NEW YORK, December 30, 2025, 11:20 ET — Regular session
- Costco shares were down about 0.5% in late-morning trading, lagging a flat broader market.
- Retail and consumer-staples names drifted lower in a holiday-thinned session as investors awaited Fed meeting minutes.
- Traders are looking ahead to Costco’s scheduled December sales update on Jan. 7.
Costco Wholesale Corporation shares fell on Tuesday, down 0.5% at $863.08 as of 11:05 a.m. ET. The S&P 500 ETF was little changed.
The muted move came in a holiday-shortened week marked by light trading volumes, with U.S. markets closed on Thursday for New Year’s Day. “I wouldn’t try to make too much out of anything that happens in a holiday-shortened week,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B Riley Wealth. Reuters
Retail stocks leaned softer, with Walmart down about 0.4% and BJ’s Wholesale Club down nearly 1%. Consumer staples and retail ETFs also traded lower.
Costco has been trading near the bottom of its 52-week range, about 2% above its 52-week low of $844.06 and roughly 20% below its 52-week high of $1,078.24, according to Reuters data.
Costco’s model leans on membership warehouses and a limited assortment designed to drive high volumes and rapid inventory turnover. That structure can make its monthly sales disclosures a key read-through on traffic and demand.
Investors are also focused on the broader macro backdrop, with minutes from the Federal Reserve’s Dec. 9–10 meeting due later Tuesday. The minutes are the detailed account of policymakers’ debate and can shift expectations for interest rates, which feed into consumer spending and equity valuations.
For Costco specifically, the next scheduled company update is its December sales results, set for Jan. 7 at 1:15 p.m. PT (4:15 p.m. ET). Monthly sales releases typically include net sales and comparable sales — growth at stores open at least a year — which investors use to gauge underlying momentum.
Beyond that, Costco’s next earnings event on its calendar is the fiscal second-quarter 2026 earnings call on March 5 at 2:00 p.m. PT (5:00 p.m. ET).
The most recent quarterly snapshot came on Dec. 11, when Costco reported first-quarter fiscal 2026 results showing net sales up 8.2% year-on-year to $65.98 billion, while total comparable sales rose 6.4% and digitally-enabled comparable sales rose 20.5%.
The stock’s pullback from its early-2025 peak has kept the focus on whether Costco can sustain volume-driven growth while maintaining the lean-margin model that investors prize.
In the near term, traders are likely to take their cues from the Fed minutes and year-end positioning across defensive retail and consumer staples. The next hard catalyst for Costco is the Jan. 7 sales report, which will offer an early look at how holiday-season demand carried into year-end.
