They’re talking profits, too. Growing, they say. As if that ever changed. The real story, the one nobody wanted to shout from the rooftops, was buried in the earnings call. Memory chips. Suddenly, the little guys holding up the whole operation. A shortage, of course. What else would you expect? Demand for this AI nonsense is through the roof, and somebody has to make the bits that make it tick.
Apparently, this merger – with Synovus, another bank, naturally – diluted something called “tangible book value.” Tangible book value! What does that even mean? It sounds made up. And then there were “execution risks.” Risks! As if running a bank isn’t risky enough already. It’s like they’re actively looking for problems. The whole thing feels…unsettled. And now I’m unsettled.
The filings, those pale ghosts of transactions past, reveal a growing embrace. The fourth quarter saw this inward tide swell, bringing the fund’s holdings to 1,338,377 shares, valued at $86.93 million. A net increase of $18.90 million—a sum that doesn’t simply appear on a balance sheet, but represents a belief, a quiet confidence in the path forward. It is as if the bank, surveying the landscape, found its own soil most fertile.
Amongst these resurrected companies, one name surfaced with a particularly stubborn tenacity: Altria (MO +3.40%), the foremost purveyor of tobacco in this, our American domain. Over the past two years, its stock has rallied with a vigor that would shame a Cossack, exceeding a fifty percent ascent while the broader S&P 500 managed a mere forty. One is compelled to ask: what dark alchemy fuels this improbable resurgence? And, more importantly, can it endure? Let us, then, examine this curious case, and consider whether a modest ten thousand dollars—or perhaps a sum more substantial—might find a temporary haven within its smoldering embrace.
And right in the thick of it, leading the charge, is Nvidia. Now, Nvidia originally made its name building graphics cards for gamers – the sort of thing that lets you make explosions look convincingly, well, explosive. But they’ve cleverly pivoted, and now their GPUs – Graphics Processing Units – are the brains behind much of the AI boom. They currently command around 90% of the market, which, frankly, feels a bit like one company owning all the oxygen. They’ve also built a rather clever software platform called CUDA, and a strong networking business, which, as it turns out, is rather important when you’re trying to move vast quantities of data around. It’s a bit like building a superhighway for information, and Nvidia seems to have secured most of the toll booths.
For years, AbbVie has drawn sustenance from the fertile ground of immunology, most notably through Humira. Though the rains of exclusivity have ceased for that particular crop, the company has adapted, cultivating new strains like Skyrizi and Rinvoq. These are strong plants, already bearing considerable fruit – Skyrizi, a fifth-best seller globally, and Rinvoq following close behind. A man could build a comfortable life on such a harvest.
XRP had a run last year. A quick burst, like a cheap firework. Climbed seventy-one percent, then coughed up ten. The story? A legal tangle with the SEC. A squabble over whether a token was a security, or just…air. They dropped the appeal, and the optimists started building castles on quicksand. Stablecoins, ETFs… the usual song and dance.
Palantir, Nvidia, Broadcom – these names resonate with the predictable clamour of the market. Perfectly respectable firms, no doubt, but already burdened with expectations that, one suspects, will prove rather difficult to satisfy. Ciena, on the other hand, has been operating beneath the radar, quietly constructing the infrastructure upon which this entire digital fantasy rests.
Born from the ambitions of Ripple Labs in 2012, XRP was conceived not as a store of value – a vulgar imitation of Bitcoin‘s supposed virtues – but as a facilitator, a swift courier across the treacherous currents of international payments. One hundred billion tokens, pre-minted, a pre-ordained destiny…a curious echo of theological debate, wouldn’t you say? Unlike the laborious mining of Bitcoin or the passive accrual of Ethereum‘s stake, XRP exists solely as a bridge, a fleeting intermediary. It’s a life devoid of inherent worth, defined only by its function…a rather bleak existence, when you consider it.
The market, that fickle beast, seems to have decided that software, in general, is no longer quite so…robust. A sort of collective shudder has run through the valuation of these digital contraptions, as if investors suddenly fear they will be rendered obsolete by the very intelligence they claim to embody. AI, naturally, is the culprit. The specter of automated accounting haunts the trading floors, and valuations are adjusted accordingly. It is as if the very act of counting beans is now considered a vulgarity, a task best left to the machines.