Bull Markets, Cruise Ships & Toast: A Smorgasbord of Nonconformist Investments

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Somewhere in the arcane labyrinths of the Patrician’s Stock Exchange1, a consensus is forming. Market indices, those mysterious creatures herded by wizards in pinstripe robes, have staged what is economically known as “the V-shaped recovery,” otherwise known as “putting the carpets back after the fire brigade’s gone.” In such times, the Great Herd surges towards whichever companies have so much as coughed in the direction of a 52-week high, secure in the knowledge that nothing succeeds like bandwagonry.

Allow me, your loyal contrarian, to fetch a magnifying glass and, while everyone else is reading the ticker tape, to read between the lines. Here then are two stocks that have broken out from the flock—possibly because they were never quite the flocking type to begin with.

1. Carnival: Or How To Sail Straight Into the Wind

Let’s talk Carnival (ticker: CCL), the floating city-state of the cruise world. This company, buoyed by demand so persistent it must be hereditary, has watched its stock rise around 18% this year—well ahead of the S&P 500, that most unadventurous of benchmarks. Eight successive quarters of record revenue and an admirably plump bookings ledger stretching towards a future that looks, to Carnival at least, like one continuous deck party.

And what is a cruise except a floating controlled environment in which consumer confidence is measurable in buffet plates per hour?2 While sales of socks and sundries wane—all those would-be shoppers are now queuing for trivia night somewhere off Corfu—Carnival is, quite literally, full steam ahead.

Consider the oracular numbers: anticipation yawns towards $25 billion in revenue by 2025, with $2.00 expected in adjusted earnings per share (doubtless adjusted with the same precision a ship’s purser brings to the dessert table). All this while the broader travel industry’s fate remains subject to the benevolence of mischievous minor deities, such as Grobnar the God of Random Price Hikes.

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Industry statistics, which are only accurate to the nearest expert guess, suggest 82% of those who have endured, er, enjoyed a cruise plan to return3. Carnival’s own management, speaking at their Q2 conclave, virtually beamed about bookings filling cabins all the way to 2026, and made it clear there was only so much cruise ship to go ’round. Scarcity, it turns out, is excellent for margins.

And should you be tempted to mutter “overvalued,” consider this: with a forward price-to-earnings multiple of 15, Carnival remains priced more like a humble soapmaker and less like a circus impresario. Analysts, who are to predictions what seers are to chickens’ entrails, expect earnings growth to pace at an annualized 21%. Of course, the only certainty about predictions is that time, like the tide, will one day put them out to sea.

2. Toast: Sorcery for the House-Elves of Hospitality

Now let us consider Toast (ticker: TOST), allegedly named not for ye olde breakfast staple but for the act of raising a glass to progress. In the grand banquet of artificial intelligence, everyone wants a seat—even (and especially) the keepers of the realm’s eateries, forever plotting how to serve more stew with fewer spoons.

Toast, wielding technology that practically purrs, has seen its shares rise 33% this year. It is apparently the anointed purveyor of digital wizardry to the restaurant business, backed not merely by algorithms, but by a product so “user friendly” it wouldn’t be out of place at a family reunion of trolls.4 

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The field is as crowded as the Unseen University’s annual pudding competition, with every would-be software conjurer pitching in. But Toast boasts a formidable arsenal: cloud-based systems, palm-top devices (for hands both clean and questionably so), and a magic portal through which managers may monitor the comings, goings, and regrettable orderings of their staff.

Quarterly achievements ring out: over 6,000 new locations came aboard in Q1, a 25% jump, and recurring revenue scuttled up 31%. Most delightfully for the accountants haunting the metaphorical kitchens, growth in cherubic high-margin zones has plumped up gross profits by 37%. Talk about rising dough.

As Toast fattens up on its own success, it ploughs funds back into new technical familiars. Notably, the ToastIQ feature, an ambitious attempt to assemble the collective learning of millions of anonymous sandwiches and hasty side salads across the kingdom. This is, we are told, a “network effect,” which is classical economics for “big gets bigger,” a phrase that has ruined more small inns than fire.

The market, generally content to classify software companies somewhere between wizard and juggler, has started whispering about Toast’s inevitable coronation. With some 875,000 eateries in the land to chase, the story is compelling enough that, if you squint, you might almost see a Franchise Renaissance on the horizon.

As a contrarian, the thrill comes not from joining the ovation, but from examining the orchestra pit. When the bandwagon threatens to tip over with believers, that’s when I start looking for the nearest emergency exit—and perhaps for a ticket to a precisely opposite destination. But even I must acknowledge: in a world obsessed with certainty, both Carnival and Toast are placing shrewd bets on the enduring foolishness and optimism of the human heart.5

Footnotes:
1Where fortunes are made chiefly from the difference between buying high and selling higher, or—if one is truly daring—selling low and running even faster.
2The famed “Buffet Confidence Index,” first introduced by Lord Ledger the Fiscally Imaginative of Quirm.
3Possibly because they have accrued enough loyalty points to acquire a commemorative statue in the ship’s main atrium.
4Who find even provider setup refreshingly nonlethal.
5Which, statistically speaking, has outperformed all known indexes in the long run.

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2025-07-29 11:12