The short term is TOTALLY distorted right now by IRAN......the disrespect of great earnings.....AI micro second trading.....total disregard of business fundamentals.....and other events and actions. I continue the recent trend of finding very little of any interest to long term investors.......so I will withdraw and wait for the day to progress.
I've been looking at some leaks of the Palantir Maven Smart System software. Considering what this thing is, how intertwined it is with the US military, and what it can do, I would be comfortable riding out any market vicissitudes. When you have a product the military cannot do without, you're probably not going to go bankrupt, any time soon. Perhaps this ultra-brief 1 minute overview of one aspect of MSS will help you fall further in love with $PLTR https://youtube.com/shorts/VZmJJxvJq1Y?si=q0l3J0kT1s9W7DH6
I....0f course....have ZERO plans to sell PLTR. Even with the current drop in price I still have a gain of about....100%.
AND....right now the markets are better than.......a poke in the eye with a sharp stick......they are actually GREEN. I have a small gain in spite of MSFT and PLTR being in the RED. If only we can hang on till the close.
They better be......managing money in retirement is very difficult.....probably beyond many people. Americans close to retirement are saving for later, but they're worried about getting by right now https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/a...ied-about-getting-by-right-now-182653896.html
The reason for the come-back today. Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq stage comeback after Israel agrees to talks with Lebanon https://finance.yahoo.com/news/live...says-ceasefire-has-been-broken-225323726.html
Of course.....this A-HOLE.....shows up and pushes his short term trading. He seems to have a ready conduit to the media whenever he wants. of course....with their hunger for clicks....they play right along. Palantir stock plunges after 'Big Short' investor Michael Burry says Anthropic is eating its lunch https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pala...-anthropic-is-eating-its-lunch-171120431.html "This isn't a new crusade for Burry. He has been consistently bearish on Palantir. Around September 2025, he disclosed a significant short position through long-dated put options on the company, forecasting a multiyear decline." AND. "Wall Street, however, remains deeply divided on whether Burry's skepticism is warranted. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives remains bullish, maintaining an Outperform rating and a $230 price target. Ives argued that Palantir has a "golden path" in the AI revolution, specifically citing "unprecedented traction" within the federal landscape as a moat." AND Of course he.....MR A-HOLE.....than DELETED the post. A CLASSIC example of market manipulation with a willing and complicit media ready to jump in with both feet. AND.....it worked.
GOOD.....this is how you run a company with..... DECISIVE action. I would much rather see their HUGE pot of money used here than with share buy-backs. Amazon CEO Jassy defends $200 billion AI spend: “We’re not going to be conservative https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/09/amazon-ceo-andy-jassy-ai-spending.html
I ended with a nice medium.....small gain in my stocks today....in spite of PLTR and MSFT. BUT.....I got beat by the SP500 today inn my stocks by.....0.22%. A pretty good week if we can hang on for tomorrow. TGIF......TGIF.
We are going to see a stamp costing ONE DOLLAR soon. I remember as a kid stamps being THREE CENTS and going to FOUR CENTS. (mid to late 1950's) U.S. Postal Service seeks hike in price of first-class mail stamps to 82 cents in July https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/09/us-postal-service-mail-stamps-price.html Of course back than on the Army Post where we lived a movie was FIFTEEN CENTS......a candy bar was FIVE CENTS......etc, etc, etc.
I may have been caught sleeping here but I don't see Maven being replaced any time soon and not by Anthropic. Anthropic products overlap Maven but don't eclipse it, as best I can tell. The systems work together. Michael Burry may know more than I do about the highly classified aspects of these systems. I only know a few glimpses the army wanted to leak. On the other hand, if he did know more than is publicly available and he started running his mouth, he would be put in jail. Michael Burry is famous for calling the GFC accurately in scope and getting the timing almost right. He has also predicted a ton of other market catastrophes which have not come to pass. Google thinks Michael Burry has a net worth of $300M. I admire what he's done and I respect his thought process but I wouldn't let hims care me off Palantir. On the other hand, AI is going to turn markets into shark tanks. World beating corporations will fall to relatively unknown corporations, all the time. The strong will eat the weak and then get eaten by the even stronger. There will be little space for #2, although there will be plenty of #2 spread around.
I know you guys hate politics but this situation is 100% political and I have no problem talking about it and ignoring the mindless criticism of every post I make on this site. I consider what's happened in Iraq to be the best case scenario for an outcome in Iran. Sure, Iraq was a boondoggle but it can also be viewed as a success. Iraq was once a terrorist state with expansionist notions. We could talk about bad things that happen there but Iraq is no longer a sponsor of terror and they generally don't hurt anybody in the neighborhood. That's a huge win, even if the result has no resemblance of American democracy. Women can vote in Iraq and hold about a quarter of seats in parliament. In retrospect, the outcome of the Iraq war seems as good as could/should have been hoped. Imagine if the Iraq war never happened. Iraq would be constantly attacking Israel, occasionally Iran, and sponsoring every terrorist a-hole in the neighborhood. How would your portfolios be doing in that scenario? Think of how much oil has left the Gulf to directly fuel the global economy with Iraq forced to act half way civilized, against their will. Perhaps Iran is a nearly identical situation? Maybe a little short term pain is a small price to pay for commerce and oil to support the global economy? If Iran can be knocked back a bit, our portfolios will be a whole lot stronger. Far more concerning is the pro-Palestine mind share in Europe and North America. This faction isn't just advocating for Palestinians. That would be fine. Iran has a lot of support in the US. A terror state that has mass executed citizens, directly sponsors every terrorist cell in the region, is actively seeking to end the idea of Israel, and is bombing every country within drone range is seen as the victim in this conflict by a small but non-trivial portion of the population. Scary. Meanwhile, the IRGC power structure seems to be designed to fund IRGC families living in Los Angeles. Politics are ruining the global economy. No objective person can look away from that fact. The best thing for the markets, long term, is anything that reduces global political toxicity.
I respect you very much Tom, but I have to be honest: I do not agree with this at all. The Middle East, as it is right now, is a result of the imperialistic hegemony of Britain and the U.S. from the very first discovery of oil there in 1908. I could write an essay on this topic, but I guarantee you that the Middle East would be a very different, more peaceful, and stable region if it were not for the various nefarious economic and religious interests constantly meddling and destabilizing it. A chaotic and angry populace is easy to distract and exploit. None of this is to excuse the insanity that is Islamic fundamentalism (or really any religious fundamentalism), but understanding the events that took place beforehand gives great insight into why it became so pervasive. I am pretty sure you know what points I would bring up with my revealing this differing stance, so please feel free to disagree with any or all of, but I know W hates a lot of the political talk, so I really do not want to go too far down that rabbit hole.
100% agree. As much as I loathe PLTR, they are not going anywhere. Agree again, but the computer nerd in me hates that hardware is "sell your kidney" prices and looks to stay that way for a long while. I hope I can ride this out with my current system.
Amazing how.......MR A-HOLE....made one really good call back in about 2007...but in hindsight it was as obvious as the Madoff scheme. Just about EVERYTHING he has tried to call since than has been delusional FAILURE. YET......the media treats him like some sort of god.....nearly 20 years later.....and simply parrots his BS for clicks and fear mongering headlines. Of course the AI headline and news micro-second traders love it. Actually......ALL...the short term market manipulators love it.
Back to REALITY....compared to the CRAP that passes for journalism now. How Investors Should Think About the Ceasefire Markets don’t wait for all-clears. https://www.fisherinvestments.com/e...ow-investors-should-think-about-the-ceasefire ........"Investing—managing a portfolio for a long-term set of goals—isn’t always about trading. It is about building, making tactical decisions when warranted and, a lot of time, holding. Resisting the temptation to react. Traders and speculators react. Computerized trading platforms react. Investors do best when they make deliberate, well-reasoned, probabilities-based decisions about what is likely to happen in the medium and longer term. Reacting to what just happened is the antithesis of that.".....
I like this little article and the points that are made. It illustrates the disconnect that continues to grow in the markets and the view of the economy.....from REALITY. Of course what used to be REALITY can be lost forever....if enough people accept the BS that is spouted every day. A continuation of my little theme above. The odd disappearance of the business cycle And the futility of macro forecasts https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/the-odd-disappearance-of-the-business ......"If you told economists back in the 20th century that we’d have a nine-year period with unemployment at or below 4.5% apart from a brief pandemic period, and that inflation would end that long period at just 2.8%, they’d ask: How does it feel to be living in nirvana? If you then told them that public sentiment on “the economy” was at near record lows (even before Iran), they’d ask if the entire country had become insane"......
And to continue this little theme....here is what is routinely IGNORED. Makes me think that REALITY....as a structured, hard, concept does not exist. The Longest Economic Boom Ever? https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2026/04/the-longest-economic-boom-ever/ ....."But I think it’s a legitimate argument to call this the longest economic expansion in history. There hasn’t been a real recession since 2009. There’s been no credit cycle in that time either. No financial crises to speak of. The stock market has experienced just two down years out of the past 17. The S&P 500 is up nearly 14% per year since the beginning of 2009.".... AND...... in conclusion the article notes: "Everyone who has been predicting the downfall of the economy since the end of the Great Financial Crisis has been wrong, often spectacularly so. The economy just keeps chugging along." MY COMMENT This FACT does not stop the daily dear-mongers from their mission to destroy the economy and the markets. BUT....of course....in the modern era there is no such thing as FACTS. Just like great earnings no longer matter. AND....there is no business cycle.
