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In the months preceding this brief rally, there had been whispers of caution. The winds had not been kind, laden with tariff threats and uncertainties about consumer spending. Yet, amid the clamor of potential downturns, Dillard’s had defied expectations. The company’s second-quarter results were nothing to write home about, yet they stood in stark contrast to the pessimistic forecasts. With revenue rising by a mere 1.4%, and same-store sales inching upwards by just 1%, there was little reason to think this day would be any different from the others. But it was. For within the walls of Dillard’s, something subtle and enduring had taken place-a quiet revolution, perhaps, in the form of a carefully curated business model.

And so, it is with the same expected disappointment that we find XRP’s decline intimately linked to the rather unremarkable yet persistent issue of inflation. The latest inflation data has driven investors into a retreat-hardly a new development, yet always one that surprises those who have not yet learned to keep a stoic demeanor in the face of such inevitable, though inconvenient, events. The Producer Price Index (PPI), a measure of inflation that most would rather avoid, announced a far higher level of inflation than anticipated. This, unsurprisingly, has induced a great deal of price retraction, as both cryptocurrency and stock markets retreat into their well-worn habits of caution.

The numbers, cold and indifferent, tell a tale of 21.3% gains since last Friday. But what of the soul that trades in percentages? The market, that great theater of collective delusion, now turns its gaze to SoundHound, where the price of a future is bartered with the currency of hope.

GoPro’s ledger, it seems, is a chiaroscuro of contradictions. Revenue, that most fickle of muses, fell 18% year-over-year to $153 million, a decline as graceful as a ballerina trampled by a stampede. The root of this woe? Action camera sales, the lifeblood of its empire, withered by 23% to 500,000 units. Subscription and service revenue, a modest but vital tributary, stagnated at $26 million, like a river frozen mid-spring.

And yet, dear reader, here we find ourselves at an all-time high-a phrase that trips off the tongue like a champagne cork popping in slow motion. The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF has ascended 8.5% year-to-date and a dizzying 66.4% since the start of 2023. But earnings? Ah, those plodding tortoises of corporate performance, they have not kept pace, leaving valuations stretched thin as the silk threads of a spider’s web under moonlight. Is this ascent, then, a bubble waiting to burst, or merely the natural evolution of markets?

TeraWulf, a company that mines Bitcoin and rents out high-performance computing space (essentially the Airbnb for AI algorithms), has signed a 10-year, $3.7 billion agreement with Fluidstack, an artificial intelligence cloud provider. To put this into perspective, imagine renting out your spare bedroom to a tenant who insists on installing a particle accelerator in it-and then pays you handsomely for the privilege.