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The market for cancer diagnostics is, predictably, expanding. Forecasts suggest a substantial increase in demand over the next decade, a statistic that, while impressive, should not be mistaken for a guarantee of profit. The integration of artificial intelligence into imaging technologies offers a marginal improvement in accuracy, but it is the development of targeted diagnostic agents that presents a more compelling, if still speculative, opportunity.

The Seven, in descending order of market capitalization (a measurement of how much everyone thinks something is worth, which is often divorced from actual value, but never mind), are:

Units of Confidence Lost: 7. Hours Spent Staring at Bloomberg: 11. Number of Times I’ve Considered Becoming a Goat Farmer: 3.

It’s got investors twitchy, mind you. They’re startin’ to think twice about keepin’ all their eggs in the American basket, and movin’ a bit of their coin over to foreign lands. And that, my friends, has caused a bit of a stir on the exchanges. While the S&P 500 has been mostly dancin’ in place this year, two funds have been showin’ a bit more pep in their step: the Vanguard FTSE Pacific ETF and the Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF. The Pacific ETF has climbed a respectable 18%, and the Developed Markets one a solid 11%.

The question isn’t if you should consider it, but how much. And that’s where things get interesting. Most folks are asking the wrong questions. They’re looking for a get-rich-quick scheme. Bitcoin isn’t that. It’s more like a slow burn, a flicker in the dark.

For those unfamiliar, Lone Pine is a hedge fund known for a blend of sensible value investing and a willingness to dabble in growth stocks. Mandel, a chap who clearly knows his way around a balance sheet, recently decided to completely exit his position in Meta Platforms – Facebook and Instagram to the rest of us. A sizable position, mind you – over $971 million worth of shares. Now, that’s a lot of likes and shares. Over the past couple of years, Meta’s stock had rather impressively doubled, so a bit of profit-taking was entirely understandable. Hedge funds, after all, aren’t charities. Their average holding period is a mere 16.5 months, which, when you think about it, is less time than it takes to properly mature a good cheddar. Still, the complete jettison of the stock raised a few eyebrows.

For decades, the Oracle of Omaha has dispensed wisdom, often couched in folksy aphorisms. These, investors have dutifully recorded, and, in some cases, even acted upon. The effect, one suspects, has been rather like attempting to steer a supertanker with a rowing oar, but a certain amount of incidental benefit undoubtedly accrued. The truly astonishing thing, however, is not what Mr. Buffett did in his final quarter, but what he conspicuously didn’t.

Established in 1957, the index tracks the fortunes of five hundred large enterprises, representing, it is claimed, approximately eighty per cent of the nation’s equity value. Admission to this gilded club is, of course, governed by a series of criteria – profitability, liquidity, a minimum market capitalisation of twenty-two billion dollars – all designed to maintain the illusion of seriousness. One suspects the true requirement is simply a capacity to inflate the numbers, at least for a season.

The question, naturally, is whether this agreeable ascent will continue. Oil prices, those volatile, darkly alluring indicators, have been exhibiting a decided upward trajectory, nearing levels not witnessed since the languid days of last summer. Geopolitical anxieties, those ever-present specters, and the lingering effects of global energy sanctions, threaten to introduce further disruptions to supply, potentially sustaining elevated prices for the foreseeable future. And, let us not overlook the rather compelling valuation: a price-to-earnings ratio of nineteen, positioning the sector as one of the more reasonably priced options within the S&P 500’s somewhat bloated landscape. A bargain, perhaps, in a world increasingly devoid of them.