Life insurance, at its heart, is a bet against time. People pay now, for a peace of mind later, a shield for those left behind. The company holds that money, invests it, hopes for a return. It’s a delicate balance, a slow turning of the wheel. This ‘float,’ as they call it, is the lifeblood, but it can run thin. A bull market swells the coffers, a downturn… well, a downturn reveals what’s truly solid beneath.
They published their fourth quarter and full-year 2025 numbers on Tuesday. Revenue was up 21% to $103.6 million. Net income, as calculated by accountants who must eat too, rose 9% to $10.6 million ($0.46 a share). It’s all just numbers, really. Attempts to quantify the unquantifiable.
Before the market even yawned and stretched, this shareholder – a fellow named Starboard Value, who sounds suspiciously like a pirate – dispatched a missive to Riot’s boss, Jason Les, and the chap who chairs the board, Benjamin Yi. A most stern letter, it was, intended to give these gentlemen a jolly good nudge towards… well, towards actually doing the things they said they were going to do.
Netflix, that restless wanderer of the digital plains, has known both the feverish heat of success and the creeping chill of uncertainty. It rose, a phoenix from the ashes of Blockbuster, offering a refuge from the predictable narratives of broadcast television. For a time, it seemed invincible, a kingdom built on algorithms and the insatiable appetite for stories. But even kingdoms, as the ancient maps remind us, are susceptible to erosion. Now, the stock, once a beacon for investors, drifts nearly forty percent below its zenith, prompting whispers of a bargain, a chance to gather the fallen fruit before the frost arrives.
Then there’s Robotaxi, the autonomous ride-sharing service. Musk suggests it could be “in dozens of major cities by year-end.” Dozens! That’s a lot of cities. It reminds me of trying to predict the weather – a lot of confident forecasts, and a surprising number of umbrellas required. But here’s the thing: the stock isn’t exactly reflecting all this potential. And that, as any trader worth his salt will tell you, is a bit of a head-scratcher.
They weathered the fourth quarter of ’25. Survived. Barely. Revenue down ten percent, to a little over $329 million. A hit, obviously. But the analysts, those carefully calibrated prediction machines, were bracing for worse. Under $294 million, they figured. Fools. They always figure wrong. Still, it’s like watching a wounded animal try to stand. You root for it, but you’re also calculating the odds of it collapsing into a twitching heap.
In a recent Q&A, Mr. Armstrong declared, with all the solemnity of a man defending his sister’s character at a country ball, that Coinbase is “a classic innovator’s dilemma.” By which he meant, in the most polite terms, that traditional financiers, much like the horse-drawn carriage guild, view crypto as a menace to their venerable trade. He compared their resistance to the Luddites’ disdain for spinning jennies-or, as he put it more colourfully, to taxi magnates who once cursed the very notion of hailing a ride via a glowing rectangle.
Of late, a chill has descended. Not a catastrophic freeze, but a subtle, insidious cooling. Worries, like persistent drafts, have begun to seep into the collective consciousness. The pace of relief from elevated interest rates – a promise dangled before us like a mirage – feels increasingly uncertain. More troubling still is the nascent realization that these very tools of artificial intelligence, hailed as harbingers of progress, may, in the long run, erode the foundations of demand for established goods and services. A paradox, certainly, but one that speaks to the inherent instability of systems built upon fleeting novelties.
For the quarter, Global Payments declared revenues of $2.32 billion – a mere 1% increase from the previous year. A modest climb, certainly, but in the world of finance, even a snail’s pace can be considered progress. Adjusted net income, however, fared better, rising 5% to $755 million, or $3.18 per share. A comfortable sum, enough to keep the shareholders from staging a revolt, at least for another quarter.
Folks are drawn to these big numbers like moths to a flame. They think they’ve found a passive income machine. Well, I’d wager a good nickel that you’d be better off with Realty Income. Four and nine tenths percent, it yields. Not as flashy, no, but reliable as a sunrise. And in this world, reliability’s worth more than a heap of fool’s gold.