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The CAPE, or Cyclically Adjusted Price-to-Earnings ratio, is a simple thing, really. It takes the price of the market – the S&P 500, a broad measure of American industry – and sets it against the earnings of those industries over a decade. It smooths out the bumps, the lucky years and the lean ones, to give a truer picture of value. It’s a way of asking whether the price being paid for a share reflects a reasonable claim on the future earnings of the company behind it.

Observe, if you will, the spectacle of a company chasing the glittering phantom of artificial intelligence, while simultaneously neglecting the rather mundane necessity of, shall we say, profit. I am reminded of a certain Monsieur Jourdain, who, upon learning the art of rhetoric, insisted on speaking in prose without realizing he had been doing so all along. SoundHound, it seems, is similarly preoccupied with the appearance of innovation, while the substance remains… elusive.

Berkshire, a behemoth exceeding a trillion dollars in market capitalization, now rests in the hands of Greg Abel. The question, then, is not merely one of profit, but of fate. Can a share purchased today truly secure a life, or is it merely another indulgence in the grand, tragic comedy of the market?

Goldman Sachs, naturally, aren’t thrilled. They want fewer human hands involved, because humans cost money, you see. They’re predicting that by 2030, one operator should be able to manage ten robotaxis, and by 2040, a whopping thirty-five! That’s a lot of metal to control. It’ll require a bit of ingenuity, a dash of magic, and a whole heap of technological tinkering.

Amazon, now there’s a name that’s become synonymous with… well, everything, it seems. Started selling books, they did, and now they’re delivering everything from aardvark food to zither strings right to your doorstep. They’ve been at it since ’97, and I’ll tell you what, that’s a long time to stay afloat in this world. They’ve managed to grow every year, bar one, in all that time – a feat that’d impress even the most seasoned riverboat gambler.

You see, a company that’s all in on one thing – a “pure play,” as they call it – is like a man with all his eggs in a single, rather fragile basket. If that basket holds, you might just have an omelet. If it doesn’t… well, you’ve got a mess to clean up. Rigetti’s betting the whole farm on quantum computing, and that’s a mighty risky proposition. They claim to be on the cutting edge, but sometimes the sharpest edges are the ones that cut you.

For too long, we have chased after the gilded idols of Silicon Valley, the Nvidias and Palantirs, whose valuations seem to defy the very laws of reason. Let us, instead, turn our gaze eastward, to a company that, while not entirely untouched by the follies of the market, offers a more grounded—and, dare I say, amusing—proposition.