India has reportedly signed a deal to buy Russian missiles that target support aircraft as its arch-rival Pakistan and China continue to integrate their aerial weapons profiles. Russia has cleared the export of around 300 R-37M ultra-long-range air-to-air missiles in a US$1.2 billion deal, according to media reports. Malaysia-based news platform Defence Security Asia said deliveries of the missile...
India has reportedly signed a deal to buy Russian missiles that target support aircraft as its arch-rival Pakistan and China continue to integrate their aerial weapons profiles. Russia has cleared the export of around 300 R-37M ultra-long-range air-to-air missiles in a US$1.2 billion deal, according to media reports. Malaysia-based news platform Defence Security Asia said deliveries of the missiles could begin within 12 to 18 months. India is also developing its own Astra Mk 2 and Mk 3 missiles,...
Shenzhen’s residential inventory has fallen to a seven-year low, putting the southern technology hub ahead of other first-tier Chinese cities in clearing excess housing stock – a condition investors see as essential for a broader property market recovery. While inventory had declined across major Chinese cities, analysts said the recovery remained uneven after five consecutive years of weakness in...
Shenzhen’s residential inventory has fallen to a seven-year low, putting the southern technology hub ahead of other first-tier Chinese cities in clearing excess housing stock – a condition investors see as essential for a broader property market recovery. While inventory had declined across major Chinese cities, analysts said the recovery remained uneven after five consecutive years of weakness in the housing market. A broader rebound across city tiers and property types is likely to take...
Of all the traditions humans thoughtlessly adopt, being socially obliged to touch someone when introduced to them is one of the worst. Good on young people for refusing Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. A person, place or thing you perhaps took for granted exits your existence, and only then do you appreciate what they meant to you, how important they were. This is not one o...
Of all the traditions humans thoughtlessly adopt, being socially obliged to touch someone when introduced to them is one of the worst. Good on young people for refusing Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. A person, place or thing you perhaps took for granted exits your existence, and only then do you appreciate what they meant to you, how important they were. This is not one of those times. New research has revealed that the handshake is in danger of becoming extinct, and surely we’re united in planning to dance on its grave, shouting “Good riddance!” and spraying champagne, Grand Prix-style. A survey of 2,000 parents and their teenage children, by ACS International Schools, provides much hope for the future, as today’s teens seem to have their priorities correct. An impressive 59% “go to lengths” to avoid small talk; 28% don’t like answering the door or phone if they don’t know who’s calling; and 24% find giving a handshake excruciating. It would be interesting to find out the percentage of adults who agree – 98%? The other 2% being those who consider Sun Tzu’s The Art of War a business manual, and are focused on putting their free hand on top of the handshake to assert dominance, before the other party can beat them to it. Continue reading...
Killhouse is based on real-life story of civilian couple saved from battlefield by Ukrainian drone operators It is being billed as Ukraine’s answer to Saving Private Ryan, updated for an age of drones. The war movie Killhouse is an action thriller which shows off the latest in battlefield technology. Released this week, it features cameos by figures well known in Ukraine, including the nation’s fo...
Killhouse is based on real-life story of civilian couple saved from battlefield by Ukrainian drone operators It is being billed as Ukraine’s answer to Saving Private Ryan, updated for an age of drones. The war movie Killhouse is an action thriller which shows off the latest in battlefield technology. Released this week, it features cameos by figures well known in Ukraine, including the nation’s former military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov. One missing person is Donald Trump. The film is conveniently set in 2024, when Washington and Kyiv were allies. Continue reading...
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This is the forum for daily political discussion on Seeking Alpha. A new version is published every market day. Please don't leave political comments on other articles or posts on the site. The comments below are not regulated with the same rigor as the rest of the site, and this is an 'enter at your own risk' area as discussion can get very heated. If you can't stand the heat... you know what they say... More on Today's Markets: Moderation Guidelines: We remove comments under the following categories: Personal attacks on another user account Anti-Vaxxer or covid related misinformation Stereotyping, prejudiced or racist language about individuals or the topic under discussion. Inciting violence messages, encouraging hate groups and political violence. Regardless of which side of the political divide you find yourself, please be courteous and don't direct abuse at other users. For any issue with regards to comments please email us at : moderation@seekingalpha.com. Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.
The most expensive AI failure I have seen in enterprise deployments did not produce an error. No alert fired. No dashboard turned red. The system was fully operational, it was just consistently, confidently wrong. That is the reliability gap. And it is the problem most enterprise AI programs are not built to catch. We have spent the last two years getting very good at evaluating models: benchmarks...
The most expensive AI failure I have seen in enterprise deployments did not produce an error. No alert fired. No dashboard turned red. The system was fully operational, it was just consistently, confidently wrong. That is the reliability gap. And it is the problem most enterprise AI programs are not built to catch. We have spent the last two years getting very good at evaluating models: benchmarks, accuracy scores, red-team exercises, retrieval quality tests. But in production, the model is rarely where the system breaks. It breaks in the infrastructure layer, the data pipelines feeding it, the orchestration logic wrapping it, the retrieval systems grounding it, the downstream workflows trusting its output. That layer is still being monitored with tools designed for a different kind of software. The gap no one is measuring Here's what makes this problem hard to see: Operationally healthy and behaviorally reliable are not the same thing, and most monitoring stacks cannot tell the difference. A system can show green across every infrastructure metric, latency within SLA, throughput normal, error rate flat, while simultaneously reasoning over retrieval results that are six months stale, silently falling back to cached context after a tool call degrades, or propagating a misinterpretation through five steps of an agentic workflow. None of that shows up in Prometheus. None of it trips a Datadog alert. The reason is straightforward: Traditional observability was built to answer the question “is the service up?” Enterprise AI requires answering a harder question: “Is the service behaving correctly?” Those are different instruments. What teams typically measure What actually drives AI infrastructure failure Uptime / latency / error rate Retrieval freshness and grounding confidence Token usage Context integrity across multi-step workflows Throughput Semantic drift under real-world load Model benchmark scores Behavioral consistency when conditions degrade Infrastructure error...
Matthis Arrivet/iStock via Getty Images Northrop Grumman ( NOC ) is a defense contractor that many investors know from its platforms, such as the B-2 stealth bomber, and high dividend growth rate. Since I last wrote about it, the company has grown by producing new platforms and sustaining and modernizing older ones. The share price reached a record in early March 2026 before rapidly declining on f...
Matthis Arrivet/iStock via Getty Images Northrop Grumman ( NOC ) is a defense contractor that many investors know from its platforms, such as the B-2 stealth bomber, and high dividend growth rate. Since I last wrote about it, the company has grown by producing new platforms and sustaining and modernizing older ones. The share price reached a record in early March 2026 before rapidly declining on fears of higher costs, lower margins, and broader defense equity malaise. As a dividend growth stock, Northrop Grumman is familiar because of its Dividend Contender status, 22-year streak of consecutive annual increases, and double-digit growth rates. The company has an attractive portfolio of businesses and a wide moat. Despite the declining share price, the valuation is still elevated. Hence, I view Northrop Grumman as a long-term ‘hold.’ Overview of Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation was founded in 1939 and is headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia. Today, it is one of the five largest Aerospace & Defense companies based on revenue. The firm acquired Orbital ATK in 2018 and divested the IT Services business in 2021. The defense giant now operates through four segments: Aeronautics Systems (31% of total revenue), Defense Systems (19% of total revenue), Mission Systems (30% of total revenue), and Space Systems (26% of total revenue). The majority of sales are to the U.S. military and other federal agencies, and 14% are to international customers. The firm designs, manufactures, sustains, upgrades, and sells advanced and often classified military equipment such as aircraft, missiles, solid rocket motors (“SRMs”), ammunition, satellites, UAVs, sensors, networks, and more. The company is known as a designer and manufacturer of the B-2 Spirit, B-21 Raider, MQ-4C Triton, RQ-4 Global Hawk, E-2D Hawkeye, E-8C Joint Stars, etc. Total revenue was $41,954 million in 2025 and $42,367 million in the last twelve months (“LTM”). The backlog at the end of the first quarter of ...
Viktor_Gladkov/iStock via Getty Images The iShares Core S&P U.S. Growth ETF ( IUSG ) is among growth ETFs offering targeted allocation to growth stocks. As is usually the case, the fund has a strong exposure to mega caps and technology companies, which also translates into above-average profitability measures. This is a characteristic of the fund that is amplified now compared to my previous artic...
Viktor_Gladkov/iStock via Getty Images The iShares Core S&P U.S. Growth ETF ( IUSG ) is among growth ETFs offering targeted allocation to growth stocks. As is usually the case, the fund has a strong exposure to mega caps and technology companies, which also translates into above-average profitability measures. This is a characteristic of the fund that is amplified now compared to my previous article covering the fund in early 2025. While earnings growth expectations in the overall market and particularly in big techs are likely to continue to support IUSG’s performance from here, its stock concentration profile and no significant advantage over growth peers suggest a more measured, though still overall optimistic view on the fund. With that in mind, the following sections will break down the fund’s core holdings and compare its sector allocation, valuation, and performance with the Russell 1000 and other growth ETFs. ETF Description & Highlights IUSG is designed to provide exposure to large- and mid-cap U.S. companies with above-average growth characteristics. The fund tracks the S&P 900 Growth Index, a subset of the S&P 900, which is the merger of the S&P 500 and S&P MidCap 400 indexes. From this initial universe, the index provider assigns three factors for each company, based on the following measures: 3-year sales growth, 3-year earnings growth relative to price, and 12-month price percentage change. These inputs are combined into a composite growth score that is used to select the index constituents and weight them in the index. The weighting process is subject to constraints that limit individual positions to roughly 23% of the index, while also restricting the aggregate weight of all holdings above 4.8% to no more than 50% of the index. In addition, through a quarterly rebalance structure, the methodology maintains the portfolio aligned with current market conditions and avoids excessive concentration in a few stocks. As of April 17, 2026, IUSG had $29.6 bill...
OBalazs/iStock via Getty Images I'm providing an update for my coverage on Amprius Technologies ( AMPX ). The company reported Q4 2025 results and had some additional developments since my last article . Amprius is achieving strong revenue growth along with margin expansion. The margin gains are driving the company towards profitability. While I love the growth that Amprius is achieving, I still h...
OBalazs/iStock via Getty Images I'm providing an update for my coverage on Amprius Technologies ( AMPX ). The company reported Q4 2025 results and had some additional developments since my last article . Amprius is achieving strong revenue growth along with margin expansion. The margin gains are driving the company towards profitability. While I love the growth that Amprius is achieving, I still have valuation concerns. The company background information can be read in my first Amprius article . AMPX's battery technology received the Best of Innovation award at CES for its silicon anode lithium-ion batteries. Amprius was chosen over thousands of entrants. The deciding factor came down to AMPX's batteries providing 520 watt-hours per kilogram. That is 2x the energy density of conventional graphite-based lithium-ion cells. This high-energy density enables the batteries to perform much better in their key applications. Growth Catalysts Amprius finished 2025 with strength as the company grew revenue by 137% to $25.2 million, beating estimates by $2.33 million in Q4. This helped drive the 3x gain in revenue to $73 million for the full year. These strong top-line results demonstrate the demand for AMPX's high-density silicon anode lithium-ion batteries. The company's batteries have 2x the energy density, range, and flight time as compared to conventional graphite-based battery cells. This advantage helps drive the demand for the use of AMPX's batteries for drone usage. Amprius has also been achieving strong margin increases . The gross margin increased from a negative (21%) in Q4 2024 up to a positive 23.7% in Q4 2025. The gross margin increased from a negative (76%) for the full year of 2024 up to a positive 11.3% in 2025. The operating margin is still negative. However, the margin improvements that Amprius is making are getting the company closer to profitability. The operating margin did improve from a negative (184%) in 2024 to a negative (33%) in 2025. Amprius may ge...
FinkAvenue/iStock Editorial via Getty Images With a market capitalization as of this writing of $573.3 billion, Visa ( V ) is more than a giant in the payment processing industry. It is one of the largest publicly traded companies on the planet. And yet, even though it commands a market-leading position and has done incredibly well as of late, its share price has lagged in the market. Since I last...
FinkAvenue/iStock Editorial via Getty Images With a market capitalization as of this writing of $573.3 billion, Visa ( V ) is more than a giant in the payment processing industry. It is one of the largest publicly traded companies on the planet. And yet, even though it commands a market-leading position and has done incredibly well as of late, its share price has lagged in the market. Since I last reaffirmed it as a ‘hold’ candidate back in January of this year, the stock has fallen 5.1%. This is at a time when the S&P 500 is pretty much flat. Although this is disappointing, it's not shocking to me. As I detailed in that article, even though it is valued at multiples that are consistent with other similar firms, it is absolutely expensive on an absolute basis. Not so expensive as to justify a bearish assessment. But expensive enough, even when factoring in its quality and market-leading position, to warrant more of a neutral stance than a bullish one. I hope that, eventually, the company will justify an upgrade. After all, I think it's a fascinating business that is doing an exceptional job. The good news is that there will be an opportunity for new data to paint a more bullish picture for the business when management announces financial results for the second quarter of the company's 2026 fiscal year. Those results should come out on April 28th. Leading up to that point, analysts believe that revenue and profitability will rise nicely. But unless something really amazing happens, I think that sticking with my neutral stance on it is justified for now. I’m Not Ready to Upgrade Visa Yet Author - SEC EDGAR Data As of this writing, the only new data that investors have regarding Visa since I last wrote about the company covers through the first quarter of its 2026 fiscal year . During that time, revenue amounted to $10.90 billion. That's up nicely from the $9.51 billion that the business reported a year earlier. Management mentioned that this rise in revenue was driven...