Should You Buy the Oracle Stock Drop and Hold for 2026?

Shares of major enterprise software and cloud computing company Oracle (ORCL) had a difficult trading session on Thursday. The stock fell more than 15% intraday and closed 11% lower, marking its worst trading day since 2001, as second-quarter sales fell short of estimates. Additionally, its five-year CDS spread widened sharply, reaching its highest level since 2009, making the cost of taking on debt more expensive for the Larry Ellison-led company.

Oracle already has a debt pile of more than $100 billion, and it looks like it will need to raise even more funds as the company raised its capital expenditure forecast to about $50 billion in fiscal 2026 from $35 billion previously. Previously a small cloud provider, Oracle has developed into a serious competitor in the cloud space thanks to its track record $300 billion deal with OpenAI was fueled by debt.

Although this made Ellison the richest person in the world, his dislike of stock dilution may come back to haunt him in the future, as a small…