Costco (COST) Stock: Price, Trend, Options & Financials
Costco's price regime, relative strength, unusual-options history, curated-manager ownership and filed fundamentals — joined into one dated stock intelligence page.
What the evidence says now
COST closed at $942.25 on Oct 7, 2026. The price is +1.1% from its 50-day average and -2.1% from its 200-day average, which places it in the rules-based “split trend” regime. The relative-strength check: over three months the stock returned +3.2%, trailing SPY by 0.2%. It remains 14.1% below its 52-week high.
Sources, methodology & freshnessSplit-adjusted OHLCV, end-of-day options chains, SEC 13F filings and EDGAR XBRL company facts · Price/options daily; 13F quarterly; Financials each earnings seasonData as of 2026-10-07 · Open ↓Close ↑
The close is +1.1% from its 50-day average and -2.1% from its 200-day average. Over three months, COST returned +3.2% versus +3.4% for SPY.
- vs 50-day
- +1.1%
- vs 200-day
- -2.1%
- From 52W high
- -14.1%
Descriptive, not predictive. “Uptrend” is a rules-based reading of the close and moving averages; it is not a rating, price target or recommendation.
Price & regime
One year of daily price and volume
252 split-adjusted sessions · candles above, share volume below
Unusual options — attention, not intent
COST appeared in a UOA top-30 list on 15 of 93 archived scanner sessions: 9 call-side, 7 put-side and 1 on both lists. The latest session did not place it in either top 30. Its larger composite score was 0.26, below the 1.5 “strong” threshold. That is repeated options attention, not proof of bullish trade initiation.
| Recent flag | Call rank | Put rank |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-25 | #9 | — |
| 2026-07-24 | — | #24 |
| 2026-07-10 | #17 | #13 |
| 2026-07-09 | #16 | — |
| 2026-07-02 | — | #17 |
| 2026-06-26 | — | #23 |
| 2026-06-25 | #22 | — |
| 2026-06-24 | #25 | — |
| 2026-06-18 | #9 | — |
| 2026-06-17 | #27 | — |
Latest chain snapshot
2026-10-06Strong-signature cutoff: 1.5. Current OTM volume/OI: 0.094 calls, 0.129 puts.
Researched catalyst context
2026-09-25Sep 25: Costco rose 2.9% to $922.77 on 4.6 million shares (2.4x its 30-day average) after fiscal fourth-quarter results released Sep 24 after the close. The stock opened 1.1% lower at $887.00 and reversed, closing 4.0% above the open. The 16-week quarter brought net sales of $93.9 billion, up 11.2%, and EPS of $6.75 against $5.87, including a one-time $0.15 benefit from IEEPA tariff refunds; comparable sales rose 9.4%, or 6.7% excluding gasoline prices and foreign exchange.
Costco runs 939 membership warehouses, and membership fees ($1.85 billion in the quarter) supply much of its profit, so renewal rates and paid members matter more than merchandise margin. The tariff refund flatters this quarter's EPS and will not repeat. Even after the rebound the shares are 15.8% below their May 19 high of $1,096.50. The next data point is the September sales report due in early October.
Source: ↗Curated-manager ownership
1 of the 20 managers in the project's curated 13F set reported a long Costco position in their latest filing, worth $5M in aggregate at each filing's reported value. This is a focused manager panel, not the complete institutional holder list.
| Fund / manager | Position value | Portfolio | Shares | Quarter change | Report date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Baron Capital Group Ron Baron · COST | $5M | 0.01% | 5,569 | -12.3% reduced | 2026-06-30 |
Filed fundamentals — latest snapshot
Go deeper into the filings
The dedicated Financials dashboard carries the complete quarterly and annual income statement, balance sheet and cash-flow history, with derived figures flagged and every XBRL concept disclosed.
Open COST Financials →How COST trades — the working manual
Costco pairs high-volume warehouse retail with a recurring membership model. For the stock, comparable sales and traffic matter, but membership renewal, fee income, merchandise margins and inventory discipline better explain how deliberately low product markups translate into operating profit and cash flow.
What can move the tape
- 01Comparable sales excluding gasoline and currency, shopping frequency and average ticket.
- 02Paid memberships, renewal rates, executive-member penetration and fee income.
- 03Merchandise mix, procurement, shrink, freight and wage costs.
- 04New warehouse openings, ecommerce growth, inventory turns and capital spending.
What can fool the read
- 01Thin merchandise margins leave earnings sensitive to small shifts in costs or shrink.
- 02Gasoline prices and currency can distort headline comparable-sales growth.
- 03A premium valuation can make steady operating performance insufficient for the stock.
- 04Rapid expansion can dilute site economics if new warehouses cannibalize mature locations.
Costco triggered 1 issuer-level flag in the committed 2026-04-01–2026-10-07 archive. The latest was COST on 2026-09-25: 2.4× its 30-day average volume while the stock moved +4.0% that session.
Not published yet. The local archive has 1 reported COST events—too few for a defensible gap-and-drift study. This missing block is an explicit indexing blocker.
Source map & freshness
| Block | What it uses | Vintage | Raw data |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | SEC issuer + primary security mapping | 2026-10-05 | JSON ↓ |
| Price & trend | Split-adjusted daily OHLCV + SPY comparison | 2026-10-07 | CSV ↓ |
| Options | End-of-day chain anomaly ranks | 2026-10-06 | Premium → |
| Ownership | Latest filings from 20 curated 13F managers | 2026-10-07 | Tool → |
| Financials | SEC EDGAR XBRL company facts | 2026-08-27 | JSON ↓ |
| Joined profile | The exact contract rendered by this page | 2026-10-07 | JSON ↓ |
COST stock questions
Is COST stock in an uptrend?+
COST is classified in the “split trend” regime as of 2026-10-07: the close is +1.1% from its 50-day average and -2.1% from its 200-day average. This describes the current tape. It is not a forecast.
What does unusual options activity in COST mean?+
Costco's OTM option chain produced an outlier relative to the scanner universe on at least one archived session. Call-side and put-side labels identify which book produced the signature; end-of-day chain data does not identify buyers, sellers, institutions or spread legs.
Are the COST 13F holdings current?+
No. 13F filings are delayed quarter-end snapshots and cover only the curated managers in this project. They are useful for documented ownership changes, not real-time positioning or complete institutional ownership.
Where are COST's income statement and cash flow?+
The dedicated COST Financials page contains the full quarterly and annual income statement, balance sheet and cash-flow history parsed from SEC EDGAR XBRL. This stock page carries only the latest filed snapshot.
Why is there no COST earnings-move base rate yet?+
The committed earnings archive does not yet contain enough reported events for a defensible company-level reaction study. The page leaves that block unpublished instead of presenting a tiny sample as a reliable base rate.