To The Moon

I have long been sceptical of banks declaring themselves ‘technology companies.’ Most still behave like utilities with better apps and bigger marketing budgets. $Capital One(COF)$, however, is quietly dismantling the universal banking playbook rather than polishing it. By owning the payments network, the software layer, and the balance sheet, Capital One is assembling a full-stack model that collapses boundaries most banks still treat as sacred. The result is a business that looks increasingly mislabelled — benchmarked as a bank, but behaving more like a platform with regulated funding. When payments, software, and banking stop pretending they’re separate The Tollbooth Heist Nobody Is Modelling Most coverage frames the Discover acquisition as a sca

Constellation Brands has chosen the least fashionable strategy in modern markets: deliberate contraction. In an era obsessed with growth-at-any-cost, STZ is doing the opposite — and quietly improving the equity in the process. Shrinking the structure to reveal what actually compounds When Less Starts Pulling Its Weight The consensus looks at Constellation’s mid-single-digit organic sales decline and reaches for familiar diagnoses: fading relevance, demographic decay, or strategic drift. I see something far more intentional. This isn’t erosion; it’s excision. $Constellation(STZ)$ is performing surgery on itself — and the patient is thriving on the operating table. The divestment of lower-margin wine and spirits assets, including SVEDKA and further w

Ciena Corp: Beyond the Silicon Peak — The Quiet Toll-Collector of the AI Efficiency Era AI investing still looks like a race up the silicon mountain. Faster GPUs, denser racks, louder narratives. $Ciena(CIEN)$ sits somewhere less glamorous but far more unavoidable: at the junction where power, distance and data collide. The market largely treats it as a beneficiary of AI growth. I see it as a physical bottleneck with pricing power. The arteries of AI, flowing unseen but indispensable This is not an AI hardware story in the conventional sense. It is an efficiency monopoly operating inside tightening constraints, and that distinction is being mispriced. When Saving Energy Spends More of It The dominant narrative around Ciena is simple: data volumes

When Running Out of Space Becomes Expensive For most of my investing life, hard drive makers lived in the bargain bin of technology. Demand surged, factories expanded, supply flooded the market, and margins collapsed. Investors learned not to get emotionally attached. Scarcity matters now in a way it never did before. Cloud consolidation means a handful of hyperscalers command enormous, predictable storage volumes, allowing them to pre-book multi-year capacity. Add AI workloads that generate massive cold data archives, and suddenly bulk storage demand is structurally sticky. Seagate now occupies the opposite end of the spectrum. Its manufacturing capacity is effectively committed through 2026, with hyperscale cloud operators already locking in supply. Instead of chasing unpredictable PC de

Most investors still talk about Broadcom as if it were simply another beneficiary of the AI boom, a sort of well-positioned tenant riding Nvidia’s coattails. I think that framing is not just lazy, it is structurally wrong. Broadcom is no longer competing for floorspace inside the AI data centre. It increasingly owns the land, writes the zoning laws, and collects rent whether the buildings are fashionable or not. That distinction matters enormously when valuations start to feel uncomfortable. Broadcom isn’t renting space — it’s writing the zoning laws What makes $Broadcom(AVGO)$ interesting in 2026 is not raw compute performance but architectural control. This is an infrastructure story masquerading as a chip story, and the market is only just begi

The Porphyry Pivot: How Aris Mining Is De-Risking Colombian Gold Through Industrial-Scale Underground Mining While analysts still tend to file Aris Mining under ‘high-risk Colombian juniors,’ the company is quietly doing something far less exciting—and far more valuable. It is building an underground gold operation designed to behave less like a prospecting venture and more like a factory. The market loves romance in mining. What it often struggles to price correctly is repeatability. That mismatch matters, because $Aris Mining(ARMN)$ no longer resembles the speculative profile it is routinely assigned. With a market capitalisation around US$4 billion, nearly US$770 million in trailing revenue, and operating margins above 40%, this is not a story

How Erie Indemnity quietly collects its cut while others wrestle the wreckage A Strange Beast in a Familiar Zoo Most insurance stocks behave exactly as you would expect. They obsess over weather maps, argue with regulators about rate filings, and spend earnings calls explaining why ‘this year was unusual’. Erie Indemnity does none of that, largely because it does not actually insure anyone. Erie sells tickets while others wrestle the storm That makes it a strange creature indeed. $Erie Indemnity(ERIE)$ lives inside the insurance ecosystem but outside its danger zone. It does not price risk, reserve for losses, or pay claims. Instead, it runs the machinery—distribution, systems, administration—for Erie Insurance Exchange and collects a management f

From Trainers to Operating Leverage: Why I Think On Holding Is Being Valued Like a Platform, Not a Brand $On Holding AG(ONON)$ rarely gets discussed in the same breath as software platforms, yet that is exactly how Wall Street is beginning to frame it. I find that intriguing, because on the surface this is still a Swiss sportswear company selling trainers, apparel and the occasional sharply priced jacket. Look closer, however, and the market’s enthusiasm starts to make sense—this isn’t fashion infatuation, it’s a numbers-driven bet on operating leverage. Not a shoe story—an operating system in premium apparel form The share price tells a familiar growth-stock story. After peaking above 64, the stock has pulled back into the mid-40s, leaving it dow

I am not revisiting $Lumen Technologies(LUMN)$ because I have suddenly developed a soft spot for telecom turnarounds. That story is well worn and usually ends with investors discovering that leverage and secular decline make poor travelling companions. What interests me in early 2026 is something far more specific and far less nostalgic. Lumen is quietly positioning itself as a control point in the physical flow of AI data, at precisely the moment when data movement is becoming as strategically sensitive as compute itself. This is not a comeback story. It is a bottleneck trade. Data flows everywhere—except where Lumen controls the route Control beats capacity The prevailing narrative around Lumen’s AI pivot focuses on selling fibre to hyperscalers

When Bitcoin Stops Behaving Like a Trade and Starts Acting Like Infrastructure This Is Not a Price Call, It’s a Plumbing Inspection Asking where Bitcoin trades next quarter is the wrong question—possibly even a boring one. The more relevant question is how it is now being used. BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF has quietly crossed a threshold from speculative access point to something closer to financial infrastructure. An asset once explained with memes is now explained with risk committees, which may be the clearest sign of maturation yet. Bitcoin’s wiring is now being installed into mainstream portfolios IBIT is no longer behaving like a vehicle for excitement. It is behaving like a component. Components are not bought for thrills; they are installed, monitored, and only discussed when they fail.