The idea of investing a real estate amount of $1,000 in the present AI excitement leaves to consider three leading equities, namely, Palantir Technologies, Nvidia, and Alphabet, as having a potential to merge decent growth trends with proven dominance in the market as of February 8, 2026. Palantir’s Record Surge Palantir Technologies (PLTR) exceeded the estimates of quarter four and announced reve...
The idea of investing a real estate amount of $1,000 in the present AI excitement leaves to consider three leading equities, namely, Palantir Technologies, Nvidia, and Alphabet, as having a potential to merge decent growth trends with proven dominance in the market as of February 8, 2026. Palantir’s Record Surge Palantir Technologies (PLTR) exceeded the estimates of quarter four and announced revenue of $1.41 billion, which is 70% higher than all of the previous years, and net income of $609 million, with a profit margin of 43%. The figures-analytics enterprise was able to conceive 180 contracts of over 1 million dollars with an ultimate record contract of $4.26 billion, a 138% over the previous year. Its AI software has now enabled real-time analysis of insights to governmental and commercial organizations and thus defined its necessary nature. NVIDIA Fuels the Fire As of February 2, 2026, Nvidia Corporation (NVDA) has a market capitalization of $4.51 trillion, and remains the largest AI chip maker. The applications of GPUs include AI training and cryptocurrency mining, which are the highest-performance computing segments of the company. It has been mentioned that cloud-based units of GPUs are already fully subscribed before the introduction of Rubin components later in the year. Goldman Sachs analyst James Schneider reiterated his Buy rating for Nvidia, with a $250 price target. NVIDIA will announce its fourth-quarter financial results on February 25. Analysts expect the company to report $65.55 billion in revenue and $1.49 per share, according to Benzinga Pro data. NVIDIA’s offerings have been limited, driving the surge in data center utilization, ensuring it holds the leading position. Alphabet’s Cloud Edge The Net income in the fourth quarter increased by 30% over the previous year, reaching $34.5 billion, exceeding analysts’ expectations of $31.9 billion. The company made a profit of $132 billion in 2025. According to FactSet data, revenue increased 18% to $11...
AP Chanel/iStock via Getty Images On February 5, MDU Resources ( MDU ) released its Q4 2025 financial results. Earnings per share of $0.37 just beat expectations of $0.36. Revenue of $534 million fell short of projections by about $27.5 million. For the full year, continuing operations for the company saw an improvement in net income of just over $10 million, from $181.1 million to $191.4 million....
AP Chanel/iStock via Getty Images On February 5, MDU Resources ( MDU ) released its Q4 2025 financial results. Earnings per share of $0.37 just beat expectations of $0.36. Revenue of $534 million fell short of projections by about $27.5 million. For the full year, continuing operations for the company saw an improvement in net income of just over $10 million, from $181.1 million to $191.4 million. Earnings per share for FY 2025 from continuing ops rose 5.7%, from $0.88 to $0.93. The market did not appear to welcome the news from the company’s most recent performance. Its stock fell by over 4% by the closing bell on that date. However, MDU had been on a nice run at the end of 2025 leading up to the report. Since September 17, the stock has gained 28.3%, even with the decline at the end of this week. Over the last 12 months, MDU has gained just over 20%, not including dividends. Seeking Alpha After looking through all of the recent data for the company and thinking about its prospects for the year ahead, MDU Resources seems to fall in the category of “good, but not great.” It trades at a profit valuation that is average for its sector. It is making some strong investments in capex but diluting current shareholders to do so. I believe the stock is a Hold at its current price. Company Overview MDU Resources is a regulated utility that has electric and natural gas operations that serve more than 1.2 million customers. The company also has a pipeline division that provides natural gas transportation and underground storage services. Its business footprint stretches from the Dakotas to Washington State. MDU is headquartered in Bismarck and is the oldest publicly traded company from North Dakota. The company has gone through a great deal of transition over the last few years as it has spun off two non-core businesses to streamline its utility operations. On May 31, 2023, the company separated from its construction materials business, Knife River ( KNF ). On October 31, 2024...
Explore how sector focus, risk, and cost differences between these ETFs can shape your portfolio’s resilience and growth potential. State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY +2.02%) and Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1 (QQQ +2.11%) differ most in sector concentration, risk profile, and cost, with QQQ charging a higher fee and focusing more on technology stocks. Both the State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Tru...
Explore how sector focus, risk, and cost differences between these ETFs can shape your portfolio’s resilience and growth potential. State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY +2.02%) and Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1 (QQQ +2.11%) differ most in sector concentration, risk profile, and cost, with QQQ charging a higher fee and focusing more on technology stocks. Both the State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) and the Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1 (QQQ) are giants among United States exchange-traded funds, each tracking a large-cap index but with distinct portfolios and risk-return tradeoffs. This comparison outlines how the two ETFs stack up on cost, performance, sector tilts, liquidity, and portfolio construction to help investors evaluate which may better fit their strategy. Snapshot (Cost & Size) Metric SPY QQQ Issuer SPDR Invesco Expense ratio 0.09% 0.20% 1-yr return (as of 2026-02-04) 14.0% 15.5% Dividend yield 1.1% 0.5% AUM $709.2 billion $405.7 billion Beta measures price volatility relative to the S&P 500; beta is calculated from five-year weekly returns. The 1-yr return represents total return over the trailing 12 months. SPY looks more affordable, charging about half the annual expense ratio of QQQ, while also offering a higher dividend yield. QQQ’s higher fee and lower payout may matter to cost-focused or income-oriented investors. Performance & Risk Comparison Metric SPY QQQ Max drawdown (5 y) (24.49%) (35.12%) Growth of $1,000 over 5 years $1,770 $1,828 What's Inside QQQ tracks the NASDAQ-100 Index, tilting heavily toward technology (55% of assets), with communication services and consumer cyclical sectors making up most of the rest. The fund holds 102 stocks, with the largest allocations to NVIDIA Corp (NVDA +8.01%) (8.46%), Apple Inc (AAPL +0.87%) (7.69%), and Microsoft Corp (MSFT +2.00%) (5.90%). Launched in March 1999, QQQ has a track record of nearly 27 years and is known for its tech concentration, which can amplify both gains and losses. SPY, by contra...
Companies in the Consumer Cyclical sector have received a lot of coverage today as analysts weigh in on Amazon (AMZN – Research Report), Volvo Car AB Class B (VLVOF – Research Report) and Tapestry (TPR – Research Report). Amazon (AMZN) In a report released yesterday, Steven Forbes from Guggenheim maintained a Buy rating on Amazon, with a price target of $300.00. The company’s shares closed last Fr...
Companies in the Consumer Cyclical sector have received a lot of coverage today as analysts weigh in on Amazon (AMZN – Research Report), Volvo Car AB Class B (VLVOF – Research Report) and Tapestry (TPR – Research Report). Amazon (AMZN) In a report released yesterday, Steven Forbes from Guggenheim maintained a Buy rating on Amazon, with a price target of $300.00. The company’s shares closed last Friday at $210.32. According to TipRanks.com, Forbes is a 5-star analyst with an average return of 13.2% and a 57.5% success rate. Forbes covers the NA sector, focusing on stocks such as Petco Health and Wellness Company, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Advance Auto Parts. ;'> Amazon has an analyst consensus of Strong Buy, with a price target consensus of $283.49, a 39.9% upside from current levels. In a report issued on January 28, Bank of America Securities also reiterated a Buy rating on the stock with a $286.00 price target. See the top stocks recommended by analysts >> Volvo Car AB Class B (VLVOF) Kepler Capital analyst Alexandre Raverdy maintained a Hold rating on Volvo Car AB Class B on February 5 and set a price target of SEK32.00. The company’s shares closed last Thursday at $3.35. According to TipRanks.com, Raverdy is ranked #7862 out of 12040 analysts. The word on The Street in general, suggests a Moderate Sell analyst consensus rating for Volvo Car AB Class B with a $2.59 average price target, representing a -22.6% downside. In a report released yesterday, Deutsche Bank also maintained a Hold rating on the stock with a SEK25.00 price target. Tapestry (TPR) In a report released yesterday, Robert Drbul from BTIG maintained a Buy rating on Tapestry, with a price target of $175.00. The company’s shares closed last Friday at $152.10. According to TipRanks.com, Drbul is a 4-star analyst with an average return of 4.9% and a 53.7% success rate. Drbul covers the NA sector, focusing on stocks such as G-III Apparel Group, Columbia Sportswear, and Burlington Stores. ;'> The word o...
alexsl/iStock via Getty Images The US dollar rose against the G10 currencies last week, except for the Australian and New Zealand dollars. Without much in the way of new supportive developments, we frame its gains primarily in technical terms after the dramatic sell-off that appears to have been spurred by the bellicose nature of the US attitude toward Greenland. The nomination of Warsh to succeed...
alexsl/iStock via Getty Images The US dollar rose against the G10 currencies last week, except for the Australian and New Zealand dollars. Without much in the way of new supportive developments, we frame its gains primarily in technical terms after the dramatic sell-off that appears to have been spurred by the bellicose nature of the US attitude toward Greenland. The nomination of Warsh to succeed Powell as Fed Chair seemed to have sparked a correction in several markets. Meanwhile, after a couple of soft labor market indicators, the market feels more confident of at least two Fed cuts this year. The dollar traded mostly lower ahead of the weekend, but the momentum indicators suggest the upside correction may not be over. The market's fear of intervention faded as the February 8 Japanese election drew near. The yen was the weakest of the G10 currencies last week, falling almost 1.5% against the greenback. A surge in German factory orders did not translate into an increase in industrial output. The ECB stood pat, as expected, and President Lagarde played down the impact of the euro's appreciation on the outlook for monetary policy. The Bank of England delivered a dovish hold and the market's confidence in a cut in April rose (~95% chance vs. 74% a week ago). Next week's highlights include the delayed US January jobs report and what is expected to be a softer CPI. China reports January CPI and PPI as well. The PBOC continues to lower the dollar's fix on a trend basis. The UK reports Q4 GDP. Meanwhile, polls suggest that the LDP will bolster its standing in the lower house in Japan's election on February 8, which will be seen as a broad mandate for Takaichi. US Drivers: There seem to be two main considerations for the broad movement of the greenback. First is a correction after being extremely stretched from a technical perspective. The momentum indicators suggest it still has a run to go. Second, and arguably, what triggered the technical correction was the nomination...
Amazon is still the cloud computing leader. It's no secret that Amazon (AMZN 5.55%) has been losing market share in cloud infrastructure to Alphabet's (GOOG 2.48%) (GOOGL 2.46%) Google Cloud and Microsoft (MSFT +1.90%) Azure for years now. That trend continued in 2025. Amazon reported a respectable 20% growth at AWS, but that was well behind Google Cloud at 36%, and Microsoft, which operates on a ...
Amazon is still the cloud computing leader. It's no secret that Amazon (AMZN 5.55%) has been losing market share in cloud infrastructure to Alphabet's (GOOG 2.48%) (GOOGL 2.46%) Google Cloud and Microsoft (MSFT +1.90%) Azure for years now. That trend continued in 2025. Amazon reported a respectable 20% growth at AWS, but that was well behind Google Cloud at 36%, and Microsoft, which operates on a different fiscal calendar, but reported 39% growth in Azure in its most recent quarter. Amazon invented cloud computing, or infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), as a business more than 20 years ago, and it has been the leader ever since, but the recent gains from Alphabet and Microsoft underscore the larger narrative in AI that Amazon has fallen behind its hyperscaler peers. However, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy seems to be tired of hearing that, as he gave a robust defense of AWS and reasserted its cloud leadership on Amazon's recent earnings call. Jassy told investors, "As a reminder, it's very different having 24% year-over-year growth on a $142 billion annualized run rate than to have a higher percentage growth on a meaningfully smaller which is the case with our competitors. We continue to add more incremental revenue and capacity than others, and extend our leadership position." He also noted that AWS clocked its fastest revenue growth in the last 13 quarters at 24%, and its chips business, led by Graviton and Trainium, which are designed for AI, have reached $10 billion in annual revenue run rate, growing triple digits. Amazon is still the cloud leader As Jassy said, AWS added more than $21.2 billion in revenue in 2025, compared to Google Cloud, which grew by $15.5 billion. In Microsoft's fiscal 2025, which ended in June 2025, Azure grew by roughly $19 billion. AWS is still more than double the size of Google Cloud and significantly larger than Azure. Amazon is also preparing to outspend its rivals in capital expenditures, targeting $200 billion this year, predominantly for ...
SIphotography/iStock via Getty Images Investment Thesis I last reviewed the Global X SuperDividend U.S. ETF ( DIV ) more than three years ago on September 12, 2022, when I rated it a "hold" after previously criticizing its strategy for not doing enough to screen out yield traps. While that remains true, DIV does offer an enticing 6.74% yield, and I think it's worth revisiting to see if it's worth ...
SIphotography/iStock via Getty Images Investment Thesis I last reviewed the Global X SuperDividend U.S. ETF ( DIV ) more than three years ago on September 12, 2022, when I rated it a "hold" after previously criticizing its strategy for not doing enough to screen out yield traps. While that remains true, DIV does offer an enticing 6.74% yield, and I think it's worth revisiting to see if it's worth pursuing. Overall, I don't think it is, and in this article, I'll explain why DIV's high-dividend, low-volatility strategy isn't as safe as you might expect, and why its fundamentals and performance history suggest the chances of it outperforming are slim. As such, I've downgraded DIV back to a "sell," and I look forward to explaining why in further detail below. I hope you enjoy the read. DIV Overview DIV tracks the Indxx SuperDividend U.S. Low Volatility Index , which is "a maximum 50-stock equal weighted index designed to measure the market performance of companies in the United States that have a high dividend yield and low beta." Below is my summary of its selection process, which I created using the latest methodology document . 1. Eligible securities must be incorporated in the United States and have a minimum total market cap above $500 million. In addition, securities must have a six-month average daily turnover above $1 million and a 10% minimum free float factor. 2. Common stocks, MLPs, and REITs are eligible securities, and to be considered for inclusion, these securities must have a beta less than or equal to 0.85 with respect to its local country benchmark. 3. The Index calculates the twelve-month dividend yield for all securities and excludes those with yields below 1% and above 20%. After removing those that have not paid dividends consistently for the last two years or have decreased their dividends by 50% or more compared to the prior year, a selection pool of 200, ranked by dividend yield, is formed. 4. The top 50 companies by dividend yield qualify, subj...
Will Falling Birth Rates Mean A More Conservative World? Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), George Orwell was on to it almost 80 years ago—the problem of below-replacement level birth rates. In a short book written for the Britain in Pictures series in 1947, written just as Britain was emerging from wartime rigors into an uncharted postwar future, Orwell noted that des...
Will Falling Birth Rates Mean A More Conservative World? Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), George Orwell was on to it almost 80 years ago—the problem of below-replacement level birth rates. In a short book written for the Britain in Pictures series in 1947, written just as Britain was emerging from wartime rigors into an uncharted postwar future, Orwell noted that despite an upward blip in birth rates during the war, “the general curve is downward. The position is not quite so dangerous as it is sometimes said to be, but can only be put right if the curve not only rises sharply but does so within ten or at most twenty years.” David Veksler/Unsplash.com “Otherwise,” he went on, forebodingly, “ the population will not only fall, but, what is worse, will consist predominantly of middle-aged people. If that point is reached, the decline may never be retrievable .” Orwell did not live to see it—he died at the age of 46 in 1950—but the danger was averted. Postwar birth rates rose in Britain and parts of Europe, though not so robustly as in the United States, where the baby boom peaked in 1957 and petered out after the introduction of the birth control pill in 1962. The peak U.S. fertility rate, or the projection of how many children the median woman would have if current birth rates continued, hovered above 3.5 and then plunged to 1.74 in the bicentennial year of 1976, just about the same as 2025’s 1.79. Fertility rates remained low in the 1980s, then rose and occasionally reached the replacement rate of 2.1 in the high-immigration 1990s through the Great Recession of 2007. The latest rate was an uptick from the 1.6 levels of the COVID-19-affected 2020–24 period, leaving the United States with something similar to the dilemma Orwell warned Britons against. And it’s not just the United States . Plunging birth rates are a worldwide phenomenon. Europe’s fertility rates have been well below replacement for years, with nations’ under-70 population...
Find your next quality investment with Simply Wall St's easy and powerful screener, trusted by over 7 million individual investors worldwide. Corning (NYSE:GLW) has entered a multi year, multi billion dollar supply agreement with Meta Platforms for advanced optical products for Meta's data centers. The company is also participating in the U.S. government's Project Vault, focused on securing rare e...
Find your next quality investment with Simply Wall St's easy and powerful screener, trusted by over 7 million individual investors worldwide. Corning (NYSE:GLW) has entered a multi year, multi billion dollar supply agreement with Meta Platforms for advanced optical products for Meta's data centers. The company is also participating in the U.S. government's Project Vault, focused on securing rare earths supply for critical industries. These developments highlight Corning's role in next generation data center infrastructure and in key supply chains for sectors such as semiconductors and automotive. For investors tracking NYSE:GLW, these announcements arrive with the stock at $122.16, following very strong share price performance over multiple time frames, including 18.3% over the past week and 43.3% over the past month. The 1 year return of 135.0% and 5 year return of 280.0% show how closely the market is tying Corning to long term themes in data infrastructure and advanced materials. Looking ahead, the Meta agreement points to multi year visibility in a core end market, and Project Vault involvement connects Corning to U.S. policy priorities around critical materials. Investors may want to watch how these projects translate into capacity decisions, capital spending, and the mix of revenue across data center, semiconductor, and automotive customers. Stay updated on the most important news stories for Corning by adding it to your watchlist or portfolio. Alternatively, explore our Community to discover new perspectives on Corning. NYSE:GLW Earnings & Revenue Growth as at Feb 2026 How Corning stacks up against its biggest competitors Quick Assessment ⚖️ Price vs Analyst Target : At US$122.16, Corning trades about 6.7% above the US$114.46 analyst consensus target, which is within a 10% band. ⚖️ Simply Wall St Valuation : Simply Wall St flags the shares as trading close to estimated fair value. ✅ Recent Momentum: The 30 day return of roughly 43% indicates very strong recen...