This ONCE Capital now holds 1.3160% of the fund’s assets in SMR. A percentage small enough to be dismissed, yet large enough to warrant a raised eyebrow. It’s a bit like investing in a perpetual motion machine – the potential is thrilling, the probability… less so. Still, one must admire the audacity.
The company, as the name implies, aspires to alter that. A vertically integrated operation, they call it. Mining the ore, processing the metals, crafting the magnets… a complete chain, forged in the American West. It’s a noble thought, of course. There are so few attempting such a thing these days. One can almost count them on the fingers of one hand, which, admittedly, is a rather limited counting method.
Industrials, energy, consumer staples, utilities, materials… they’re holding the whole damn thing together with duct tape and wishful thinking. A temporary reprieve, a fragile illusion. The rot is setting in, and it’s time to reposition. Time to get serious. Forget about “growth” – that’s for suckers and venture capitalists high on their own supply. We’re talking about survival now. About building a fortress against the coming economic hurricane.
They were already feeling a little flat after last week’s earnings report – numbers that suggested people are maybe, possibly, drinking slightly less beer. Groundbreaking, I know. But then Bank of America decided to kick them while they’re down, issuing an “Underperform” rating. It’s a fancy way of saying, “We don’t think this stock is going to win any beauty contests.”
This Signet, they own a whole collection of shops – Zales, Kay, Jared, even a place called Pagoda (sounds like a villain from a penny dreadful). They’re everywhere, these shops, lurking in shopping centres like glittering spiders, waiting to catch unsuspecting customers. And now they’ve got their hands on online sellers too, like Blue Nile and Diamonds Direct. Two thousand six hundred shops around the world! It’s a monstrous number, really. Enough to give you the shivers.
As of this afternoon (3:30 p.m. ET), it’s up 13%. Back above $0.10. Which, let’s be honest, isn’t exactly a fortune, but it’s a definite… blip. A flicker of hope in the vast, grey landscape of crypto winter. I’ve been trying to be sensible. To diversify. To invest in things with…utility. But then Dogecoin does this. It’s terribly distracting.
This happened in the last quarter, you see. February the sixth, 2026, to be precise. BlueStem shelled out about $10.6 million – enough to buy a small island, or a truly magnificent collection of rubber ducks. They seem to think these little bond things are worth a nibble, and who are we to argue with people who manage other people’s money? Though, frankly, I suspect they’ve got a secret stash of chocolate biscuits hidden somewhere in the office.
The fourth-quarter earnings report, delivered with the quiet precision of a skilled lepidopterist pinning a specimen, offered a curious reprieve. A modest outperformance on both top and bottom lines, coupled with cautiously optimistic guidance for 2026, seemed to momentarily arrest the downward drift. It was, shall we say, a fleeting glimpse of sunshine through the rather overcast foliage of recent performance.
The company’s quarterly report, delivered this morning, initially presented a façade of prosperity. Earnings and revenue exceeded the expectations of those who attempt to predict the future (a notoriously unreliable endeavor). Yet, within this apparent success lay a foreshadowing of turbulence – a cautionary note regarding the quarters to come. It is as if the company offered a perfect mirror, reflecting not present gains, but future anxieties.
Our former President, never one to be outdone, promptly slapped on a new 15% “global” tariff under something called Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. Sounds thrilling, doesn’t it? Like a James Bond film, except with more paperwork and less Sean Connery. As your friendly neighborhood portfolio manager, let me break down what this means for your investments, and frankly, for the sanity of anyone trying to predict the future.