qfx

The August 28 quarterly oracle’s pronouncement – a 19% market capitulation – appears, at first glance, a Sisyphean rebuke. Yet within the earnings parchment lies not calamity, but a palimpsest of recursive growth: $2B in quarterly revenue (a 58% y-o-y phoenix-like rise), adjusted EPS doubling like a binary star, and data centers humming with 75% of revenues – a digital El Dorado.

The Trade Desk (TTD) lost 37% of its value-roughly the same percentage of my faith in humanity that evaporated during my last family Zoom call. Revenue growth slowed to 19%, which sounds decent until you realize their previous CFO had held the job since the Obama administration. The new hire started on August 21st, which feels like trying to learn the alphabet while being chased by wolves. Meanwhile, stricter privacy rules loom like a neighbor who won’t stop borrowing your hedge trimmer and returning it broken.

Amazon, that most enterprising of merchants, has long mastered the art of transformation. From peddling wares to pioneering cloud services, it has become a colossus, its AWS division a titan in the realm of digital infrastructure. Yet what is AWS but the scaffolding for its latest folly? Artificial intelligence, that modern philosopher’s stone, is now its chosen muse. One might almost pity the poor robots laboring in warehouses, their toil justified by the promise of ever-faster deliveries-a farce of efficiency where the only true profit is in spectacle.