NEW YORK, January 4, 2026, 17:56 ET — Market closed
- Costco shares ended Friday down about 0.9%, near the bottom of their 52-week range.
- The retailer is due to report December sales results after market close on Jan. 7.
- Telsey’s Joseph Feldman expects comparable sales growth to slow sharply from last year.
Costco Wholesale (COST.O) shares closed Friday down about 0.9% at $854.50. The stock is now heading into a December sales update scheduled for release after market close on Wednesday, Jan. 7.
The timing matters because Costco’s monthly sales release offers one of the earliest reads on holiday demand and member shopping behavior at a major U.S. retailer. The update can also influence sentiment toward the warehouse-club model, where value-focused shoppers have been a key theme.
Markets also reopen into the first full week of 2026’s U.S. economic calendar. Traders will be watching Monday’s ISM manufacturing survey and Friday’s U.S. nonfarm payrolls report, with Wednesday’s ADP employment report and ISM services data in between.
On Friday, Telsey Advisory Group analyst Joseph Feldman reiterated an Outperform rating on Costco and kept a $1,100 price target, Benzinga reported. Feldman is focusing on December “comps,” short for comparable sales — revenue at stores open at least a year — as a cleaner measure of underlying demand. Benzinga
Feldman expects total December comps of 2.2%, a sharp slowdown from 7.4% in the prior-year period, according to the report. He also sees core merchandise comps of about 2.0% once gasoline and foreign-exchange effects are stripped out, with U.S. comps excluding gas at 1.0%, Canada at 4.0% and other international markets at 5.0%.
“Gas prices declined in December, which should create an estimated comp headwind of ~20 bps,” Feldman wrote, Benzinga reported. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point; Feldman also said a weaker U.S. dollar should provide an estimated 40-basis-point tailwind. Benzinga
Costco’s shares finished the week just 1.2% above their 52-week low of $844.06 and about 21% below the 52-week high of $1,078.23, according to company stock data. Technical traders are also watching the stock’s position below its 50-day and 200-day moving averages, which sit near $898 and $951, respectively, according to Yahoo Finance data.
The move came even as the Dow and S&P 500 ended higher on Friday to start 2026, Reuters reported. Costco traded between $852.50 and $863.10 in the regular session, putting the mid-$860s — an area around recent closes — on the radar as a near-term ceiling for any rebound.
There is room for the story to break either way. If the December update shows weaker-than-expected U.S. comps, it would reinforce investor worries about cooling momentum as comparisons get tougher, while gasoline and currency moves can still distort the headline figure even when demand is steady.
The next test is Wednesday’s December sales release after market close. Investors also have Costco’s annual shareholders’ meeting on Jan. 15 and the company’s fiscal second-quarter earnings call scheduled for March 5.
