The Dow crossed 54,000. The smart money spent the day arguing.
Records with skepticism are healthier than records with euphoria — but neither changes the drill. Action: ride the winners the portfolio owns, keep the seatbelt on, and let the chip market’s priced-for-perfection tantrum happen to somebody else.
Aramco made $33 billion in a quarter. The war premium that built it is leaking.
Saudi Aramco earned a third more on $108 average oil even while shipping 2.7 million fewer barrels a day around a half-closed Hormuz. Now Iran and Oman are near a deal to reopen the strait — and crude has slid from the $80s to $75 on the hope. The war floor is becoming a war memory.
This is why the energy sleeve is insurance-sized, not conviction-sized: it already paid us through the closure. If Hormuz reopens, we keep the dividends and lose nothing we counted on. That’s what a hedge is for.
SpaceX filed its first quarterly report. The market took away 14%.
Revenue up 92% to $7.8 billion; Starlink doubled to 12 million subscribers; capex $18.4 billion in a single quarter, mostly AI data centers. Musk’s new target: $1 trillion in revenue by 2030, with data centers in orbit. The stock, still priced at 28 times sales, fell anyway.
Public markets are a truth serum — visions meet quarterly filings. We admire it from the sidelines: no position, and the lesson stands for everything we do own: capex promises are liabilities until they cash-flow.
Eli Lilly’s quarter was the drug industry’s Super Bowl.
Mounjaro up 91% to $9.9 billion, Zepbound up 46%, earnings of $8.38 against a $6.01 estimate — and a new CVS partnership putting transparent GLP-1 pricing and same-day pickup in the app. Novo, meanwhile, fell 6% on a pill shortfall. The GLP-1 era has a clear leader now.
The portfolio’s healthcare stance has been “adapt to the GLP-1 era, don’t chase the drugmakers” — LLY’s quarter is why the exception exists in the growth sleeve. REINFORCE at weight; the CVS tie-up widens the moat.
The dividend column every retiree should read twice.
Heard on the Street ran the numbers: the S&P High Dividend index returned 3.9% a year for a decade while the plain S&P returned 13.2%. Pfizer yields 6.9% — and spends nearly all its free cash flow paying it. A high yield is not income. A covered yield is income.
This is our house rule with a WSJ byline: the Midterm Dividend books hold payers with coverage, not payouts with hope. This week’s energy adds follow the same test — and PFE, which fails it, goes under formal review. Details in the report.
Texas just told the data centers to take a number.
Governor Abbott ordered an audit of every data-center grid connection request — no new approvals until it’s done. Vistra fell 8%, NRG 15%. Meanwhile Caterpillar posted its first $20 billion quarter ever, selling generators to the same data centers Texas just paused.
The AI build-out’s next constraint isn’t chips — it’s electrons and permits. CAT REINFORCE (it sells the workaround); the merchant power names go on WATCH until the political weather clears.
She is 97. A year ago she had a stroke. On Tuesday she stood on the wing of a biplane.
Betty Bromage of Cheltenham became the oldest female wing-walker in history — her sixth walk since taking up the hobby at 87. Her secret, apparently: keep booking the next one. There is no financial angle here. We just think you should know about Betty.
Fine, one angle: longevity is the planning problem and the point. The plan has to fund the version of you that takes up wing-walking at 87 — because apparently that version exists.
The shopping app that works like a slot machine, because it is one.
One accountant spent $1.36 million on Whatnot’s live auctions — savings, a corporate card, his marriage. Another drained a 401(k) and maxed 13 credit cards. A consumer complaint says the app’s randomized “breaks” are unlicensed lotteries. The countdown timer is the product.
Gambling mechanics are migrating into shopping, brokerage and everything else with a buy button. The defense is boring on purpose: automatic investing, a bill ladder, and no financial decisions after 10 p.m.
Basic economy got basic-er. Read the fine print before you click.
Airlines quietly tightened the cheap seats: JetBlue’s change fee is now $150, Alaska’s Saver fares earn no miles, Southwest credits die in six months, and American gives no credit at all unless you booked direct. The $40 you saved has never been easier to give back.
Retirement travel runs on these tickets, so the rule of thumb: price the flexible fare first, and treat any credit like milk — it expires. The cheap seat is only cheap if your plans are bulletproof.
The HOA can foreclose on your paid-off house. Filings just jumped 40%.
Homeowners-association foreclosure filings hit 6,376 in the first quarter — up 40% in two years, rising faster than mortgage foreclosures — as HOA insurance costs nearly doubled and special assessments spread. In roughly 20 states their liens can jump the line. Even Floyd Mayweather got a notice.
For fixed-income homeowners this is the stealth housing cost of the decade. Planning move: put the HOA budget and reserve study in the annual review next to the property-tax bill — and never let a small dues dispute compound.
Talking to strangers is the cheapest health intervention you’re not doing.
A kindness researcher’s finding: small talk with weak ties measurably boosts mood and health — and Americans now speak 338 fewer words a day than in 2005. One New Yorker’s answer: folding chairs on the sidewalk and a sign that says talk to me. People line up.
Loneliness compounds like a debt — the surgeon general prices it at 15 cigarettes a day. In retirement the paycheck isn’t the only thing that stops arriving; so does the office small talk. Schedule the replacement on purpose.
The socialists won Michigan. The money says November is wide open.
Abdul El-Sayed took the Michigan Senate primary by a point despite $32 million against him — the progressive wave reached the heartland. Karl Rove’s ledger: Democratic Senate candidates out-raising Republicans $290 to $197 million, while Trump-controlled super PACs sit on $461 million. Ninety days out, both parties are running on one issue: prices.
The portfolios don’t pick parties; they price scenarios. Five roads to November, and this week strengthened the volatile ones — which is exactly what the Midterm Dividend series, now with its energy sleeve, is built for.