New York, May 29, 2026, 05:06 (EDT)
Oracle shares are set for Friday trading after jumping 6.6% Thursday and ending close to $204. AAII had Oracle at $203.640, a 6.64% gain, up 26.18% for May so far, still off its 52-week high of $345.72.
Timing is the focus now. Wall Street pushed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to fresh record closes, with traders saying recent gains came as bets on AI spending started to show up in sales for software and data names—offsetting worries about legacy business models. The S&P 500 added 0.58% Thursday. Nasdaq advanced 0.91%, according to Reuters.
NYSE regular trading hadn’t started at the time. The exchange’s main session is from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET. Its 2026 holiday calendar puts Memorial Day on May 25 and Juneteenth on June 19, not May 29.
Snowflake shares jumped more than 33% after Reuters said the data platform raised its annual revenue outlook and signed a five-year, $6 billion deal with Amazon Web Services. Matt Britzman at Hargreaves Lansdown said the rally showed “how quickly sentiment can turn” when AI is helping growth. Scotiabank’s Patrick Colville called Snowflake an “AI winner.” Reuters
Oracle is aiming for that spot. Back in March, Reuters said Oracle was focusing on building data centers for partners like OpenAI and Meta and going after AI workloads, working to take share from AWS and Microsoft Azure. eMarketer’s Jacob Bourne said Oracle’s quarter was “a beat and a stress test result for the AI trade.” CEO Clay Magouyrk said Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s “overall margin profile” is getting stronger. Executive Chairman Larry Ellison downplayed the risk from AI, saying the “SaaS-apocalypse” fear “applies to others but not to Oracle.” Reuters
Oracle posted fiscal third-quarter revenue of $17.2 billion, up 22%, and cloud revenue jumped 44% to $8.9 billion. Remaining performance obligations climbed 325% to $553 billion. Oracle also boosted its fiscal 2027 revenue target to $90 billion.
Oracle shares have been volatile. The stock dropped 1.09% to $190.96 on Wednesday, snapping a four-session win, while the market stayed firm, according to MarketWatch. Thursday’s gain didn’t stand out as an Oracle-specific move and instead looked like a quick snapback in software names.
But the risk still hangs over Oracle. The latest 10-Q shows capital expenditures jumped to $39.2 billion in the first nine months of fiscal 2026, up from $12.1 billion a year ago. Free cash flow, which is cash left after capital spending, came in at negative $24.7 billion over the last four quarters. If AI customers don’t ramp faster, or if data-center costs outpace the revenue Oracle books, shares could lose some of Thursday’s gains.
Friday’s test looks straightforward. The market isn’t debating if Oracle is an AI stock now—it’s looking to see if the company can turn its large cloud backlog into revenue and margins, and do it without raising new concerns over cash spending.
Right now, Oracle is moving with AI-linked stocks again, not with the software group hit by disruption worries. That’s an improvement from Wednesday. It isn’t confirmation yet.
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