Consumers are still spending.

Costco (COST) posted July sales up 10.7% from a year ago, with digital sales growing twice as fast as the rest of the business.

The market spent the rest of the week grading last week's reports. Amazon (AMZN) held its post-earnings jump and closed at a 52-week high Monday. Alphabet (GOOGL) gave back part of its own run after reshuffling its AI leadership.

Tesla (TSLA), meanwhile, picked the Texas site for the chip factory it is building with SpaceX.

Core Conviction Spotlight

Costco (COST): Demand Is Accelerating Into Back-to-School

Costco reported $23.1 billion in July sales this week, covering the four weeks ended August 2.

Comparable sales rose 8.9%. Digital comparable sales, the company's e-commerce measure, rose 17.7%, twice the company pace.

Our web-visits are in lockstep, and have climbed every month since February.

The impending shopping season plays straight into that channel.

The National Retail Federation expects a record $146.8 billion in combined back-to-school and college spending this year, with college spending topping $100 billion for the first time.

Costco stocks the season's list end to end, from bulk supplies to laptops and school clothes.

The first days of August already show the season arriving: visits are running above July's pace and pulling away from last year's curve.

Shares sit near $946, down about 2% over the past year while monthly sales compound at 10%.

Our data points at acceleration into the season.

Infinite Hold Updates

Tesla (TSLA): A Chip Factory, a Starlink Tie-Up, and a Bigger Map

Tesla is building its own chip factory with SpaceX, and the site is now set: Texas, with a $16.8 billion first phase. Elon Musk says the finished plant will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth.

Musk told investors in January that chip supply would become a constraint within a few years without it. The plant is designed to make the AI chips Tesla's cars and Optimus robots run on.

SpaceX ties run through the Tesla product line too.

The Cybercab robotaxi ships with Starlink satellite internet built in, and Musk says the service will eventually reach every Tesla: a driverless fleet needs connectivity that cellular networks cannot promise everywhere.

Andy covered the recent SpaceX report on this week’s founders call.

Meanwhile, Tesla's driverless map keeps widening. Robotaxi service opened in Austin in June 2025, the Bay Area a month later, Dallas and Houston in April, and three Florida metros in July. Every market opened this year runs without safety monitors.

Phoenix and Las Vegas are the two named markets still to open.

Tesla delivered just over 480,000 vehicles in the second quarter, and the robotaxi fleet is already running early versions of the next self-driving software release.

Consumer visits to Tesla's site still run below last year, though the gap has been narrowing since spring.

We’re still betting on Musk’s massive vision.

Alphabet (GOOGL): A New Chief Scientist, and a Breather for the Stock

Alphabet reshuffled its AI leadership this week. Demis Hassabis, who won a Nobel Prize and ran its DeepMind AI lab, moved up to become chief scientist for the whole company, focused on long-term research. His deputy took over the lab.

Shares fell 4% Wednesday as investors weighed the shake-up.

Shares fell 4% Wednesday as investors weighed the shake-up.

But AI plans are still accelerating.

Alphabet plans $195 billion to $205 billion of infrastructure spending this year, more than double last year's $91 billion, a target it raised with its latest quarterly report.

Free cash flow ran negative $5.9 billion last quarter, the first negative quarter since Alphabet came public in 2004. Revenue grew 24% in the same stretch; the cash is going into data centers.

Amazon (AMZN): The Pop Held

Amazon closed at a 52-week high just above $284 on Monday, extending the 15% jump that followed last Thursday evening's report.

Amazon Web Services moved the needle: revenue grew 36.7% in the quarter, the fastest pace in 18 quarters, on $42.2 billion in sales.

CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon's AI and chips businesses each run at more than $25 billion a year.

Goldman Sachs charts the squeeze across the whole group: the big cloud builders' combined free cash flow dips negative right now, with a recovery penciled in from 2027 as the new capacity starts earning.

Amazon has run this play before. Its cash flow went negative in 2021 and 2022 because it was building data centers as fast as it could pour concrete.

That spending is today's AWS: the data centers built through that stretch are the ones customers are filling now.

So read the negative bars the way we do: as the next major revenue unlock getting built. The last time the chart looked like this, shareholders were rewarded.