The DORKs: A Labyrinthine Journey through Speculative Stocks

In the horizontal dust of our era arises a most curious bestiary: the DORKs. Acronyms, like mirrors, fracture meaning—here comprising Krispy Kreme (DNUT), Opendoor Technologies (OPEN), Rocket Companies (RKT), and Kohl’s (KSS). The present chronicle regards their recent ascent, less as a story of finance than an episode in the grander labyrinth of speculation.

Let the uninformed suppose that the DORKs’ current trajectory is the inevitable consequence of gravity-defying news; the initiated trader, however, will quickly recognize in that ascent the tangle of chance and mass desire. These tickers, the subject of much whispered conjecture in the corridors of exchanges physical and virtual, have staged a meteoric procession since mid-July: Krispy Kreme, ascending by 43.5% (a figure to satisfy even Zeno), Opendoor, by a vertiginous 144.2%, Rocket by 12.7%, and Kohl’s by a respectable 38%. None of these increments is explainable by revelation or miracle, unless the aforementioned $.88 donut qualifies as an epiphany.

One recalls the Biblioteca de Babel, whose infinite corridors contain every possible permutation of text; the market, similarly, cycles through every possible permutation of narrative. Rocket Companies cites a survey, as if satisfaction (like stock price) could be indexed and accounted for. Opendoor transmutes the sale of a dwelling into a recursive exercise—buying, then reselling, then sharing profits, in the hope that meaning will emerge from repetition.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal—that Tetrarch of Boring Truth—coldly notes the incongruity of enthusiasm for real estate in a stagnant maze, and the ghosts of management wandering Kohl’s echoing floors. The Journal, perhaps channelling Tacitus or the apocryphal Han Yu, concludes: the hour of speculative stocks—YOLO bets in the argot of the initiated—has dawned anew.

But the trader, whose nights are spent before the silent ledger, knows that every speculation is also a riddle. As Borges might write, Benjamin Graham (an ancient, always quoted but never fully read) mused that the market in its short term is a voting machine, and in the long term, a weighing machine—suggestive of those mythical balances wherein a soul’s worth is measured against a feather. The DORKs, weighed thus: Krispy Kreme, Opendoor, Rocket—all currently profitless, creatures of debt and hope. Kohl’s alone claims profit—$121 million in the last year, nearly matched in free cash flow.

Let us wander deeper into the labyrinth: Not so long ago (2022, or perhaps in a dream of 2022), Kohl’s was recording over $900 million in annual profit. The oracles—called analysts—predict a doubling by 2028. Yet, behold the paradoxical architecture: Kohl’s market cap, an unremarkable $1.4 billion, seems austere beside its $7.4 billion of debt. Here, the enterprise value metastasizes in darkness, approaching $8.6 billion—six-fold the apparent value, a hall of mirrors in which the naive are doomed to lose themselves.

If prophecy holds, that doubling of earnings leads merely to a valuation many times today’s profits—a ratio daunting even to those familiar with infinity.

The conclusion, naturally, is recursive: Even the best of the DORKs is not quite an Ariadne’s thread leading to security or fortune, but perhaps only another turn in the maze. The trader, shaped by paradoxes, will smile wryly and choose not to wager his drachmas on these uncertain pages of the Infinite Book. In the end, perhaps, the stock market is indistinguishable from a library, where all stories, even the exhilarating ones, lead back inevitably to risk.
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2025-07-29 16:20

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