Starbucks stock price today is steady at $91

Starbucks stock price today is steady at $91.95 after a modest pre-market dip, rebounding on positive consumer confidence data. Long-term valuation models point to margin expansion driven by digital ordering and loyalty program growth. Jon Quastt: It's interesting. You do need to bring new buyers into the market. Shout out to KB Homes, seems to be doing pretty well in that regard. It said that half of its homebuyers are actually first time home buyers, so doing a good job there. But one of the things that these Home Builders are doing is incentivizing these purchases for a new home and this is, according to the National Association of Home Builders, more than 1/2 of builders cut their prices in August, and 2/3 offered incentives, and that incentive deal was actually the highest in five years. We're seeing an uptick there. Let me give you a real life example of what that could look like. This is from realtor.com, talking about a Dallas couple they got a DR Horton new home, and they got a lower rate at 3.9% versus 6.3% is what they should have gotten at the time. Their down payment was reduced 20,000-13,000. The final price of the home was reduced 370,000-332,000. Essentially, they were able to save $50,000 upfront and then hundreds of dollars per month on an ongoing basis because the interest rate was lower. Why are they offering incentives? Well, they're trying to get people into the homes. It's interesting. I don't know. Matt, maybe you have thoughts here on whether or not this is a signal of weak demand counterintuitively. New home sales are going up, but it's through the incentives. Another thing to note here is the Census Bureau noted that new housing starts were down 6% year over year in August. What's going on here, Matt? Niccol said the company has already opened numerous locations over the past year as he launched an aggressive "Back to Starbucks" strategy to help the company reverse its declining traffic and effectively compete in the highly saturated market, which means the company-operated store count in North America will only decline by about 1% in fiscal year 2025. Starbucks stock price today sits near $92.10, with trading volume up 12% above its 30-day average, implying heightened investor interest ahead of the company’s quarterly earnings. Market sentiment remains cautiously optimistic as coffee market demand outpaces forecast models.