Occidental Petroleum (OXY +5.22%) is clearly a favorite of Mr. Buffett at the moment. He left a rather substantial $10.9 billion position in the company before retiring from Berkshire Hathaway – a bet that has, thankfully, proven rather astute. One wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of that particular transaction, would one?
A century has passed since Conagra first took root in the American landscape, its brands—Marie Callender’s, Healthy Choice, Duncan Hines—becoming fixtures in pantries and freezers. Yet, this longevity, once a source of strength, now feels like a form of institutional ossification. Over the past five years, the stock has surrendered nearly half its value, a silent testament to a misalignment with evolving consumer preferences. A modest uptick this year offers scant reassurance, merely a temporary reprieve from a deeper, more fundamental malaise.
We are presented with the Schwab U.S. Broad Market ETF (SCHB 1.30%) and the iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF (ITOT 1.32%). Both, in their earnest striving, offer access to the vast and often capricious American economic landscape. The distinction, my dear reader, is as subtle as the difference between a perfectly tailored waistcoat and one merely… adequate.
Bitcoin’s (BTC) current price action is like a suspense thriller with a disappointing twist: it’s consolidating beneath a major resistance cluster, like a teenager who can’t figure out if they want to go to college or start a TikTok career. After trying to hit the big time at $72,400 and getting rejected like a bad Tinder date, it’s creeping back towards the value area high but is struggling to muster any momentum.
The filing spoke for itself. Aperture was done with Trex. Clean break. A quarter-end purge. Twenty-one million bucks gone to ground. It’s a simple story, really. An investor saw the writing on the weather-stained wood and decided to head for port.
Therefore, it wouldn’t surprise a soul if things took a bit of a tumble, a bit of a correction, as the chaps in the city like to call it. And when such a thing occurs, the sensible investor – the sort who likes a bit of security with his returns – will naturally gravitate towards the steady, reliable dividend-paying stocks. Two such establishments, looking particularly promising at the moment, are Energy Transfer and Digital Realty Trust. A bit of a safe harbor, you might say, in a rather choppy sea.
Both, ostensibly, offered a balm to the anxieties of those seeking income from the American enterprise. But their paths diverged, as all paths inevitably do. The Vanguard fund, a meticulous gardener, favored those companies that consistently bore fruit, nurturing a slow, deliberate growth. The iShares fund, however, preferred the immediate bounty, plucking the ripest, most readily available dividends, regardless of the long-term health of the tree. It was a choice between the promise of a future harvest and the satisfaction of an immediate feast, a decision that revealed more about the investor than the funds themselves.
Both, of course, pursue the same elusive quarry: value in the smaller enterprises. But the very definition of “value” in these circumstances feels provisional, contingent on factors beyond any reasonable calculation. The indices they track, the Russell 2000 Value and whatever internal construction Vanguard employs, are not objective truths but rather arbitrary frameworks imposed upon a chaotic reality. To choose between them is not to select the superior instrument, but to acknowledge one’s acceptance of a particular set of rules, a particular form of bureaucratic oversight.
The filing, dated February 17th, 2026 (a date which, I suspect, will be remembered by future historians for reasons entirely unrelated to geothermal energy), reveals this rather substantial acquisition. It is a transaction that speaks volumes, or perhaps whispers secrets, depending on one’s inclination for fanciful interpretation. Aperture now holds nearly 3% of Ormat’s reportable U.S. equity assets – a percentage that, while seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, feels… weighty. As if the very fate of the fund rests upon these shares.
The whispers speak of conflict, of a simmering heat in the Middle East. And with heat, comes demand. Not for peace, mind you, but for…tools. Palantir, it seems, offers a particular set of tools, forged in the fires of data and algorithms. They’ve been building these tools for some time, refining them, and now, the government—always a discerning customer—appears to be taking notice. Or, perhaps, simply restocking the armory.