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Old John Zito, a fellow with Apollo Global Management – a name that suggests they’re aiming for the heavens, though I suspect they’re mostly concerned with earthly gains – he posed the question: “Is software dead?” A dramatic query, to be sure. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF has taken a proper drubbing, down twenty-one percent this year, and a good portion of that in the last week. Seems investors are spooked, and rightly so, when they see a shiny new toy threaten the old. But a wise man doesn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, does he?

Snowflake’s fiscal third-quarter revenue reached $1.21 billion, representing a 29% year-over-year increase. However, a disaggregation of revenue streams reveals that product revenue, constituting the vast majority of total revenue at $1.16 billion, expanded at a rate of 29%, a deceleration from prior periods. This moderation in growth, while not entirely unexpected given the law of large numbers, warrants close monitoring.

The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV), a cartographic representation of this digital terrain, has experienced a decline – a fall of twenty-two percent from its zenith. The ostensible cause? A fear – a phantom, perhaps – that the emergence of artificial intelligence, specifically those generative engines originating with OpenAI and Anthropic, might dismantle the established order of software-as-a-service. It is a curiously swift judgment. The market, it seems, anticipates disruption before disruption itself has fully manifested. One recalls the apocryphal Library of Babel, where all possible books exist, including those detailing the precise moment of a sector’s obsolescence. Yet, no such definitive text has yet been revealed.

Lilly’s fourth-quarter revenue hit $19.3 billion. Forty-three percent year-over-year. Let that sink in. They’re basically printing money with those GLP-1 drugs – Mounjaro and Zepbound. Sales surged 110% and 123% respectively, totaling $7.4 billion and $4.3 billion. It’s…aggressive. And let’s be real, it’s fuelled by a society simultaneously obsessed with instant gratification and terrified of aging. Don’t judge me, I’m already pre-ordering the anti-gravity cream.

Microsoft, that purveyor of operating systems and office suites, now presents itself as a cloud computing pioneer. Azure, its cloud division, is the object of particular fascination, a sort of digital oracle consulted by those seeking the secrets of artificial intelligence. The logic is simple, or so it seems: abundant cloud capacity equals abundant AI spending. Clients, eager to dabble in the wonders of machine learning, flock to Azure, eschewing the messy business of maintaining their own data centers. A convenient arrangement, to be sure, but one cannot help but wonder if this entire enterprise is not merely a grand illusion, a shimmering mirage in the desert of technological progress.

The ambition is admirable, truly. Tesla is building castles in the air, magnificent structures of engineering and software. But even the most beautiful castle needs foundations, and a solid treasury. And that, at the moment, is looking a bit like a bog. Vehicle sales have stumbled, profits are heading south, and the company is about to embark on a spending spree that would make Croesus blush.²

The coming year, 2026, is not about grand pronouncements or soaring valuations. It is, rather, about navigating two persistent, almost melancholy, realities. Risks, one might call them, though they feel less like looming disasters and more like the inevitable dampness that settles in with the autumn chill.

Brandywine, they’re mostly in the office business, though they’re tryin’ their hand at other ventures, like a fella tryin’ to learn the banjo. Their fourth-quarter and full-year results for 2025 came in, and revenue was a hair under $121 million. Not a fortune, mind you, and a smidge down from last year. Seems folks are discoverin’ they can do a heap of work without actually bein’ in the office, a notion that’d give a landlord the vapors.

The question, of course, is whether this upward trajectory is sustained, or merely another fleeting bubble in the ever-turbulent sea of finance. One approaches such matters with a degree of skepticism, naturally. The markets are rarely driven by logic, but by the collective delusions of men eager to believe in miracles.