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Ross. They sell stuff cheap. Two chains, actually. Ross and dd’s. It’s like… Ross is for people who pretend they don’t care about brands, and dd’s is for people who genuinely don’t. It’s a whole system. And it works. Because people like a bargain. It’s not rocket science. Though, the store layouts… don’t even get me started. It’s like they want you to wander aimlessly for hours. It’s a power play, I swear. Anyway, they’re doing okay. Last quarter, sales were up 9%. Not spectacular, but… not bad. They expect another 3-4% this year. And the earnings… 6-11%. It’s…fine. They’re opening more stores, of course. Like they need more clutter. They had 1904 Ross stores and 363 dd’s. More places to get lost. It’s a whole thing.

To attribute this decline to conventional anxieties – fears of slowing growth, or the capital expenditures required to maintain a competitive edge – is to misunderstand the nature of the labyrinth we call the stock market. These are merely the visible walls, the readily apparent dead ends. The true impediment lies elsewhere, in the ephemeral currents of sentiment, in the collective unconscious of investors.

The current impetus, as reported, stems from anxieties surrounding liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies, disrupted by events in the Persian Gulf. It is an irony not lost on those familiar with the ‘Treatise on Contingency’ – a spurious text attributed to the Alexandrian scholar, Ptolemy Secundus – that the pursuit of cleaner energy sources should be so readily entangled with the vagaries of geopolitical conflict. The blockage of supply, it seems, has prompted a renewed, if temporary, reliance on coal – a return to a prior state, a recursive echo in the energy landscape.

The particulars are these: 825 shares, valued at approximately $70,000 according to the official record, leaving Mr. Thomas with a direct holding of 4,381 shares, representing a value of $364,000. These numbers, ostensibly concrete, are merely points on a fluctuating curve, reflections in a hall of mirrors where value is never fixed, only perceived.

Forget your meme stocks. Forget your crypto fantasies. We need anchors. We need CASH FLOW. And right now, two names are screaming at me from the wreckage: Coca-Cola and Tractor Supply. They aren’t glamorous. They aren’t going to make you an overnight billionaire. But they’ll keep you breathing when the whole system goes belly up. These aren’t investments, they’re survival kits.

These aren’t the kind you stick on a fridge. These are the guts of the future, the neodymium-iron-boron magnets. Strong stuff. The kind that makes electric motors hum, robots walk, and drones…well, do whatever it is drones do these days. Seventeen elements, they call them ‘rare earth’. A misnomer, really. They’re not rare, just hard to get out of the ground and even harder to refine. China had a head start. Still does. They control about 71% of the supply coming into the U.S. as of 2025. That’s a chokehold, plain and simple.

BigBear.ai, you see, is a curious case. Despite all the fuss and bother with things blowing up in various corners of the world (which, you’d think, would be good for companies that make things that go boom), it’s been performing rather poorly. It’s like giving a perfectly good chocolate biscuit to a grumpy badger. A waste, a complete waste. The company’s results? Let’s just say they’ve been less than splendid.

The numbers, as you can see, are perfectly respectable. The SEC form, of course, is a monument to bureaucratic precision. But the real story is always the quiet desperation underneath. Or, in this case, the quiet confidence. Jenkins bought in at $125 a share, which, as of this morning, is a bit optimistic. I always feel a little bad for directors who time the market poorly. It’s like announcing your vacation plans to the office before you’ve actually booked the flights.

The transaction value is based on the SEC Form 4’s weighted average, and the post-transaction value is calculated as of the market close on March 10th, 2026 – a date which, I trust, is still firmly in the future.

Now, let’s pit two of these electric hopefuls against each other: Rivian Automotive (RIVN +0.82%) and Lucid Group (LCID +0.48%). Which one’s the slightly less terrible bet? I’m not promising riches, just… slightly less financial devastation. We’re looking out to 2026 and beyond, so grab your crystal ball and a strong cup of coffee.