The short sellers, of course, are having a field day. Though, frankly, their optimism is rather predictable. It reminds one of a particularly tedious dinner party conversation. But, as the late Jim Rogers observed, when everyone “knows” something to be true, it’s time to consider the alternative. So, one asks oneself, what are the bears missing? And why might Adobe, despite all the gloom, not be quite the disaster everyone predicts?
Ares, you see, finances what they politely call “middle market” companies. What I call companies that conventional banks have deemed too risky to touch. They’ve got 603 of these little ventures in their $29.5 billion portfolio. It’s a bit like being a loan shark with a better publicist. They try to minimize risk with first-lien loans (60.5% of the portfolio) and a sprinkle of second-lien (5%). It’s all very…layered. Like a bad onion. Or a complicated tax shelter.
This is the final installment, they tell me, of a series examining Micron. A curious exercise, this post-mortem dissection of a company still, ostensibly, breathing. The previous pieces, if memory serves, traced a familiar arc – a history of booms and busts, of fleeting advantages and inevitable corrections. Now, the question hangs in the air: is this time truly different? Or are we merely witnessing a particularly vivid illusion?
Yesterday, the stock had a nice little jump after CapitalWatch retracted accusations of…well, let’s just say “creative accounting”. Good for them. A bit of retraction goes a long way. Then, today, we get a bullish note from Wall Street. Because of course we do. It’s all a bit performative, isn’t it? Like everyone’s trying to look like they knew what was happening all along.
The situation, one might venture, presents a most fortunate alignment for investors in Nvidia (NVDA 0.39%).
When an asset’s price is driven more by hope and fear than by underlying value, it ceases to be a reliable store of wealth. It becomes a gamble, and a dangerous one at that. For those who prioritize preservation of capital, the pursuit of fleeting gains in precious metals is, at best, a distraction, and at worst, a path to ruin.
The Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ +0.09%) – yes, the one that sounds like a malfunctioning printer – has done rather well for itself, hasn’t it? Up 84% in five years. Which, if you do the math (and I rarely do, preferring to outsource even the simplest calculations to Siri), works out to about 13% annually. Not bad. The S&P 500 chugs along at a respectable 10%, but it doesn’t have that vaguely unsettling ticker symbol. It feels…sturdier. Like a sensible pair of shoes. The QQQ feels like roller skates. Potentially exhilarating, but with a high probability of face-planting.
The S&P 500? Barely twitching. Those “Magnificent Seven” – more like the “Magnificently Overvalued Seven” – are starting to look… tired. Down 3%? That’s a bloodbath in this game. Meanwhile, while the sharks circle the carcass of hype, something… solid… is happening. Dividend stocks are quietly, almost apologetically, rising. It’s unsettling. It’s… beautiful.
The problem isn’t that Tilray isn’t trying. They talk a good game about international markets, but honestly, it feels a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The entire investment thesis seems to hinge on the U.S. finally deciding to join the party and legalize marijuana. It’s a lot of potential energy, sure, but potential energy doesn’t pay the bills. It’s like waiting for a friend who’s always running late – eventually, you just order your own appetizers.
UPS, that tireless engine of consumerism, currently distributes a dividend yielding 5.6 percent. Five times the pittance offered by the broader market, a fact which, one suspects, is less a triumph of fiscal prudence than a reflection of general market apathy. The share price, one notes with mild approval, has enjoyed a recent uptick—a mere 19 percent thus far in 2026—presumably due to the insatiable demands of online shoppers. The company’s fourth-quarter pronouncements, predictably, exceeded expectations, with adjusted earnings of $2.38 per share. A triumph, naturally, trumpeted from every rooftop. Revenue guidance for 2026, at $89.7 billion, also exceeded the prognostications of the so-called analysts. The stock, predictably, rallied. One anticipates a further, temporary, elevation.