They dropped $43.52 million on this spree, calculatin’ it by the price of things back in the last quarter of ’25. And wouldn’t you know, the value of that pile o’ paper grew by another $37.79 million. Seems the market, like a fickle woman, is smilin’ on these spectacles.
Steadfast Capital Management, a firm whose name suggests an unwavering gaze, has quietly relinquished its entire holding in Pool Corporation, a divestment amounting to some $156.40 million. It was a transaction conducted not with fanfare, but with the precise, almost mournful, efficiency of a cartographer redrawing a map after a long-forgotten coastline has surrendered to the sea. The fund, once a believer in the shimmer of chlorinated water and the promise of backyard oases, has withdrawn, leaving a void where optimism once resided. The shares, once constituting 2.7% of Steadfast’s holdings, now exist only as a memory in the ledgers, a ghost of potential profit.
Walmart, ah, Walmart! It flourishes, of course. A veritable hydra, sprouting new stores with the implacable force of habit. Its recent earnings, reported with the solemnity usually reserved for pronouncements of plague, were…adequate. A five-and-a-half percent increase, they say. As if a five-and-a-half percent increase in the acquisition of ceramic gnomes and discounted socks constitutes a triumph of the human spirit. And e-commerce, surging a full twenty-four percent! One imagines legions of digital clerks, toiling in the server farms, each transaction a tiny, insignificant step towards…what, precisely? A world overflowing with plastic trinkets?
By the close of play, the stock was up a jolly good 35%, a performance that sent ripples of mild astonishment through the financial district. Not a bad day at the office, eh?
The current fuss, naturally, revolves around this Artificial Intelligence business. Everyone is convinced that these new-fangled contraptions will render perfectly good design tools obsolete. As if professionals will simply abandon years of honed skill for a bit of algorithmic whimsy. The very idea! It’s a bit like suggesting one replace a perfectly good martini with fizzy water. Unthinkable.
Glassnode, the analytics debt‑nymph that knows no stranger to data, unfurled a new article on X, pointing out that Bitcoin’s open interest had jumped like the beam of a tantalisingly regular super‑market display. “Open Interest” counts how many perpetual futures are left in the market, and a spike tells you folks are betting big. A dip? Maybe the party’s getting pushed out or someone’s being liquidated in a dramatic, dramatic fashion.
D-Wave Quantum (QBTS +3.78%), a name that sounds suspiciously like a villain from a science fiction serial, has been doing rather well for itself, thank you very much. A staggering 2,690% rise over the last three years, as of this writing, is enough to make even the most seasoned investor raise an eyebrow. Naturally, the question arises: will D-Wave join the splitting party? A perfectly reasonable inquiry, though one requiring a bit more investigation than simply staring at the ticker tape.
The new silicon—the M5 Pro and M5 Max—are presented as the engine of this endeavor. The company claims a quadrupling, even an octupling, of “AI performance” when compared to prior generations. Such pronouncements are, naturally, relative. One recalls the Library of Babel, Borges’ infinite compendium of all possible books. Each volume, though ultimately meaningless in isolation, contains within it the potential for profound insight. Similarly, these chips are not intelligent in themselves, but possess the capacity to process information at a scale previously unattainable. The true measure lies not in the speed of calculation, but in the quality of the questions asked.
If one were compelled, against better judgment, to navigate these troubled waters with a modest sum – let us say, one thousand units of currency – one would be wise to abandon the pursuit of the ‘next big thing’ and instead consider the foundational elements, the ‘pick-and-shovel’ operations that will benefit regardless of which algorithmic titan ultimately prevails. Two such entities warrant scrutiny: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, and Micron Technology. Not as beacons of innovation, but as necessary components in a system increasingly divorced from genuine progress.
But don’t despair, dear investor. The coffers don’t have to remain empty. There’s always a way to turn a profit, even when the digital gold is looking less like a dragon’s hoard and more like a particularly shiny pile of pebbles. Let’s consider a few avenues, shall we?
