Munro/iStock via Getty Images The first quarter of 2026 was one of those eventful quarters that feels like two or three unfolded in the same time. While the U.S.-Iran War has been going on for over a month, there were several market narratives before that had made the market somewhat stagnant and fragile before the sell-off. There are several themes I'm still investing in despite their recent pain...
Munro/iStock via Getty Images The first quarter of 2026 was one of those eventful quarters that feels like two or three unfolded in the same time. While the U.S.-Iran War has been going on for over a month, there were several market narratives before that had made the market somewhat stagnant and fragile before the sell-off. There are several themes I'm still investing in despite their recent pain that I believe will rebound in Q2. We're already off the deepest lows, and while there are plenty of reasons to be worried or do a little hedging, I'm a believer that we hit a relative market bottom around late March, around the time I said that, “ It Is Time to Be Greedy .” Data by YCharts The SaaSpocalypse Will End Software-as-a-service ("SaaS") was one of the hot themes of the last decade and took a swift dump following the release of agentic coding tools by major frontier labs like OpenAI ( OPENAI ) and Anthropic ( ANTHRO ) in late January. This led to a massive decline in software services stocks, and to me publishing “ I'm Buying the Software Meltdown, ” where I wrote: The central flaw in the thesis against software stocks and the argument against AI eating software is that AI tools require humans to operate. Agents must be piloted, so to speak, and the firms that hire the best pilots ("prompt engineers"?) are likely to succeed even if the tools lower the barriers to entry. ...are we using our phones more now that there are more apps? Are the new apps gaining any actual market share or attention? The floor being lower for being an app developer means that there are more app developers, but it doesn't say that the long tail is paying off in that regard. The future of software in the AI world is unclear, as the ultimate potential of AI systems is still unclear. However, I don't believe that vibecoder entrepreneurs are going to replace the software sector. It doesn't make sense that AI coding tools will make software firms obsolete by allowing for in-house tools to be m...
The US president couldn’t give a single coherent reason for why this aggressive war of choice must still be prosecuted Donald Trump’s self-congratulatory speech on Iran on Wednesday night was as puzzling as it was divorced from reality. I had hoped he would declare victory and end the war. Some feared he might provide cover for a ground invasion. Instead, he told us in essence to be patient, that ...
The US president couldn’t give a single coherent reason for why this aggressive war of choice must still be prosecuted Donald Trump’s self-congratulatory speech on Iran on Wednesday night was as puzzling as it was divorced from reality. I had hoped he would declare victory and end the war. Some feared he might provide cover for a ground invasion. Instead, he told us in essence to be patient, that he is almost done, but he was utterly unclear about what more there is to accomplish. If there was ever a purpose to the war, it was to curtail Iran’s capacity to develop a nuclear weapon. Trump harped on that goal repeatedly in his speech, noting that he had long vowed that he “would never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon”. But he didn’t mention that Iran has long agreed to eschew a nuclear weapon. If that is the only goal, this entire war has been pointless. Continue reading...
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is undeniably the biggest tech megatrend in recent memory. And it has created plenty of millionaires and billionaires out of investors who bet big on the right companies at the right time. That said, not every generative AI stock has been a winner. SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN) has struggled to hold Wall Street's attention. And despite having a compelling bus...
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is undeniably the biggest tech megatrend in recent memory. And it has created plenty of millionaires and billionaires out of investors who bet big on the right companies at the right time. That said, not every generative AI stock has been a winner. SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN) has struggled to hold Wall Street's attention. And despite having a compelling business strategy in the speech and voice AI niche, shares have fallen by a blistering 41% since the start of 2026. Let's explore the reasons why the stock is crashing and why it may be on the cusp of a turnaround over the next few years. Continue reading
Stocks on the U.S. markets opened lower on Thursday, April 2, 2026, before recovering to near breakeven by midday. Investors digested conflicting signals from the ongoing Iran conflict and a disappointing March delivery report from Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) . ^DJI data by https://ycharts.com ">YCharts Continue reading
Stocks on the U.S. markets opened lower on Thursday, April 2, 2026, before recovering to near breakeven by midday. Investors digested conflicting signals from the ongoing Iran conflict and a disappointing March delivery report from Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) . ^DJI data by https://ycharts.com ">YCharts Continue reading
Jennifer Johnston, senior vice president and director of research for municipal bonds at Franklin Templeton joins Scarlet Fu on "Bloomberg Markets." The US municipal market’s worst month in more than two years has cheapened the debt enough to lure some investors looking to add to their tax-exempt holdings. (Source: Bloomberg)
Jennifer Johnston, senior vice president and director of research for municipal bonds at Franklin Templeton joins Scarlet Fu on "Bloomberg Markets." The US municipal market’s worst month in more than two years has cheapened the debt enough to lure some investors looking to add to their tax-exempt holdings. (Source: Bloomberg)
Walter Cicchetti SpaceX ( SPACE ) has had talks with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund about PIF potentially taking an anchor stake of about $5 billion in the rocket, satellite, and AI company's initial public offering. The Saudi investment would partly prevent dilution of PIF's existing stake of just under 1% in SpaceX, according to a Reuters report on Thursday, which cited people familiar wi...
Walter Cicchetti SpaceX ( SPACE ) has had talks with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund about PIF potentially taking an anchor stake of about $5 billion in the rocket, satellite, and AI company's initial public offering. The Saudi investment would partly prevent dilution of PIF's existing stake of just under 1% in SpaceX, according to a Reuters report on Thursday, which cited people familiar with the matter. No final decision has been made, and any investment remains subject to change. SpaceX didn't respond to Reuters request for comment. PIF declined to comment. The latest update comes after multiple reports on Wednesday indicated that SpaceX ( SPACE ) filed confidentially for an IPO . SpaceX could look for a valuation of more than $1.75 trillion , Bloomberg has previously reported. An IPO for SpaceX would raise as much as $75 billion. More on SpaceX SpaceX IPO: What I Learned From ULA's Heydays SpaceX-xAI Deal: Building America's New Icon SpaceX IPO's $700 Billion Valuation Increase Benchmarked By Rocket Lab SpaceX is said to plan analyst day, data center tour amid IPO preparations SpaceX files confidentially for IPO - Bloomberg
hapabapa Palantir Technology's ( PLTR ) ontology layer—which turns raw enterprise data into real-world, actionable objects—has proven the enterprise software company's artificial intelligence moat, UBS said. “Our conversations with Palantir and its customers support a view that the value-add of Palantir’s ontology layer goes well beyond serving as a thin data semantic layer sitting on corporate da...
hapabapa Palantir Technology's ( PLTR ) ontology layer—which turns raw enterprise data into real-world, actionable objects—has proven the enterprise software company's artificial intelligence moat, UBS said. “Our conversations with Palantir and its customers support a view that the value-add of Palantir’s ontology layer goes well beyond serving as a thin data semantic layer sitting on corporate data to make that data more approachable (trusted, reusable) or easier to traverse,” UBS analyst Karl Keirstead wrote in a note to clients. “The competitive edge, what makes Palantir’s Foundry platform very tough to replicate, is a) Foundry’s strength at metadata graphing or mapping, defining relationships between data and mapping or connecting data to the customer’s relevant operations and systems, and b) the Palantir ontology layer can be used for operational decision-making, it is actionable and can quickly produce 'targeted outcomes' for business users. Customers are not citing any viable alternative to Palantir today and there is no evidence of this in the numbers.” Keirstead has a Buy rating and a $200 price target on Palantir shares. And while there is some evidence of large language models from companies such as OpenAI ( OPENAI ) and Anthropic ( ANTHRO ) being able to handle some parts of the software market, the likelihood of disruption for Palantir is “low,” Keirstead argued. “For Palantir, Snowflake ( SNOW ) and its peers, we’d argue that it’s low, even though we hear that AI models can already do some data engineering/pipelining tasks,” Keirstead explained. “Not a single Palantir customer or partner has cited any real risk from Claude models being used to DIY an equivalent of Palantir, likely because the data mapping and decision-making in Palantir is very sophisticated. Palantir seems too far right on the complexity spectrum.” More on Palantir Palantir Is Now U.S. Military's Critical System Palantir Is Becoming The System Behind Decisions Palantir's Old Narrative...
Here's a question almost nobody is asking: how do you get to the Times Square Olive Garden? Well, these beautiful weirdos are answering it - the team that made the Times Square Olive Garden compass . If that's not clear enough, let me explain. They're making a compass that points you exclusively in the direction of the Times Square Olive Garden. I thought this must have been an April Fools' joke w...
Here's a question almost nobody is asking: how do you get to the Times Square Olive Garden? Well, these beautiful weirdos are answering it - the team that made the Times Square Olive Garden compass . If that's not clear enough, let me explain. They're making a compass that points you exclusively in the direction of the Times Square Olive Garden. I thought this must have been an April Fools' joke when it came across my TikTok feed. Then I talked to the creators - Jason Goldberg and Steve Nasopoulos, who worked in collab with Glub Glub Labs - and learned it's, at least, not that kind of joke. Disclaimer: I can't say you should buy this, use i … Read the full story at The Verge.
President Donald Trump said the war in Iran is “very close” to completion, even as he said the US plans to launch fresh attacks on the country within the next two to three weeks. Trump in a rare prime-time address on Wednesday cast the war as a success, saying the operation had nearly achieved its military goals, including destroying Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, air force, navy and indus...
President Donald Trump said the war in Iran is “very close” to completion, even as he said the US plans to launch fresh attacks on the country within the next two to three weeks. Trump in a rare prime-time address on Wednesday cast the war as a success, saying the operation had nearly achieved its military goals, including destroying Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, air force, navy and industrial base. He said those steps would prevent Tehran’s proxies from destabilizing the region and cut off the country’s path to nuclear weapons. Rebecca Grant, vice president for defense programs at the Lexington Institute, joins Balance of Power to discuss and said the positioning of more US military resources off Iran's coast suggests that commanders still have a target list to finish. (Source: Bloomberg)