursday's session produced a two-month extension of the trade agreement to 10 January 2027, announced by Treasury Secretary Bessent at 3:22 p.m. What we're checking next The lease. Oracle's next 10-Q, for the quarter ending 30 November, is the first document that could show a change in the operating lease commitments schedule or a new line in the remaining performance obligations note reflecting a New Mexico slip; the desk will read the lease footnote against the one filed in September.
Before that, three public records could settle pieces of the question: the New Mexico Environment Department's decision on the fuel-cell air permit, due by 23 November; any amended in-service filing by Energy Transfer for the pipeline; and Blue Owl's third-quarter results, where a question about Stack's largest tenant is now unavoidable. The desk is also checking whether any other Stargate site has drawn a similar notice, because if the clause has been used once, it has been read everywhere. Sources and data notes Every level carries its feed, and the minute it was observed, Eastern.
Observations were made between 7:20 and 7:40 a.m.; the Brief was delivered after its 8:15 target because the run stalled between reads, and the 8:30 durable goods print is previewed above, not reported. Sworn in. Thursday's index closes (S&P 500 7,704.13, −1.90; Dow 51,349.98, −161.61; Nasdaq Composite 26,939.37, +3.34) are from the Associated Press wire on ABC News at 4:18 p.m. and The Motley Fool's close story at 5:33 p.m., with Trading Economics' change fields agreeing at 7:28 a.m.
The Russell 2000 at 2,835.57 is the Associated Press alone. Oracle's close at $139.54, −3.47 percent, is from Investing.com's dated history table and stockanalysis.com's close field, both read at 7:30 a.m., and The Motley Fool's close story. Blue Owl's $9.25 is stockanalysis.com alone.
Meta's $777.59 and Nvidia's $224.58 are The Motley Fool alone. Not sworn in. US futures rest on one board (Investing.com, stamped 02:55 on its own clock) and a second feed's direction only.
Thursday's yield table is TheStreet alone. This morning's ten-year is two feeds at two minutes: 5.194 (Trading Economics, 7:31) and 5.225 (TheStreet, read 7:34). Asian and European levels are Trading Economics' narratives; the Nikkei's 66,364 reconciles with Thursday's 65,514 within a point, given the change printed beside it.
MGM and TD Synnex are TheStreet at 4:18 p.m. only. Oil. WTI $92.525 and Brent $105.148 from Trading Economics at 7:31 a.m., on one page at one minute; TheStreet's $92.89 and $105.40 are the same pair a few minutes later.
Thursday's settlement figures were not read. The subject. Project Jupiter's 2.45 gigawatts, the 2028 target, the Energy Transfer pipeline's slip to 1 February 2027, the 23 November permit deadline and the Blue Owl and Oracle statements are from TechCrunch (2:11 p.m.), Bloomberg Law (8:25 a.m., updated 9:51), Data Center Dynamics and the Albuquerque Journal (5:47 p.m.), all read between 7:24 and 7:30 a.m.
The $165 billion, 1,400 acres and four buildings are Data Center Dynamics' and the county's figures as reported; the $18 billion loan and its sub-90 trading level are Bloomberg Law's. Oracle's remaining performance obligations of $664 billion, first-quarter capital expenditure of $28.5 billion and new AI contracts above $30 billion are the company's fiscal first-quarter figures as carried by 24/7 Wall St. via Yahoo Finance at 10:13 a.m.; the desk did not open the release itself this morning. The claim that the notice is the first public use of the clause by a hyperscale tenant is this desk's own and rests on its reading of the beat, not on a search of every lease.
Desk arithmetic. The Dow needs 51,682.64 − 51,349.98 = 332.66 points today to avoid a fourth weekly loss; inputs from the Associated Press. Oracle's low of $133.48 versus a prior close of $144.56 is a 7.66 percent drop.
The Nikkei's 66,364 minus 850.21 is 65,513.79. The Chronicle. Three entries join the register this morning, taking it from 143 to 146.
Entry 145: Trading Economics' United States index page at 7:28 a.m. showed the S&P 500 at 7,722.99 beside −1.90 and the Dow at 51,443.06 beside −161.61, Thursday's cash changes beside Friday's contract levels, the ninth time in eleven sessions and the form The Errata, No. 5, named last night (item 4); 7,722.99 + 1.90 implies a Wednesday close of 7,724.89, which no feed carried. Entry 146: the same provider's Japan page at 7:30 a.m. quoted the Nikkei 225 at 66,572, up +850.21, while its own narrative said the index closed at 66,364; the narrative reconciles with Thursday's close, and the quote does not. Entry 147: the same provider's currency page at 7:35 a.m. carried dollar-yen at 157.726, change +1.1380, percent −0.72; 1.138 on 156.59 is 0.73 percent, and the sign on the change and the sign on the percentage cannot both be right.
Separately, TheStreet's 4:18 p.m. wrap carrying Oracle at −6.44 percent, the 9:51 a.m. figure, against a settled −3.47, is recorded here and not logged: the wrap is a live blog's last entry, not a closing table, and the desk classifies it as stale copy rather than a false close. Sources. The Associated Press via ABC News, The Motley Fool and Trading Economics for the closes; TheStreet for Thursday's yields, oil and single-stock moves through the day and for this morning's pre-market note; Investing.com and stockanalysis.com for Oracle and Blue Owl; Benzinga and Investing.com for the intraday Blue Owl moves; Bloomberg Law, TechCrunch, Data Center Dynamics, the Albuquerque Journal and El Paso Matters for Project Jupiter; 24/7 Wall St. via Yahoo Finance for Oracle's quarterly figures; Trading Economics for Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, the euro area, commodities, bonds and the dollar; Investing.com for futures and for the calendar cross-check; Trading Economics' United States calendar for the day's releases; Yahoo Finance's Thursday live blog for the Reuters Hormuz report and the Bessent announcement; CNBC via TheStreet for this morning's Iranian offer; the Federal Reserve Board for the meeting dates.
The Decoy Chronicle — every entry, dated and sourced — is published as a standing register and updated with each issue. The TrendyVest Championship is open for registration at Tournament.Trendyvest.com — 500 seats, a $100,000 simulated stake, free to enter. Trading begins October 1 at the market open.
TrendyVest is an independent research practice. This is analysis and editorial opinion, not investment advice, and nothing here is a recommendation that any particular person buy or sell any security. Figures identified as this desk's arithmetic are the practice's own, and the inputs are printed.