SUCCESS

Meet the Israelis and Palestinians defying war and mistrust to build shared ventures — in tech, tourism, art, and more — as profiled in venture capitalist Yadin Kaufmann’s new podcast.

It marked the third straight year the two women have squared off in Flushing Meadows.

Looking for help with today’s New York Times Pips? We’ll walk you through today’s puzzle and help you match dominoes to tiles.

Oil prices are surging again, pushing diesel prices and interest rates to new highs and driving the stock market crazy.

A cynic might say: What did you expect? It’s September, historically a crummy month. And, oil and the Middle East are among the biggest problems.

Related: Pain at the gas pump rises as Middle East violence worsens

Here’s a list of all the issues as of Sept. 10:

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, jumped to $107.63 per 42-gallon barrel in London, its highest settlement price since May 19.

Light sweet crude moved above $103 a barrel, its highest level since May 19.

Gasoline prices jumped in the United States: $4.277 a gallon, per AAA Fuel Prices. $4.273 a gallon, according to GasBuddy They’ve risen about 5% so far in September and 51% so far in 2026.

U.S. diesel prices were in worse shape: $5.9773 a gallon, according to AAA, up 67% year to date. That weighs heavily on truckers and farmers in the United States. A freight trucker might buy 300 gallons at a stop. The cost: nearly $1,800. A new credit may help.

Bond yields are rising, which means mortgage rates and other consumer rates are moving up. The 10-year Treasury yield hit a 52-week high of 4.963% during the day. Why does it matter? Multiply the yield by 1.5 and you get a reasonable look at what a 30-year mortgage might cost. It was right at 7.07% on Sept. 10, according to Mortgage News Daily.

Stocks continue late-summer struggle

Stocks struggled for a fourth straight day as a result.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index dropped 45 points to 7,592. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 317 points to 52,064, and the Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 172 points to 26,082.

The S&P 500 is off 1.2% so far this month. The Dow is down 2.1%, and the Nasdaq has dropped 1.1%, modest losses to be sure. All three indexes have felt larger falls since hitting 52-week highs earlier this summer.

But it is also September. The month has been the weakest for the three indexes since 1950, according to the Stock Traders Almanac.

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The Middle East conflict casts a long shadow

And it all dials back to the Middle East, where a big concern on Sept. 10 was that Houthi rebels based in Yemen were attacking Saudi Arabian port facilities on the Red Sea in hopes of taking control of the vital Bab al-Mandab Strait, at the southern end of the waterway.

A Houthi win could choke off a way to ship crude oil to Europe and elsewhere. And it would be a potentially serious setback for the Trump administration in its ongoing war with Iran and for Saudi Arabia.

Iran has warned this week of “a faster, heavier, and more painful response” to U.S. attacks, as hostilities between the two sides escalate.

President Trump himself has suggested the war could last at least until the November Midterm elections. If Republicans win, the Iranians will sue peace, he predicted.

Related: August sees a dubious record on gasoline prices

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Why we love this deal

No matter the time of year, you should always have a good comforter set. Whether you’re in the balmy doldrums of summer or the height of blizzard season, a versatile bedspread and sheet set are a must. As luck would have it, we’ve found a seven-piece comforter set on sale at Walmart. Not only is the set available at a great price, but it includes everything you need to revamp your bed’s look and feel. It even comes with matching sheets.

The Dhole 7-Piece Lightweight Comforter Set is currently on sale for $39. That’s a discount of 29% off the original price of $55. If you want to take all-new bedding into the cool autumn months, then we recommend putting this set into your cart ASAP. If you don’t, you may miss out, as offers this good tend to sell out quickly this time of year.

Dhole 7-Piece Lightweight Comforter Set, $39 (was $55) at Walmart

Courtesy of Walmart

Shop at Walmart

Why do shoppers love it?

This comforter set is the perfect buy for ensuring a good night’s sleep year-round. It includes a lightweight comforter, a fitted sheet, a flat sheet, two matching pillowcases, and two pillow shams. It’s got everything you need for a complete bedding refresh. The comforter’s shell is made from ultra-soft microfiber, and it has a down alternative fill. The fill is hypoallergenic and stays in place thanks to a box-stitch design that prevents it from pooling in one side of the comforter.

Aesthetically, the bedspread and sheet set are a great pick for any decor style. The comforter has a breezy boho feel, with a large tufted pattern throughout. The other six pieces of the set match the color of the comforter, though you could easily buy multiple sets at this price to mix and match. It’s available in eight colors and five sizes, from twin to California king.

Proper care of this set doesn’t require a whole lot of forethought or effort. The entire thing is fully machine washable on the cold cycle and can be tumble dried on low heat. Doing so will have everything coming out looking and feeling virtually brand new. We can’t think of a better way to spend your money to give your bedroom an entirely new vibe.

Related: Amazon’s highly rated $35 7-piece comforter set comes with every bedding essential you need

Details to know

Included: Comforter, fitted sheet, flat sheet, two pillowcases, and two pillow shams.

Materials: Ultrasoft breathable microfiber and down-alternative fill.

Colorways: Eight color variants.

Sizes: Twin through California king.

Walmart shoppers were very happy with this set. One called it “so pretty and cozy,” adding, “I’m obsessed with the color.”

Shop more deals 

Hig 7-Piece Comforter Set, $46 (was $100) at Walmart

Wishead 7-Piece Comforter Set, $36 (was $56) at Walmart

Vccoem 7-Piece Comforter Set, $36 (was $66) at Walmart

The Dhole 7-Piece Lightweight Comforter Set is a great purchase if you’re a fan of quality bedding at an affordable price. At just $39, it’s one of the best bedspread sets for a total overhaul of your bedroom’s look. Why not give it a shot right now and head into the holiday season with every night’s sleep feeling like a wonderful dream?

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Every so often a stock stops being the thing investors thought it was.

For most of the past decade, Dell Technologies (DELL) was a name people owned without thinking about it much. It sold laptops to school districts and servers to mid-sized banks, threw off cash, and traded at the multiple the market reserves for companies it expects to grow slowly and predictably forever.

That reputation was fair. Dell went private in 2013, returned to public markets in 2018, and spent years getting described as a hardware business in a software world.

Then artificial intelligence (AI) showed up, and the unglamorous part of Dell’s business turned out to be the part that mattered. Somebody has to build the machines that run the models, wire them, cool them and service them.

Wall Street has been marking that discovery up in real time. The stock has roughly quadrupled over the past year, and analyst notes have spent most of it chasing the price rather than leading it.

Which brings us to Wednesday, Sept. 9, when Evercore ISI lifted its price target on Dell to $650 from $575 and kept an outperform rating, according to CNBC.

That is a large number. It is also the least interesting number in the note.

Why Dell’s AI server backlog changed the story

For the target to makes sense, you need to understand the backlog.

Dell reported fiscal second quarter results on Sept. 1 that broke the model most investors were carrying into the print. Revenue landed at $47 billion, up 58% from a year earlier, and adjusted earnings per share hit $7.04, up 203%, according to a company statement.

The figure that actually moved the stock was not revenue. Dell booked $60.9 billion in AI server orders during the quarter and finished it with a $95 billion AI backlog, “the most in our history,” said operating chief Jeff Clarke, according to a company statement.

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Three months earlier that backlog sat at $51.3 billion. Dell also raised full-year guidance for the second time this fiscal year, to roughly $192 billion in revenue and $25.50 in adjusted earnings per share.

Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup all lifted their price targets after the report, reported MarketWatch.

What makes the backlog unusual is that it is not purely a demand signal. Dell has been supply constrained on memory, flash and processors, which means some of that $95 billion reflects orders the company physically could not fill in the quarter.

That cuts both ways for shareholders. Constraint protects pricing and pushes revenue into future quarters, but it also means the conversion timetable belongs partly to Dell’s suppliers rather than to Dell.

What Evercore’s new Dell price target actually says

The Evercore argument is not that the AI trade is early. It is that Dell’s next leg comes from somewhere other than raw server volume.

Analyst Amit Daryanani tied the next phase of appreciation to enterprise AI adoption, higher-margin attach and continued operating expense leverage. Then he added the line most of Wednesday’s coverage skipped past, writing that the firm was maintaining its rating and raising its target to $650, “with upside at $1,000,” according to CNBC.

Here is the context in a few numbers:

Dell’s AI backlog stood at $95 billion at quarter end, against roughly $74 billion in AI server revenue guided for the entire fiscal year, according to a company statement.

Full-year adjusted earnings per share guidance went to $25.50 from $17.90, according to a company statement.

Shares closed Wednesday at $535.25 after touching an intraday high of $562.99, according to StockAnalysis.com.

That last line is the one I keep going back to. The stock printed a fresh 52-week high on the upgrade and then handed almost all of it back, closing up 0.26%.

From Wednesday’s close, the $650 target implies about 21% upside. The $1,000 figure implies roughly 87%.

Evercore ISI raises its Dell price target to $650 and floats a $1,000 bull case.NurPhoto / Getty Images

Running the math behind the $1,000 case

I ran the numbers against Dell’s own guidance, and the bull case turns out to be arithmetic rather than enthusiasm.

At $650, Dell would trade near 25 times the $25.50 in adjusted earnings the company has guided to for this fiscal year. That is a full-market multiple for a hardware maker, though not an absurd one at this growth rate.

Get to $1,000 on that same multiple and you need something close to $40 in earnings per share. Dell earned $10.30 on an adjusted basis across all of fiscal 2026.

Related: Analyst resets Dell stock price target after earnings

So the bull case is not asking whether Dell beats this quarter. It is asking whether Dell can roughly quadruple fiscal 2026 earnings inside about two years and hold a premium multiple the whole way.

My analysis keeps landing on one variable: how much of that $95 billion backlog converts, and at what margin. Dell has said AI server profitability is tracking to a mid-single-digit operating margin, well under what the company earns on storage and commercial PCs.

Backlog tells you the revenue is coming. It tells you almost nothing about what falls to the bottom line.

That distinction is why the same $95 billion can support a $650 target and a $1,000 target at the same time without either being dishonest. One assumes Dell ships the backlog. The other assumes Dell ships it and earns more on each unit than it does today.

What Dell investors should watch next

Wednesday’s intraday reversal matters because it shows where the marginal buyer sits.

A $650 target on a $535 stock is a bet that the backlog converts. A $1,000 target is a bet that the mix improves while it converts, which is a different and considerably harder claim.

Dell has at least given investors a checkable schedule for finding out. Third quarter guidance calls for about $49 billion in revenue and $6.50 in adjusted earnings per share, with results due in late November.

Watch gross margin and the storage line rather than the headline revenue figure. Storage carries the margin profile that makes the high case work, and it grew 26% last quarter off a small base.

If margin follows the backlog, the case for the high target gets easier to make. If it does not, $650 stops looking like a waypoint and starts looking like the ceiling.

For anyone holding Dell after a year like this one, that is the more useful question than whether an analyst moved a number on a Wednesday morning. The target tells you what one firm thinks. Gross margin tells you whether the company can earn it.

Related: Dell Technologies Inc. Q2 2027 Earnings: Recap of $DELL Earnings Call, Forecast 

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