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These ‘neocloud’ enterprises – a term, I confess, that strikes me as unnecessarily ornate – are all the rage. They purchase these ‘GPUs’ – little silicon brains, if you will – and then rent out the capacity to those who require it. A simple transaction, one might think. Yet, it is fueled by a frantic land grab, a desperate construction of data centers that sprout from the earth like… well, like particularly unsightly mushrooms. They grow rapidly, consume vast sums, and offer, as yet, only the promise of future fruit. And losses, of course. Significant losses.

They’re aiming obefazimod at ulcerative colitis, a weariness of the gut that plagues too many. There’s a crowded field of remedies already, each promising relief, each carrying a price. But obefazimod might be different. Most treatments for this affliction are blunt instruments, suppressing the immune system wholesale. They quiet the storm, yes, but leave the patient vulnerable, a weakened tree exposed to every wind.

Ford, bless their rusting chassis, took a $2 BILLION hit. General Motors? Another $3.1 billion evaporated into the ether. Ford racked up a staggering $8.2 billion in losses – EIGHT POINT TWO BILLION – while GM limped along with a measly $2.7 billion profit, down FIFTY PERCENT from the year before. FIFTY! It’s enough to make a man reach for the bottle… or another stock tip.

It’s a story told in numbers, of course. Fifteen and a half million dollars less tied up in black rock. But numbers are just ghosts of transactions, and they don’t tell you about the men who dig the coal, the families who depend on it, or the power plants that burn it to keep the lights on. They don’t tell you about the weight of a legacy, stretching back to 1864, a time when a man’s handshake meant something more than a contract.

Revenue contracted, burdened by a double-digit fall in comparable sales, while the net loss widened, a deepening of the fiscal wound. As of 1:50 p.m. ET, the stock stood diminished by 10.5%, a stark metric of the market’s disillusionment.

The source of this mild disquiet, it appears, lies in management’s pronouncements regarding the year 2026. This, we are told, will be a pivotal moment, an “inflection point.” A rather grandiose term, one might think, for a company still attempting to establish itself. The implication, of course, is that future growth is contingent upon a number of factors, some of which are, shall we say, beyond their control. They are, with a boldness that borders on naiveté, expanding into the United States, seeking a bank charter, and embracing the siren song of Artificial Intelligence. A trifecta of potential complications, elegantly disguised as progress.

The SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD +1.02%), launched back in 2004, is the granddaddy of them all. It democratized gold investing, allowing even the smallest speculator to participate in the age-old pursuit of shiny objects. A commendable achievement, though one wonders if it hasn’t simply turned a dignified pursuit into a vulgar scramble.

For some time, Mr. Ackman had allocated capital to Alphabet, a company once hailed as a harbinger of boundless innovation. The initial foray, acquiring shares of both Class A and Class C designations, represented a tentative acceptance of the prevailing narrative – that artificial intelligence would be the defining force of the coming decades. However, the act of reducing that position, by a substantial 86% for Class A shares and a more modest 2% for Class C, speaks volumes. It is the quiet withdrawal from a belief, a recognition that the promise of effortless returns, so readily advertised, rarely materializes without exacting a cost.

One might ask, what accounts for this shift? The technology itself, a promise of decentralized, cleaner energy, remains, in the long view, a reasonable wager. But the market’s gaze, ever restless, has settled upon a more immediate concern: the ability of these enterprises to translate ambition into tangible revenue. To move from blueprints and simulations to a functioning reality is a labor akin to coaxing life from barren soil.