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The situation, as is so often the case, is less about a sudden catastrophe and more about a slow unraveling. Pierre Brondeau, a man apparently recalled from a well-deserved retirement (one imagines a hammock and a lifetime supply of gardening gloves) has declared 2025, and likely 2026, a ‘reset year’. A reset. It’s a wonderfully vague term, isn’t it? Suggests everything will be fine, just… different. Like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but with more fertilizer.

But the land has changed. The current season favors a different crop. The high, bright blooms of technology – the so-called Magnificent Seven – have drawn the sun and the rain, leaving the more humble dividend payers to struggle in the shade. For three years now, SCHD has trailed behind, a good ship caught in a current that runs against its sails. It’s not a failing, exactly, but a reckoning with the way things are.

Right now, everything looks deceptively pleasant. The Fed’s been fiddling with interest rates, GDP is inching upward, and everyone’s breathless about AI. It’s all very shiny and optimistic. But I’ve learned to distrust optimism. It’s usually a prelude to something deeply, profoundly irritating. Like a timeshare presentation disguised as a vacation.

The company’s growth rate, while still impressively robust at over 60%, is, inevitably, slowing down. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Constant exponential growth is, after all, thermodynamically impossible, and attempting to achieve it in the financial markets is rather like trying to build a house out of smoke. Recently, Nvidia has been attempting to ramp up production of its H200 AI chips, specifically for the Chinese market. This, on the surface, appears encouraging. But, as any seasoned observer of the universe will tell you, surfaces are notoriously deceptive.

Apparently, Goldman Sachs, those beacons of financial wisdom, decided to raise their price target from $255 to $282. Two hundred and eighty-two! It’s like they just pulled a number out of a hat. Based on… data center demand? Please. Everyone’s building data centers. It’s the new avocado toast. Suddenly, it’s a growth industry. I’m sure it’s very profitable for someone.

The filing with the SEC, that wonderfully opaque repository of financial information, reveals this wasn’t a wholesale abandonment of the fund, more of a…trimming. The overall value of their holdings dipped by $7.35 million, factoring in both the sales and the general vagaries of the market. It’s all rather fluid, isn’t it? Like trying to hold water in a sieve. ANGL accounted for 1.12% of Ocean Park’s total assets. A rounding error, really, in the grand scheme of things. Though, I suppose, every rounding error adds up, eventually. Like pennies in a wishing well, only these pennies are attached to complex financial instruments.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how a company that makes connectors—the little bits that hold everything else together—can suddenly become a darling of the artificial intelligence crowd? Amphenol, apparently, is no longer just a mature industrial cycle company. It’s a “picks and shovels” play, which is a phrase I always associate with failed gold rushes and slightly desperate prospectors. They’re supplying the infrastructure for the AI boom, which feels a bit like building sandcastles on a rising tide, but who am I to judge? I still haven’t figured out how to program my thermostat.

The year 2025 has passed. Now, in 2026, a faint recovery is observed, but is it merely a temporary reprieve, a flickering candle against the gathering shadows?