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UnitedHealth. UnitedHealth! Down 20%. Twenty percent! Because of… earnings. Earnings! It’s always earnings. They can’t just have earnings, can they? They have to disappoint with earnings. And of course, it drags down the whole healthcare sector, and then the Dow feels the need to suffer. It’s a domino effect of… competence failure. And you know what? It’s irritating. Micron and Amazon are up, though. Because AI. Everything’s “AI” now. Like that solves everything. Amazon’s ditching its Fresh and Go stores. Switching to Whole Foods. “Expanding grocery delivery.” It’s just… rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, isn’t it?

Trading volume reached a rather robust 60.8 million shares, which is approximately 76% above its three-month average of 34.5 million. That’s a lot of shares. Enough shares, in fact, to build a small, moderately priced moon base. (Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But it is a lot of shares.) Bradesco IPO’d in 2002 and has experienced a growth of 387% since then. Which, when you consider the sheer randomness of the stock market, is rather less improbable than, say, a penguin learning to play the ukulele.

The year past saw its shares tumble some 42%, a precipitous descent that might have disheartened a less…optimistic investor. However, 2026 has begun with a modest ascent of nearly 6%. A pittance, perhaps, in the grand scheme, but as the playwrights of old were wont to say, every journey begins with a single step, or in this case, a fractional gain.

One wonders if the shareholders’ enthusiasm is entirely warranted, or merely a fleeting fancy. The scent of possibility, after all, can be quite intoxicating, especially when one has lingered too long in the shadows of stagnation. But let us not rush to judgment. The landscape of technological production is rarely as simple as it appears.

Eight percent growth in the final quarter, a mere two percent organically… a trifle, one might think. Yet, it was enough to provoke the wrath of Wall Street, to send tremors through the carefully constructed edifice of investor confidence. The stock, already burdened by the anxieties of the past year, has now fallen roughly thirty percent. It is a humbling spectacle, a reminder that even the most promising enterprises are not immune to the capricious winds of fortune.

Look, I’m not saying dividends are bad. I’m saying people are treating them like a magical solution. Like a payout suddenly fixes a fundamentally flawed business. It doesn’t. It just… delays the inevitable. But fine, let’s talk ETFs. Because apparently, that’s what people want. There’s one I’d consider, and another… well, let’s just say I have questions. So many questions.

Naturally, everyone is searching for the next such phantom. A pity, really, that most will find only air. But occasionally, a glimmer of something… substantial appears.

The chaps on Wall Street, bless their hearts, occasionally convince themselves they’ve cracked the code of the market. A charming notion, but demonstrably untrue, as recent events have shown. This Venezuelan business, while causing a bit of a stir, is hardly unprecedented. Oil, you see, is a beast of a commodity, prone to fits of exuberance and gloomy spells. It’s not just occasionally temperamental; it’s always a bit of a handful. One must simply accept this as a fundamental truth, like the inevitability of rain on a Bank Holiday.