Erik Isakson/DigitalVision via Getty Images While my sell rating in June of last year didn't work too well, my reiterated bearish call on Astera Labs, Inc. ( ALAB ) last September has played out how I envisioned. Back then, despite the fact that the company had robust fundamentals, guidance was a bit soft and the valuation was at astronomical levels. In fact, I called the high valuation the stock'...
Erik Isakson/DigitalVision via Getty Images While my sell rating in June of last year didn't work too well, my reiterated bearish call on Astera Labs, Inc. ( ALAB ) last September has played out how I envisioned. Back then, despite the fact that the company had robust fundamentals, guidance was a bit soft and the valuation was at astronomical levels. In fact, I called the high valuation the stock's Achilles heel. With the stock being more than halved, today I aim to provide a fresh perspective on Astera Labs and see if it is now time to turn bullish on this AI infrastructure company. Seeking Alpha Below, it is shown that Q4 results are a bit mixed, with revenue growth continuing to slow but margin showing robustness. While guidance for Q1 is also mixed, the long-term prospects continue to look bright. Huge hyperscaler CapEx and their recent photonic acquisition show that they are quite well positioned, and that makes the massive valuation contraction seem overdone. Therefore, I have decided to double upgrade Astera Labs stock to a buy rating. Growth Decelerates For 6th Straight Quarter Data by YCharts We'll start today with a look at Astera Labs' top-line results to look for hints on where demand and business activity are right now. For Q4 2025 , the company generated total revenues of $270.58 million, up 92% YoY. That is a fairly healthy growth rate in the grand scheme of things, but investors should recognize that there have now been six straight quarters of growth deceleration. With the company scaling and the growth base getting significantly larger, it is not a surprise that there has been a slowdown. However, note that in the year-ago quarter , growth was still at 179%, and so the rate at which the deceleration has occurred is something investors should take note of. Still, Astera Labs beat analyst expectations by over $21 million, and so as a whole, I would say that business activity has remained respectable. As for demand, while some other AI companies that ...
Looking at options trading activity among components of the Russell 3000 index, there is noteworthy activity today in Reddit Inc (Symbol: RDDT), where a total volume of 56,590 contracts has been traded thus far today, a contract volume which is representative of approximately 5.
Looking at options trading activity among components of the Russell 3000 index, there is noteworthy activity today in Reddit Inc (Symbol: RDDT), where a total volume of 56,590 contracts has been traded thus far today, a contract volume which is representative of approximately 5.
Looking at options trading activity among components of the Russell 3000 index, there is noteworthy activity today in Upstart Holdings Inc (Symbol: UPST), where a total volume of 47,009 contracts has been traded thus far today, a contract volume which is representative of approx
Looking at options trading activity among components of the Russell 3000 index, there is noteworthy activity today in Upstart Holdings Inc (Symbol: UPST), where a total volume of 47,009 contracts has been traded thus far today, a contract volume which is representative of approx
Reddit stock sinks as Los Angeles jury penalizes Meta, Google in social media addiction trial. Here’s why that makes RDDT shares unattractive to own in 2026.
Reddit stock sinks as Los Angeles jury penalizes Meta, Google in social media addiction trial. Here’s why that makes RDDT shares unattractive to own in 2026.
Among the underlying components of the Russell 3000 index, we saw noteworthy options trading volume today in Marathon Digital Holdings Inc (Symbol: MARA), where a total of 378,727 contracts have traded so far, representing approximately 37.9 million underlying shares. That amou
Among the underlying components of the Russell 3000 index, we saw noteworthy options trading volume today in Marathon Digital Holdings Inc (Symbol: MARA), where a total of 378,727 contracts have traded so far, representing approximately 37.9 million underlying shares. That amou
Among the underlying components of the Russell 3000 index, we saw noteworthy options trading volume today in Steven Madden Ltd. (Symbol: SHOO), where a total of 21,297 contracts have traded so far, representing approximately 2.1 million underlying shares. That amounts to about
Among the underlying components of the Russell 3000 index, we saw noteworthy options trading volume today in Steven Madden Ltd. (Symbol: SHOO), where a total of 21,297 contracts have traded so far, representing approximately 2.1 million underlying shares. That amounts to about
Looking at options trading activity among components of the Russell 3000 index, there is noteworthy activity today in Elastic NV (Symbol: ESTC), where a total volume of 18,515 contracts has been traded thus far today, a contract volume which is representative of approximately 1.
Looking at options trading activity among components of the Russell 3000 index, there is noteworthy activity today in Elastic NV (Symbol: ESTC), where a total volume of 18,515 contracts has been traded thus far today, a contract volume which is representative of approximately 1.
Arm Holdings PLC (NASDAQ:ARM) is moving beyond its traditional licensing business, seeking a larger footprint in the data center CPU market amid surging demand for AI compute, according to UBS. At its “ARM Everywhere” event, the company unveiled a 136-core CPU claiming roughly double the...
Arm Holdings PLC (NASDAQ:ARM) is moving beyond its traditional licensing business, seeking a larger footprint in the data center CPU market amid surging demand for AI compute, according to UBS. At its “ARM Everywhere” event, the company unveiled a 136-core CPU claiming roughly double the...
Microsoft Freezes Hiring In Cloud And Sales As Stock Suffers Worst Start To Year On Record Microsoft shares were trading lower Thursday afternoon, leaving the stock deeper in bear-market territory and down about 24% on the year. Seasonal data suggests it is the worst start to a year for Microsoft on record. A new report from The Information says Microsoft executives have instructed managers across...
Microsoft Freezes Hiring In Cloud And Sales As Stock Suffers Worst Start To Year On Record Microsoft shares were trading lower Thursday afternoon, leaving the stock deeper in bear-market territory and down about 24% on the year. Seasonal data suggests it is the worst start to a year for Microsoft on record. A new report from The Information says Microsoft executives have instructed managers across major divisions, including Azure cloud and North American sales, to freeze hiring as part of a broader effort to reduce costs and boost margins ahead of the June fiscal year-end. Microsoft employees who spoke with the outlet said the hiring freeze is not companywide. They said Copilot and some other AI-related engineering divisions are still hiring, but managers in large cloud and sales organizations were told to halt all new hirings in recent weeks. " The company reported slightly decelerating Azure growth in the fourth quarter of last year and said roughly 45% of its Azure revenue backlog, or customer spending commitments, come from one customer, OpenAI ," The Information noted. Microsoft reduced headcount by 15,000 last year. The company ended 2025 with 228,000 full-time employees, the same amount as a year earlier, according to Bloomberg data. Hiring momentum has certainly leveled off after hiring sprees that began in 2016 and accelerated in the early days of Covid. Another employee who spoke with senior Microsoft executives said headcount will not increase in the coming years, both due to pressures on the software business and the proliferation of AI tools. The pattern of behavior across big tech companies pouring tens of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure has been to trim labor costs. Meta , Google, AWS, Atlassian, and ServiceNow have all been cutting, freezing, or reshuffling headcount as AI spending rises. Layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi shows 71 tech companies have axed nearly 40,500 jobs so far this year. Layoffs are nowhere near the levels seen during the tec...
Italian sweeps Tiafoe aside 6-2, 6-2 to reach semis France’s Fils wins thriller against Paul The past nine days at the Miami Open have not been kind to most of the best male tennis players in the world. One by one, so many have fallen, most dumped out of the tournament with mediocre performances. Even Carlos Alcaraz, the world No 1, was not immune to the string of giantkillings in Florida. One man...
Italian sweeps Tiafoe aside 6-2, 6-2 to reach semis France’s Fils wins thriller against Paul The past nine days at the Miami Open have not been kind to most of the best male tennis players in the world. One by one, so many have fallen, most dumped out of the tournament with mediocre performances. Even Carlos Alcaraz, the world No 1, was not immune to the string of giantkillings in Florida. One man remains completely unbothered. Having broken Novak Djokovic’s 2016 record for most consecutive sets won at Masters 1000 events earlier in the tournament, Jannik Sinner has continued to bulldoze through the draw as he tries to follow up his recent Indian Wells title by winning the Sunshine Double. He rolled into the semi-finals of the Miami Open with a comfortable 6-2, 6-2 win over the 19th seed, Frances Tiafoe. Continue reading...
bo feng/iStock via Getty Images In my recent article covering 7 income-oriented CEFs that have increased NAV and increased distributions over the past ten to fifteen years, one of the funds that I mentioned was the BlackRock Enhanced Equity Dividend Trust ( BDJ ). In this review I want to take a deeper dive into BDJ as well as some peer funds, like Gabelli Dividend & Income Trust ( GDV ), which I ...
bo feng/iStock via Getty Images In my recent article covering 7 income-oriented CEFs that have increased NAV and increased distributions over the past ten to fifteen years, one of the funds that I mentioned was the BlackRock Enhanced Equity Dividend Trust ( BDJ ). In this review I want to take a deeper dive into BDJ as well as some peer funds, like Gabelli Dividend & Income Trust ( GDV ), which I recently analyzed here . One of the criteria for evaluating whether a closed-end fund, or CEF, is a potential buy candidate is the current discount (or premium) to NAV that the fund trades at based on the latest market price. One advantage to investing in CEFs is the ability to buy funds that are trading at a wider than average discount, because the fund managers often take steps to close that discount or because the market adjusts the price closer to NAV after positive market sentiment drives the price higher. Either way, there is typically a price pattern that can be taken advantage of based on the trading history of a specific CEF. One measure to determine whether the current discount indicates a potential buy signal is the Z-score . Without getting too deep into statistics (one of my least favorite subjects in college), the Z-score is an indication of how far a specific value lies from the mean value of a dataset, which in this case is measuring the standard deviation from the mean (i.e., average) discount that the CEF trades at. From Investopedia: Z-score is a statistical measurement that describes a value's relationship to the mean of a group of values. Z-score is measured in terms of standard deviations from the mean. In investing and trading, Z-scores are measures of an instrument's variability and can be used by traders to help determine volatility. Investopedia Fortunately, websites like CEFConnect calculate the Z-score for us and display it on the fund’s pricing page. Visually, we can see on the pricing chart that the discount is wider than the one-year average d...