There are stocks I buy because I believe the market is underestimating their growth. There are stocks I buy because the underlying assets appear to be worth more than the market price. Then there are stocks like Walmart, where I find myself staring at the valuation and asking a slightly different question: How much am I willing to pay to avoid unpleasant surprises? Walmart is not an obscure turnaround story hiding beneath a mountain of debt. It is not a speculative technology company promising to revolutionize commerce once it figures out how to generate a profit. It is one of the largest, most recognizable, and most durable retailers on the planet. Approximately 280 million customers and members visit Walmart’s stores and e-commerce platforms each week. The company operates more than 10,900 stores across 19 countries and generated roughly $713 billion in revenue during fiscal 2026. Walmart is not merely a retailer at this point. It is economic infrastructure with shopping carts. That ...
I have owned, watched and analyzed enough technology stocks to recognize the familiar stages of an artificial intelligence investment story. First comes amazement. Then comes excitement. Next comes a corporate presentation containing the word “AI” so many times that I begin to wonder whether the accounting department has been replaced by a chatbot. Finally, investors ask the only question that matters: Where is the money? Amazon is moving beyond the presentation stage. AWS is not merely experimenting with artificial intelligence or adding a cheerful assistant to an existing product. Amazon is spending extraordinary amounts of money to build the infrastructure, chips, models and software that it believes will power the next generation of computing. The scale is breathtaking. It is also mildly terrifying. Amazon expects to invest approximately $200 billion in capital expenditures during 2026. That is not a typo caused by an analyst falling asleep on the zero key. The company is spending ...