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The airlines, predictably, are circling the drain. Jet fuel prices are spiking faster than a politician’s promises, and the routes over the Middle East are looking less like pathways to profit and more like invitations to disaster. Meanwhile, Berkshire Hathaway and Lockheed Martin are holding relatively steady. Lockheed Martin! Of course. The war machine always profits from chaos. It’s a grim, historical certainty. They’re stockpiling the future while the rest of us are left holding the bag.

Before the reckoning, a disquiet had settled over the market. A fear, not of failure, but of irrelevance. The whispers concerned these new intelligences, these ‘AI’ programs like Claude, that promised to reshape work and leisure. Investors, quick to scent the changing wind, saw Duolingo, and others like it, as vulnerable. A prime target in a landscape suddenly crowded with potential disruptors.

To sell, of course, is not merely a transaction; it is a judgment. Loeb did not abandon ship entirely, but pruned his stakes—a reduction of twenty-three percent in Amazon, sixteen percent in Microsoft. Such actions are rarely born of simple calculation, but rather a complex interplay of ambition, apprehension, and the ever-present search for advantage. One does not casually relinquish a portion of such holdings without a reasoned expectation of greater returns elsewhere. The market, after all, is not a benevolent provider, but a stern taskmaster, rewarding foresight and punishing complacency.

But stabilization isn’t the point, is it? It’s not about just not losing money. It’s about making it. Proper, sustainable, dividend-boosting money. In 2026, Nike needs to prove it can get its margins back. Not just a little bit, but properly. Because a stable company with shrinking margins is basically a slightly less frantic version of a sinking ship.

The broader indices, however, registered a descent. The S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.94%) fell to 6,817, and the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC 1.02%) to 22,517, as the fervor for speculative growth cooled. Within the entertainment sector, Walt Disney (DIS 1.13%) closed at $103.3 (-0.99%), and Warner Bros. Discovery at $28.2 (-1.05%), both lagging behind Netflix’s modest ascent. A subtle demonstration, perhaps, that in the realm of streaming, a reprieve from expansion can be perceived as a victory.

Let’s be clear: 4.5% of their U.S. equity portfolio. That’s not chump change. It puts TDS firmly in the ‘we’re paying attention’ category. Which, as someone who spends her days staring at spreadsheets, I appreciate. It’s a signal. A very expensive signal.

As of mid-February, even these plump geese were looking a bit ruffled, down more than the S&P 500 itself. Microsoft, poor thing, was wobbling about like a jelly. And those Amazon fellows, well, they seem to be throwing money at “artificial intelligence” as if it were confetti. A terribly wasteful habit.

They traded 54 million shares, which is a lot of shares. A lot. It’s the kind of volume that suggests people are… restless. Like a room full of toddlers who’ve just discovered they can open the kitchen cabinets. Blue Owl went public in 2020, which feels like a lifetime ago. They’ve grown 1% since then. One percent. My sourdough starter has had a better return.

I bought into this quantum computing thing a while back. Not because I believed in miracles, but because sometimes, a big company can stumble into something useful while looking for something else. It’s happened before. Mostly, it involves making better staplers.