How Joseph Carlson After Hours’s view on $COST changed

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2026-08-26Bullish
“Meta Wins A Massive Strategic Victory”
Owning COST is supported by its strong customer loyalty and favorable treatment of shoppers, which aligns with long-term success over short-term profit extraction.

When I'm an owner of Costco, I like the fact that people like Costco. They like shopping there. They view it favorably. Costco treats their customer well. The customer really enjoys Costco.

That's a symbiotic relationship. I wouldn't like it if Costco treated the customer poorly to try to churn out a little bit more money. That'd be a very poor decision by Costco.

It would serve them in the short term, but not in the long term.

Direction flip
2026-08-24Bearish
“I’m Buying $10,000 Of This Company Next”
Costco is overvalued; a buy at $600 per share would yield about 10.6% return assuming 9.3% EPS growth and a 31 multiple, but such a drop is very unlikely.

Next up, we have Costco, which is position number nine in my portfolio. It's also one of my longest held positions in my entire portfolio. I basically started buying Costco day one when I started investing.

I didn't know as much back then, but I knew Costco is a really good company. And the investment test turned out on a compounded growth rate. Costco has been one of the best returning stocks in the market.

But it currently sits at an $83,000 position with 50,000 of that being gains. This one here is a little bit tricky because Costco currently trades at 9 and $69 per share, but the buy target that I have for this one is all the way down.

It's way down. It's down at $600 per share. Now, with most of my companies, my buy targets around 18% below to 25% below the current price of the stock. But with Costco, it's a dramatic 38% below its current price.

So, for buying Costco at $600 per share, the stock needs to drop 38%. And with Costco, I rate this as very unlikely. Looking over the past 5 years, Costco does have drops, but usually they're short-lived.

Usually it drops maybe 5, 10, maybe 20%. It does not typically drop nearly 40%. So, I believe that this is one of the most unlikely drops out of all the ones. Now, the reason why I set that buy target so much below the current price is because Costco's overvalued.

It is an overvalued company that I continue to hold. Anytime it pays me the huge special dividends, I put that capital into other positions. When I look at some assumptions here, if Costco grows its EPS at 9.3%.

And it trades at a nice multiple of 31. Now, right now, it's trading at a 50 multiple, but even assuming it trades at a 31 multiple at a $600 buyin price, that means that we're getting around a 10.6% return.

So, a decent return for the company, but still not amazing. And that's part of the reason I put the buy price so far below the current price.