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Picture this: COP’s Q2 2025 EPS plummets from $1.98 to $1.56 year-over-year. Strip out that one-time gain? We’re at $1.42 – the worst performance since your Uncle Morty tried to day-trade crypto. But hold your horses! This isn’t Enron-level shenanigans; it’s just oil’s biennial tradition of playing musical chairs with profits. When Brent and WTI crude throw temper tantrums (down 33% from 2022 peaks), everyone dances. Even COP’s stock – down 25% – looks like it’s auditioning for Swan Lake with those kinds of pirouettes.

There are, to be sure, signs of a more vigorous spirit. Domino’s commenced 2025 with subdued U.S. trends, yet posted a more satisfactory second quarter, buoyed by product innovations, broader distribution on delivery platforms, and steady international expansion. This improved cadence, though modest, offers a glimmer of hope for the remainder of the year. Yet, given the current valuation, it is doubtful that mere improvement will suffice to render the shares irresistibly attractive.

Behold, the folly of man, who dares to wrestle with the unknowable. To time the market is to dance with chaos, to believe in the illusion of control. Opendoor, that once-mocked ticker, now wavers-a pendulum of euphoria and dread. Its ascent, though steep, is but a fleeting mirage, for the abyss has no mercy.

Alphabet, better known as Google’s slightly more pretentious parent entity, has decided that merely organizing the world’s information isn’t enough. No, it now aims to organize the quantum foam of spacetime itself-a task that makes the Library of Alexandria look like a particularly ambitious Wikipedia edit war. While other companies are busy arguing over whether AI will replace human creativity (spoiler: it won’t), Alphabet is quietly playing god with both silicon and qubits.

BMO Capital’s Keith Bachman, that most enthusiastic of financial florists, presented a bouquet of optimism before the market’s opening bell. His revised $154 price target, surpassing its predecessor by a full $24, might have been mistaken for a proposal of marriage had Wall Street not already pledged its troth to cynicism. “Outperform,” he declared with the conviction of a man who believes in happy endings – though one suspects his definition of “happy” requires 14-15 times fiscal 2026’s projected revenue to materialize like clockwork.

Yet beneath the arithmetic theater lies a quieter tragedy. Wolfspeed, once a titan of silicon, has traded its old skin for a new one-a serpent’s shedding to escape the golden chains of Chapter 11. The spectacle of such a leap masks a truth as old as markets: what glitters is often ash.

Before the first light of morning touched the windows of Citigroup, that titan of finance cast its gaze upon Pony AI. Jeff Chung, the analyst who wields his pen like a plow, declared his verdict: a “buy” at $29 per share. It is a price that glimmers like a mirage in the desert of current valuations, yet even after today’s surge, it remains 28% beyond reach. Chung, a man who has walked the parched roads of markets long and wide, called the robotaxi sector an inflection point-a bend in the road where the wheels of progress turn toward a new horizon.