The prevailing sentiment, it is true, has shifted. The shadow of past anxieties – tariff pronouncements and market tremors – has receded. But to assume, on this basis alone, that SoundHound AI is now undervalued is to succumb to a dangerous simplification. The market, like a wounded beast, remembers. It recalls the pattern: initial promise, followed by unsustainable expenditure, and ultimately, the inevitable reckoning.
By midday, the stock was down a good twelve-and-a-bit percent, a circumstance that caused a few furrowed brows amongst the financial set. One might almost suspect a mischievous imp at work.
Both cast their nets into the waters of consumer staples, but with different methods. RSPS spreads its line evenly across the S&P 500’s consumer staples sector, a pragmatic approach. FTXG, however, seeks out specific currents, focusing on food and beverage companies with a smart-beta index. It’s a gamble, a hope for a richer catch, but one that comes with a bit more risk. Let’s look closer, at the soil and the seed, and see which one is more likely to bear fruit.
But the real story wasn’t the quarter. It was the announcement. Two hundred billion dollars. That’s what they’re throwing at artificial intelligence in ’26. Two hundred billion. Enough to make a banker sweat. The market’s getting twitchy. Impatient. They want a return, and they want it yesterday. They don’t understand long plays. They want quick scores.
They report sales of $987 million for the last quarter, a modest eight percent rise. The alternative energy sector, including the whispers of nuclear power, and the refrigerants that keep the server farms humming – those boxes that devour our data and exhale heat – both showed double-digit growth. A full year’s tally comes to $3.9 billion. Numbers, numbers… they fall like rain on barren ground.
One is compelled to inquire into the currents responsible for this downturn. Is this a moment for prudent acquisition, a chance to gather value from a temporary chill? Or does the artificial intelligence trade, so recently lauded, now reveal itself as a fragile bloom, susceptible to the first frost?
The official explanation, naturally, involves ‘earnings estimates’ and ‘analyst expectations.’2 Perfectly serviceable excuses, but they rather ignore the more… qualitative tremors shaking investor confidence. It’s rarely about the numbers themselves, you see. It’s about the stories the numbers tell.
The fourth quarter of 2025 revealed sales of $421 million – a 3% increase, a modest cough in the grand scheme of things, yet sufficient to appease the market deities. Analysts, those oracles of limited foresight, predicted $400 million. They were, predictably, wrong. One wonders if they consult tea leaves or merely flip coins.
Indeed, a circumstance has arisen which demands the attention of any prudent investor: the cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio – a metric known, rather grandly, as the Shiller P/E – has ascended to a level rarely witnessed. It has exceeded forty for only the second time since 1871, a fact which, whilst not necessarily indicative of immediate distress, suggests a degree of exuberance that warrants careful consideration.
Some of these AI-related stocks are exhibiting a distinct lack of backbone, retreating as if faced with a particularly stern headmistress. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing – TSMC, if one is feeling lazy – however, continues to perform admirably, up a rather pleasing 65% over the last year. One shouldn’t begrudge anyone taking a profit, of course. It’s simply… sensible. But to assume that’s the end of the story? My dear, that would be terribly shortsighted.