2026 has offered a slight reprieve – a mere 11.8% uptick year-to-date. Charming, but hardly a cause for popping champagne. One wonders if regaining former glories is entirely within the cards. The question, of course, is whether one should venture a purchase at this juncture.
Sandisk’s revenue surged 61% year-over-year to $3 billion in their latest fiscal quarter. Now, one might reasonably ask, what’s driving this sudden demand? The answer, as is so often the case these days, is artificial intelligence. It turns out that all these cloud computing behemoths, the ones busy building these ‘AI factories’ as they’re calling them, need an awful lot of data storage. A truly colossal amount. It’s rather like discovering that building a large Lego castle requires, well, a lot of Lego bricks. And Sandisk, it seems, has a particularly robust supply of those bricks.
They call it DevSecOps. Sounds… complicated. Basically, it’s where people write code and try not to get hacked. Good idea, right? Seems logical. And now they’re adding AI. Of course. Everyone’s adding AI. It’s the new thing to do. It’s like they’re admitting the old way wasn’t good enough. And then they want you to pay extra for it! A hybrid model, they call it. It’s always a “model” these days. Like it’s some sort of high fashion statement. I just want the code to work!
Revenue for the fourth quarter jumped a respectable 24% to $59.9 billion. Spending, as these things often do, went up too, which is always a bit of a balancing act. But investors, being the shrewd bunch they are, had anticipated that. Net income still rose a healthy 9% to $22.8 billion, or $8.88 per share. Not bad. Not bad at all.
By the close of trading, the stock had risen by more than eleven percent—a significant tremor in the usually placid landscape of telecom investments. A quiet signal, perhaps, that something essential is shifting.
Shares of this esteemed company have commenced the year with an unseemly haste, soaring upwards as if propelled by the very vanity they seek to address. A rise of some twenty-six percent, they boast, whilst the broader market merely ambles along at a respectable, if unremarkable, pace. One wonders, of course, if this is genuine enthusiasm, or merely the collective delusion of investors, ever eager to chase the latest glittering object.
McDonald Capital Investors, they’re called. Sounds terribly sensible. They’ve just splashed out around $24.39 million on 86,891 shares of FactSet Research Systems (FDS +0.62%). Which, let’s be honest, is more than I spend on groceries in a year. Probably more than I earn in a year. It’s all terribly unfair.
The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) went down 0.45% to 6,938. Just… down. And the Nasdaq (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC) decided to join the pity party, falling 0.94% to 23,462. Honestly, it’s just exhausting. You try to make rational investment decisions, and then this happens. AT&T (T +4.32%) and T-Mobile (TMUS +4.19%) were up. Why? Because… reasons. Wireless growth, apparently. It’s all so arbitrary. They’re all just competing to see who can make the most complicated bill.
This fintech concern, you see, has recently posted a return of 62% – a figure that, while not entirely unprecedented, is certainly not to be sniffed at. One suspects it’s poised for another rather good showing, and one is always partial to a bit of sensible optimism, wouldn’t you agree?
MKS, a company which, while not exactly a household name, quietly produces the sort of instruments and tools that keep the semiconductor industry ticking over – a vital function, you’ll agree – announced the news on Wednesday afternoon. They’ve floated a billion euro issue of senior notes – a substantial sum, naturally – in a private offering, a move that suggests a certain confidence in their future prospects.