WATCH GROWTH

“TMDX did hit a local high in February, the end of February. It was trading about 145 per share before pulling back to where it is right now, 109 after actually being down 6% today. A lot of places are cutting their price targets in early April after multiple insiders were selling shares in March, that added on to near-term pressure.”

“They're recovering from the trauma that they experienced living in captivity. And for them to open up and trust you while you are there with them, helping them work through it, it's indescribable.”

“The dominant political story of the year has been the 270-day-long speakership of Representative Kevin McCarthy, whose slim majority in the House of Representatives has enabled a far-right rebellion to exert more weight over the lower chamber. The battle between the rebellious Freedom Caucus and McCarthy has been at the heart of an averted debt ceiling crisis and the annual budget debate nearly devolving into a government shutdown.”

“One of the easiest ways to achieve that goal is not investing in new IPOs until they've been trading for a year. Not just because of what's going on with the company, what's going on with trade volume, you also have insider shares locked up for 160 days. There's just a lot of dynamics going on that drives prices that are distinct from the fundamentals of a company.”

“I think one of the question marks I have with Shopify, it's not really specific to their business, but we just hear more and more talk about this agentic commerce, right? And exactly what that means. And so I think we're going to see how that opportunity and agentic commerce shapes up over the coming quarters and years. They certainly discussed their AI investments on the call. They're very excited with the opportunities, the efficiencies, helping their merchants run better businesses.”

“I saw operating margin for the quarter 15.5%. That's versus 11.2% a year ago. And so I think we had some questions really early on in the Spotify story as to exactly how quickly they could get to profitability and how profitable the company could be given the nature of the relationships with publishers and just the music business in general. You know, Travis, I just realized they passed a $2 price increase on the family plan... I'm happily, happily paying.”

“America must win. We have to win economically, we have to win militarily, and that means that we do have to win technologically. There's a movement afoot in our country that will destroy all of that, that will let China win and sink America into poverty and dependence.”

“The language we had been talking, we've been using over the last couple of years with Cloudflare, and with a number of enterprise software type companies, the elongated sales cycle, sort of the trepidation of their customers to commit to spending, those days seemed to be well past us. It was another very solid report. They grew revenue 34% for the quarter, well exceeding their own guidance, guiding for another tremendous year, 28% revenue growth.”

“Additionally, the latter half of the year saw many large mergers and acquisitions, some of the largest announcements being in oil and gas with ExxonMobil's purchase of Pioneer Natural Resources for nearly $60 billion and Chevron's acquisition of Hess Corporation for $50 billion, both in October and pending regulatory approval prior to closure.”

“Even with the Iran war, a Hormuz blockade, oil topping 100 and failed peace talks, the stock market has shown remarkable resilience, leaving many investors puzzled and cautious in equal measure. We will dig into what's really holding markets up and whether the resilience is a sign of strength or dangerous complacency.”

“2023 also saw the roots of a global banking crisis arise out of four American regional banks, the two largest being Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank. 2021's inflation surge moderated in 2023, while the Federal Reserve continued to raise its interest rates in the first half of the year.”

“Investments in information processing equipment and software was only 4% of US GDP for the first half of 2025, but it accounted for 92% of all GDP growth over that period. These companies are investing heavily in data centers because that is the basis for all of the compute that is necessary for AI. They're building these giant data centers everywhere.”

“According to Boston Consulting Group, over the next two to three years, 50 to 55% of all jobs in The United States will be reshaped by AI. Not replaced, reshaped. For many employees, this will mean they retain the same or similar role, but face radically new expectations for how they work and what they produce.”

“If we didn't have AI, we'd be in a panic right now about what's gonna happen to the economy because what we'd be staring at is a future of depopulation. Depopulation without new technology would just mean that the economy shrinks. It would mean that the economy kind of itself kind of shrinks over time and the opportunity diminishes.”

“They're only guiding for minimal revenue growth in 2026, under 5%, no margin expansion. This, they say, is temporary. They're doing model changeovers, but look, the Ferrari model is you got a huge waiting list. Just sell the cars, just jack up prices. I don't get why it's working. I think I still like this company, but it's still trading at more than 30 times expected earnings.”

“Software remained the standout story of the week with the IGV up nearly 13% over the past five sessions, a remarkable snapback for one of the most pressured areas of the market in recent months. Private credit has also bounced pretty sharply this week, easing another overhang.”

“The number of people who like AI is going down. The number of people using AI is going up. So many of the people using it are saying they simultaneously don't like it, which, by the way, is very often common with the free market. Pretty much everybody who complains about the free market is a beneficiary of the free market.”

“The population is aging and you think about what does that mean for the secular trends in investing? Because there's 10,000 baby boomers that turn 65 every day in the US and that trend continues through 2030, meaning the demand for elder care, for home health, for hospice and end-of-life services, it's essentially guaranteed to grow.”

“The rise of artificial intelligence and large language models dominated not only the economy but has also been at the root of a Hollywood double strike conducted by Writers Guild of America and a SAG APTRA strike. These were part of a larger phenomenon of labor strikes across the country, in which such large diverse groups, such as Teamsters and Auto Workers won new contracts.”

“Increasingly, when I look at Airbnb, I see Marriott. I see a mature lodging business, asset light, that can outperform but is not going to be a high-growth stock. I've kind of given up on experiences as kind of a new rocket ship. I think now we're just kind of waking up to this is more of a lodging company than it is a tech company, maybe?”