Yesterday’s earnings report, delivered after the market’s slumber, revealed a paradox: revenue surged to $130.92 million, a 9% ascent from the past year’s shadow, yet adjusted earnings per share lingered at $0.05, $0.03 shy of the mark. The company, in a gesture of hope, raised its full-year forecast, but the market, a fickle librarian, dismissed the gesture as mere rearrangement of ink in the Library of Babel.
Cleveland-Cliffs, now a vertically integrated steelmaker, owns its own inputs-iron ore, the lifeblood of its furnaces. Its operations, however, are bound to the ancient rites of blast furnaces, where fire and iron yield profit only when the market’s tides are favorable. Steel prices, those fickle winds, dictate the company’s fate. Prosperity flows in cycles, but so too does ruin, a pendulum of molten iron and red ink.
One might guess the market’s skittishness comes from the fact that Upstart’s loan book grew a quarter from the previous bottomless pit of silliness – over a billion dollars now, no small change. But even that doesn’t fully explain the sudden nosedive, no sir. If anything, it hints at a creeping concern that maybe loan defaults aren’t just bad luck but baked into the cake. Still, that’s a detail compared to what really tickles my fancy: the bright spots buried deep within these numbers, which whisper promises of a future brighter than a barn full of lanterns.
AMD released its Q2 results after hours, and here’s the breakdown: earnings matched Wall Street’s guess, revenue beat it by $260 million, and forward guidance was… polite. But the real drama? AI GPU sales growth slowed. Investors are now acting like someone spilled coffee on their forecast, but it was just a lukewarm latte.
The reason for this bullishness appears to hinge on a report from Bloomberg-an organization renowned for its uncanny ability to predict calamities and fortunes with equal enthusiasm-which states that Apple is about to make a very large, very public statement. In the grand tradition of tech giants mediating on the geopolitical chessboard, Apple will ostensibly announce at the White House that it is approximately one hundred billion dollars richer in its ambition to confront the tyranny of tariffs, the whims of political tides, and the curious phenomenon of Chinese manufacturing relying heavily on robots and, presumably, the panicked hopes of investors.
By 10:17 a.m. Eastern Time-right around the time most people are contemplating whether to pour another cup of coffee or pour themselves into an existential crisis-Lucid shares had plunged by 7.5%. That’s after an earlier, more energetic tumble of 10.7%. For those keeping score at home, that’s a downward trajectory so steep it could make a rollercoaster designer blush.
Heading into the latest quarter, Wall Street pundits confidently predicted a modest $0.65 per share, adjusting to smooth out any one-time hiccups. Arista, however, decided to RSVP to that with a raucous “Hold my beer” and delivered a hefty $0.73 per share, alongside a tidy $2.2 billion in revenue-another reminder that, sometimes, being slightly better than ‘good enough’ can turn heads faster than a viral TikTok trend.
Berkshire Hathaway’s success under Buffett was as much a product of his era as it was of his acumen. The same cannot be said for the current climate, where economic tides shift with the whims of central banks and consumer confidence. Still, the myth endures. For those who believe Buffett’s picks are infallible, the recent performance of Visa and American Express offers both vindication and warning.
Yet here we stand, at the precipice of folly, asking: Is it too late to partake in this modern-day gold rush? A question as sensible as asking if the moon is too far to dance upon. For if you believe Bitcoin’s tale, you must also believe in perpetual motion, in the philosopher’s stone, in the notion that scarcity alone can fill a man’s purse-or his head.
But here’s the thing about hope: it doesn’t always pay dividends. If you’d taken $1,000 and thrown it at Pfizer’s stock back in August 2020, when everyone was desperate for good news, your investment would now be worth around $638. That’s right-less than what you started with. Sure, Pfizer’s dividend offered some comfort, nudging your total up to $828. But let’s face it: that’s still not something you’d write home about.