But here’s the thing: the company actually did pretty well. Revenue was up a robust 22% to $201 million. Q4? Even more enthusiastic – 24% growth. And they’re forecasting even more enthusiasm in Q1 – between 26% and 34%. Which, in the current market, is basically a victory parade. They’re predicting more growth, which, frankly, feels a little… optimistic? Like ordering a size small after Thanksgiving.
Indeed, a few amongst Berkshire’s treasures currently present opportunities for the astute investor. Herein, I present three – not as recommendations, mind you, but as observations for those with the wit to appreciate them.
Among these ten, the Wall Street seers favor Palantir and Microsoft. They see a stronger current lifting these two. Let’s look closer, not at the numbers alone, but at the stories behind them.
We present three such enterprises. Not thrilling, certainly. But then, fortunes are rarely built on fireworks. More often, they’re accumulated through quiet consistency. Consider them not as rockets, but as sturdy, reliable locomotives chugging along the tracks of the market.
The current valuation, a mere 8.6% below the consensus price target, feels less like an opportunity and more like a preordained condition. The ‘Hold’ rating, curiously prevalent amongst the prognosticators, suggests a reluctance to fully endorse this slow march forward. It is as if they recognize the futility of expecting radical transformation, acknowledging that Check Point’s deliberate pace is not a deficiency, but an inherent characteristic – a stubborn refusal to participate in the prevailing frenzy. The company does not grow; it persists.
ServiceNow, it seems, is attempting to be frightfully modern with all this ‘artificial intelligence’. Their ‘Now Assist’ suite is apparently doing rather well – a rather vulgar $600 million in annual contract value. They envision it becoming even more substantial, exceeding a billion by 2026. They’re also acquiring cybersecurity firms – Armis and Veza, if you’re keeping score. All rather technical, of course, but the idea is to orchestrate this ‘agentic AI’. One hopes it doesn’t become too bossy.
Mr. Musk speaks of the Cybercab, a self-driving chariot envisioned to roam our streets, generating revenue day and night. And Optimus, the humanoid robot… a creature born not of necessity, but of a restless ambition, a desire to populate the world with mechanical echoes of ourselves. He dreams of a future where these automatons perform the tedious, the dangerous… the tasks we, in our human frailty, would rather avoid. It is a vision both compelling and… unsettling. Does it not strike you as a peculiar sort of salvation, this outsourcing of our burdens to machines?
They’re basically giving computers the power to make decisions at the speed of thought. Which sounds amazing, until you consider what terrible decisions I make at that speed. Still, analysts at PwC reckon it’ll add over $15 trillion to global GDP by 2030. Fifteen trillion. I could really use a slice of that. Nvidia’s GPUs are the brains behind it all, powering everything from data centers to, let’s be real, probably some very sophisticated cat videos.
Netflix, that purveyor of flickering images and questionable taste, has enjoyed a run that would make even the most seasoned speculator blush. Some whisper it’s too late to join the party, that the champagne has all been drunk. But consider this: a vast number of citizens still haven’t succumbed to the siren song of endless streaming. A mere 10% of their precious viewing hours, they stubbornly cling to archaic broadcast methods. This, my friends, is a goldmine disguised as a slightly inconvenient truth.
Indeed, the very nature of speculation is a paradox. Men chase after gain, believing they can master the capricious winds of fortune, yet they are but leaves tossed about by forces far beyond their comprehension. This particular surge in silver’s price, mirrored in the fortunes of the iShares Trust, was fueled by a confluence of factors, a complex web of desires and fears. It is a tale not merely of metal and money, but of human nature itself.