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Stanley Druckenmiller, a name now whispered with the reverence once reserved for the old masters, has become something of a lodestar in this constellation of wealth. With the venerable Warren Buffett easing into a quieter season, Druckenmiller’s movements are followed with a scrutiny usually reserved for migrating birds. He is a man who speaks with his actions, a collector of growth, and currently, his gaze seems fixed upon the giants of the digital age.

Last year, they raked in a sum that’d make a Mississippi gambler blush – over $215 billion, if you please. And they reckon they’ll do even better this next quarter, a jump of around 77 percent. A fellow could get used to numbers like that, though I suspect it’d spoil a man rotten.

But ah, the fickleness of fortune! 2026 has arrived, and AMD, despite a respectable showing – a 35% revenue increase, earnings of $4.17 per share – finds itself… underperforming. A touch disappointing, wouldn’t you agree? The investors, those demanding spirits, had apparently expected miracles. They seem to believe that silicon wafers grow on trees, fertilized by the sheer force of expectation. And of course, there’s Nvidia, looming like a particularly unpleasant dream, threatening to supply Meta Platforms and Lenovo with server and laptop chips. A predictable skirmish, really; the usual jostling for position in this grand, absurd drama.

The logic, as best one can decipher it (and frankly, the deciphering process involves a concerning amount of caffeine), is that insurance companies generate capital that can then be deployed into other ventures. This is not a new idea. It’s been done before. Many times. But Ackman, bless his ambitious soul, seems to believe he can do it better. (A common delusion amongst the financially fortunate, and indeed, a significant driver of economic activity.) His hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, has a reasonably encouraging track record – beating the S&P 500 by a respectable 40 percentage points over the last decade. Which, if you consider the inherent randomness of the stock market, is either impressive or simply a statistical anomaly. The jury, as they say, is still out, and probably ordering another round of drinks.

Dividends. They call it a ‘return.’ As if the machine simply gives back what is rightfully yours. No. It is a portion of the surplus, extracted from the hands of others, and briefly passed along the line. Yet, even a small share of the harvest can sustain a family. Reinvest it, yes, but remember what built it: the sweat and the striving of countless souls.

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE +1.48%), parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, recently committed $2 billion to Polymarket. The headlines focused predictably on the elevation of Polymarket’s founder to the ranks of the young and wealthy. A curious spectacle, certainly. More significant, however, is the signal this sends: ICE acknowledges prediction market data as a legitimate asset class. It is a declaration, in effect, that the collective intelligence of these markets holds predictive power worthy of institutional capital.

Apparently, everyone else had a similar panic. Software stocks, the ones that were already teetering on the edge of “expensive,” took a bit of a tumble. Something about Anthropic’s Claude Code threatening to make Excel obsolete. Honestly, I can barely open Excel, so the idea of it being replaced feels… liberating. But the market, of course, doesn’t work like that.