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Amphenol had become something of a favored son, a company lifted by the fervor surrounding artificial intelligence. It’s a simple equation, really. More data, more power, more need for the unseen connectors that make it all possible. They’d gone from a steady, unglamorous builder of industrial cabling to a darling of the investment houses. The fourth quarter saw sales swell by nearly fifty percent, a growth rate that feels…unnatural, in the long view. Organic growth, they call it – thirty-seven percent – as if the land itself had yielded a sudden bounty.

As of the hour of 2:11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the stock – a mere cipher representing a claim upon future yields – registered an ascent exceeding eight percent. A modest fluctuation, perhaps, when viewed against the backdrop of centuries, but noteworthy nonetheless.

The numbers themselves offer no solace, merely a catalog of diminishing returns and shifting sands. Subscriber counts, once a source of complacent satisfaction, have begun a slow, inexorable decline. The logic, on the surface, is irrefutable. Why pay for a curated stream of static when an infinite ocean of free, if chaotic, audio awaits? The question, however, is not one of logic, but of acceptance. Of resignation to a predetermined outcome.

Currently, NuScale’s revenue appears to be sustained by the delicate art of consulting for Fluor, a construction behemoth. Fluor, in turn, is entangled with RoPower, a Romanian power company. RoPower, with a seriousness that borders on the theatrical, is contemplating the feasibility of assembling six of these NuScale modules – a sort of atomic Lego set, if you will. The very notion! To link them together, to create a power source… it is almost poetic, if one overlooks the inherent dangers of splitting the atom.

They’ve been gathering pieces, SoundHound has—SYNQ3, Allset, Amelia, Interactions—like a farmer collecting tools before a hard season. Automakers, restaurants, even the credit card men are lining up, hoping to catch a piece of this voice-driven future. Revenue has been climbing, a solid 60% compounded over the last few years. Analysts whisper of $283 million by 2027, a turning of the corner to profit. But a fast-growing plant, if it hasn’t sunk deep roots, can be easily uprooted.

The aforementioned transaction, reported via the customary SEC filing, represents a modest 1.49% addition to the fund’s $523.16 million in reportable AUM as of December 31st. A figure, one notes, that scarcely registers in the grand scheme of things, yet provides a pleasant talking point for those of us who monitor such ephemera.

The transaction, recorded on January 23rd, involved the acquisition of 42,862 shares of the ACWX fund. It wasn’t a tempest, not a dramatic shift in the portfolio’s foundations, but rather a deliberate layering, a thickening of the protective membrane around the firm’s considerable holdings. The fund itself, a vessel carrying the hopes and anxieties of global markets, experienced a corresponding swell, its value increasing by $3.27 million – a figure composed of both the initial investment and the capricious favor of the market. One could almost feel the weight of those billions shifting, settling, as if the fund were a great, slumbering beast roused from its sleep.

The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveals a deliberate reduction, a pruning of the holding during the final quarter. The estimated value of the relinquished shares amounts to $4.67 million, a figure arrived at through the averaging of prices, a practice that obscures the individual agonies and triumphs of each day’s trading. The fund concluded the quarter with a mere 6,326 shares, valued at $1.30 million. The reported quarter-end position value, once a substantial presence, had dwindled by $4.58 million – a consequence not solely of trading, but of the stock’s own restless wandering.

The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission details the acquisition of 653,537 shares during the final quarter of the past year. A modest addition to the holdings of Kirr Marbach, yet a signal, however faint, of a shift in perspective. This is not a panicked flight to safety, nor a reckless pursuit of yield, but a measured attempt to inoculate a portfolio against the inevitable vicissitudes of the market.

This is not entirely surprising. The prevailing narrative of artificial intelligence, so relentlessly trumpeted, had already priced in Arm’s potential. The company’s strength, of course, lies in its power efficiency – a quality increasingly valued in the data centres that now house this digital leviathan. (Amazon‘s Graviton5, a processor of decidedly unromantic nomenclature, illustrates the point: a 30% improvement in performance coupled with a 30% reduction in cost. A neat trick, if one can overlook the vulgarity of such demonstrable efficiency.)