Verizon: Fine, Whatever. (And the Market)

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So, Verizon (VZ +11.83%). Up. Fine. They had a quarter. Apparently, it was… acceptable. Closed at $44.52. Which, let’s be honest, is still a price. They’re saying “momentum.” Momentum. Like they invented wireless service. It just… works. Most of the time. And now everyone’s excited because they’re buying back shares? It’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but with slightly more paperwork. 113.1 million shares traded. That’s a lot of… moving around. It’s been 450% since 1983. Which, okay, good for them. But I still remember when you had to actually talk to someone to get service. A real person. Can you imagine?

How the Markets Decided to Be Today

The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) went down 0.45% to 6,938. Just… down. And the Nasdaq (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC) decided to join the pity party, falling 0.94% to 23,462. Honestly, it’s just exhausting. You try to make rational investment decisions, and then this happens. AT&T (T +4.32%) and T-Mobile (TMUS +4.19%) were up. Why? Because… reasons. Wireless growth, apparently. It’s all so arbitrary. They’re all just competing to see who can make the most complicated bill.

What This Means, If You Absolutely Must Know

Verizon surged. They had good numbers. They’re projecting an adjusted EPS of $4.90 to $4.95 in 2026. Okay. And free cash flow of at least $21.5 billion. Great. So they’ll use that to buy back more shares, and the whole thing starts over again. They want 750,000 to 1 million new subscribers. Which means more people yelling at customer service representatives. It’s a vicious cycle. And now they’re doing a $25 billion share repurchase program. It’s like they’re trying to tell us something. Like, “We don’t have any better ideas.”

And get this: they had a network outage. A network outage. In this day and age! And now the FCC is reviewing it. Like that’s going to solve anything. It’s just more bureaucracy. Investors are suddenly concerned about “service reliability.” You think? They’re worried about sustaining customer growth and service quality. It’s almost like those two things are… related. It’s just… astounding. The whole thing is a mess. A perfectly predictable, infuriating mess. I need a vacation.

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2026-01-31 02:12