Alphabet: The AI Play You’re Probably Ignoring

Gemini. That’s the name. Their large language model. It’s consistently good, apparently. I mean, they all are, aren’t they? It’s become the baseline. But what Alphabet does is embed it. Everywhere. Cloud, search… it’s like they’re injecting intelligence into the bloodstream of the internet. And let’s be real, search is still king. They own the gateway, don’t they? Chrome, Android… over 70% market share. It’s not exactly a fair fight. And then there’s the Apple deal. They pay Alphabet to be the default search engine. Clever, really. It’s like a protection racket, but legal. And now Apple Intelligence is jumping on the Gemini bandwagon. Smooth move.

The Trade Desk: A Fading Signal

Digital Advertising Landscape

The recent figures, of course, tell a story. A story of deceleration. Of revenue growth slowing to a pace that, while still positive, lacks the earlier exuberance. One observes the quarterly progression – 22% in Q4 2024, a brief uptick to 25% in Q1 2025, then a gradual descent – 19%, 18%, and finally, a mere 14% in the most recent quarter. It is a pattern that suggests not catastrophe, perhaps, but a quiet settling. A return to something resembling normalcy.

AI Hype? Please. These Stocks Are Still Gold.

The narrative is that ServiceNow, with its workflow automation, is basically obsolete. That AI will just…do it better. It’s a lazy thought. And frankly, insulting to the people who actually built the thing. It’s like saying a plumber is redundant because someone invented a self-cleaning toilet. Yes, the toilet is clever, but it still needs pipes, doesn’t it? ServiceNow isn’t afraid of AI; it’s already integrated it. They’ve been quietly making things more efficient for ages. Customers aren’t looking to replace their systems; they want to enhance them. And guess who’s best positioned to handle that enhancement? Exactly. Bill McDermott, their CEO, put it brilliantly – AI doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It needs orchestration. It needs…well, ServiceNow. Which, let’s be honest, sounds a lot less scary than letting a rogue algorithm run your entire business.

Bitcoin’s Peculiar Predicament

Polymarket, that curious bazaar of predictive wagering, assigns a paltry 12% probability to such an outcome. A pessimistic assessment, certainly. But is it, perhaps, unduly so? One must consider the fifteen-year track record, a period during which Bitcoin has repeatedly confounded the expectations of the sensible, and occasionally, rewarded the faith of the utterly reckless.

CFTC to Prediction Markets: Don’t Be a Hoopy Frood, Follow the Rules!

The CFTC’s Division of Enforcement, in a move that can only be described as “we’ve had just about enough of your shenanigans,” issued a stern advisory on Feb. 25. It’s all about the dangers of misusing nonpublic information and engaging in fraud on event contracts traded on KalshiEX, a designated contract market (DCM). Because, you know, just because it’s a prediction market doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all.

Digital Currents: XRP and Dogecoin in the Shifting Tides

It is a peculiarity of this new age that value can exist detached from substance. Gold, a metal to be held in the hand, a tangible inheritance. Land, a physical presence, rooted in the earth. Stocks, representing the labors and profits of enterprise. These possess an inherent gravity. Cryptocurrencies, however, are different. Their price is not anchored to the solid ground of production or utility, but floats upon the shifting winds of demand and supply. They are, in a sense, a pure expression of faith – a belief in the future, or perhaps, a fleeting infatuation with the novel.

Nvidia & The Semiconductor Shuffle

The market, of course, merely shrugged. A mere 3% uptick after hours, quickly evaporating like a particularly weak gin fizz. One wonders if investors are simply jaded. Or perhaps they’ve developed a taste for genuine drama, and a relentless surge in profits is simply… tiresome.

ADP: A Chronicle of Imperceptible Shifts

The anxieties surrounding this entity are manifold. The sluggishness of the employment market, a phenomenon as predictable as the tides, casts a shadow upon its payroll processing core. More recently, the specter of generative artificial intelligence – a digital golem threatening to automate the very act of calculation – has induced a tremor of unease. Investors, it seems, fear not the absence of growth, but the manner of it – a transition from predictable increments to unpredictable leaps, a disturbance in the established order.