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For years, banks have relied on this FICO score thing. It’s like a credit personality test, deciding if you’re worthy of a loan. Very judgmental. Upstart thinks it’s a bit… simplistic. Which is putting it mildly. They’ve built this algorithm, this digital brain, that looks at 2,500 data points. Two. Thousand. Five. Honestly, it sounds exhausting just thinking about it. It’s supposed to be better at figuring out if someone will actually pay you back. Which, let’s face it, is the whole point of lending.

Apparently, Elliott Investment Management took a rather large interest – over 10%, which, in the world of high finance, is like turning up to a party and buying the entire bar. They’re launching what they call an “activist campaign.” Which, translated from corporate speak, means they’re going to shake things up. Which, translated from my perspective, means volatility. And I’m already bracing myself.

The trading volume reached 55.4 million shares, a figure that suggests a rather frantic shuffling of papers and panicked whispers. It’s a surge, you see, some 43% above the usual three-month average of 38.7 million. One wonders if the clerks responsible for tallying these numbers have developed a nervous twitch. Rivian, you will recall, emerged blinking into the public markets in 2021, and has since experienced a decline of 84%. A rather precipitous fall, wouldn’t you agree? Like a nobleman stripped of his estate, or a samovar without water.

The recent uptick – a 15.2% ascension from Friday afternoon to Tuesday – is, of course, subject to the usual caveats. Whether this is a genuine blossoming or merely a transient spasm remains to be seen. I suspect, however, that Pepe’s trajectory will continue to mirror the broader market’s capricious whims. It’s a puppet dancing on the strings of collective sentiment, and its movements, while amusing to observe, are rarely driven by anything so substantial as intrinsic value.

Before the market even had a chance to fully wake up and ponder the existential dread of being a market, Valaris announced a delay in releasing its fourth-quarter results. A reschedule to this Thursday, February 19th, to be precise. The planned conference call, that vital ritual of corporate reassurance, has been cancelled. (One imagines the executives collectively deciding that explaining things would simply be… inconvenient.) Now, delays happen. Especially when one company is about to be absorbed into another. It’s a bit like a particularly meticulous amoeba preparing to engulf a slightly smaller amoeba – things rarely proceed on schedule.

Trading volume hit 57.9 million shares. That’s nearly 19% above average, meaning a lot of people are either very optimistic or very bored. It’s been a wild ride since 1980, with a 205494% increase. Which, honestly, feels less like investing and more like winning the lottery repeatedly. Someone should probably check the fine print.

This AI business has sent a shiver through the growth stocks, especially those that rely on spending enormous sums. But there was a glimmer of good news: Amazon (AMZN +1.19%) finally stopped its downward slide. It had been tumbling for days, you see, after announcing it intended to spend a truly monstrous amount of money on… well, on more machines. A sensible company would have bought a nice holiday for its employees, but no. Machines! Snowflake (SNOW 2.73%) took a bit of a tumble itself, poor thing, after Google unveiled a rather boastful ‘BigQuery.’ Meanwhile, Apple (AAPL +3.17%) and GE Aerospace (GE +3.61%) did their best to prop up the Dow, like sturdy little pillars.

The S&P 500, a broad and often indifferent observer of these dramas, added a modest 0.10%, finishing at 6,843. The Nasdaq Composite, ever the more excitable sibling, managed a 0.14% rise, closing at 22,578. But within the intricate tapestry of e-commerce and cloud computing, a subtle discord played out. Alibaba Group, a distant cousin in this digital family, closed at $155.43, down a fractional 0.19%. Walmart, a more grounded competitor, fared worse, shedding 3.76% to finish at $128.85. It was a reminder that in this arena, fortunes are rarely shared equally, and that even the most carefully laid plans can be disrupted by the capricious winds of investor sentiment. The divergence spoke volumes – a quiet acknowledgement that risk and reward are not always aligned, and that the pursuit of growth often demands a delicate balancing act.

By the end of the trading day, the price had increased by more than 7%. A perfectly respectable number, if you’re keeping score. Which, of course, somebody is.

It’s been going up for a week, apparently. A week! Like that makes it…stable? I saw a chart. A chart. They always look so…optimistic. It’s like they’re deliberately trying to mislead you. And everyone’s analyzing it. Assessing the “momentum.” The momentum. As if crypto has any actual momentum beyond sheer, unadulterated speculation.