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Occidental is a big oil producer in the U.S., with assets in the Denver-Julesberg and Permian basins. It also drills offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, North Africa, and the Middle East. As an integrated energy company, it plays in upstream, midstream, and downstream-like a one-stop shop for oil and gas. Its profit margins are competitive with ExxonMobil and Chevron, even if its revenue isn’t. Size doesn’t matter if you know how to count. So it goes.

-it’s… Italian for ‘cloud’?”)

Enter stage left: Daniel Loeb of Third Point and David Tepper of Appaloosa Management-two hedge fund big shots who’ve been making moves like chess grandmasters on a caffeine binge. These financial wizards decided to buy up shares of Nvidia during the second quarter. Now, when guys who juggle billions are still piling into Nvidia, well, maybe it’s time to stop pretending you’re too smart for the market and take a peek at what they’re seeing.

Enbridge (ENB)-you’ve probably heard of it, or at least you’ve seen those giant pipelines snaking through the North American landscape like metallic snakes, carrying vast quantities of oil and gas, which, in turn, fuel the world’s energy insatiability. Enbridge is a Dividend Champion, having raised its dividend every year for the past 30 years. It’s like the world’s most reliable cousin at family reunions, except this cousin is better at making money than any of us.

First, a note on visibility: Mr. Ackman’s position, like a well-concealed umbrella in a downpour, is visible only via a delayed Q2 13F filing. These documents, much like a well-timed tea party, reveal positions as of quarter-end, but alas, they do not capture the latest trades or the more esoteric derivatives. One might say it is a rearview mirror, though not one one would wish to drive by.

Though the specter of retail investors lingers, their presence is but a footnote in the grand ledger of Robinhood’s metamorphosis. The company, now a colossus in financial technology, operates under a regime of relentless expansion, its services multiplying like the appendages of a hydra, each new offering a testament to its ceaseless striving. Yet this prosperity is not without its shadows, for the very mechanisms that propel its growth are steeped in the same uncertainties that once defined its infancy.

Buffett, that apostle of value investing, has long adhered to a creed of “steady growth,” “reliable profits,” and “strong management.” His portfolio, a mosaic of Coca-Colas and Duracells, is less a collection of businesses than a shrine to the virtues of patience and dividend checks. Yet for all his piousness, the man has never paid a dividend to Berkshire shareholders. Instead, he has opted for buybacks-a quieter, more fiscally discreet way to return capital, as though returning money to shareholders were a sin against shareholder-friendly aesthetics.

Two names flicker in the periphery of this bureaucratic theater: Ford Motor Company (F) and Polaris (PII). Their stock prices have been reduced to administrative errors-24% and 46% deviations from the S&P 500‘s 62% ascent. Yet, they linger, suspended in a limbo of potential. Investors, like prisoners in a Kafka novel, are promised dividends while the machinery of growth grinds on, indifferent to their plight.

Meta, the iridescent butterfly of the AI realm, has fluttered 16 percentage points above the index this year. Yet Laffont, that arch-contrarian, shed its wings. The Trade Desk, meanwhile, languishes in the doldrums, its stock price a wilted rose in Wall Street’s garden. Does our trader-philosopher perceive some esoteric pattern in the petals? Or is this merely the whimsy of a man who once bet against the moon?