earnings Tuesday AC 

at 190x forward PE and 22x forward sales, you'd be a brave speculator to take a flier on it for longer than a day trade 

OTOH, at those multiples I guess the market doesn't care about the valuation of security names now anyway 

They produced a loss for the first time in their device (handset) division, due to higher DRAM + storage prices, which are an input for that segment, and declining sales.  But the memory division produced a greater profit than any other tech company.  

And here is a key statement from what they said: 

"Considering the long lead time of more than three and a half years from building a new fab to producing wafers, expanding supply through  capacity additions will inevitably take a considerable amount of time,"  Samsung Electronics said. "It will be difficult to expect a significant  increase in supply until 2028." The company added, "The supply shortage  is expected to intensify next year compared to this year and continue  into 2028."  

People write about the size of margin debt in absolute terms, and some compare it to GDP, but the correct denominator IMO is market cap.  I don't have the numbers in front of me, but compared to market cap it is not that crazy.  Even when one adds in the debt of leveraged ETFs, which are actually not that large compared with the overall equity market, it's high but not off the charts.  

As regards a CAPE of 40+, which is indeed very expensive, I have been concerned about that for a while, to my detriment.  But there is no hard limit at the previous high of 44.  Remember Japan went to a CAPE of 100.  They had a simultaneous property + equity bubble, and I would not wish that on anyone.  And that is why it took decades to work off, instead of only one decade, like the dot com bubble took the US to digest.  

Nothing major - just the Government of Japan going bankrupt.  
250% debt to gdp - who'd a thunk it could be a problem?  

LOL that is not even a stretch, the consensus 2027E is ~$99, putting MU on a PE of what, 6.5x.  

OTOH, Hynix over in Korea, the leader in HBM, is at ~4x 2027E.  

They are considering doing a US ADR.  If so, it will of course be marketed against MU, and some money will move over to Hynix.  

It is a boom-bust industry, and one needs to keep an eye on capex.  Most of the capex in the industry this year is on technology upgrades, resulting in modest output growth.  Recent step-ups in capex will boost wafer output, likely to hit late in 2027 or in 1H2028.  Usually the new capacity hits as demand is cooling down, giving you the torpedo.  

That is indeed a great chart.  

However, it is trying to be a bit too exact, claiming a duration of 15 years every time.  For example, the cycle which ended (actually in 2011) didn't start in 1993 in my opinion.  The Asian Financial Crisis bottomed in 1997, and then the Russian default was in 1998, those were deeper bottoms than 1993.  The real upside driver of that cycle was the reconstruction of China, and that kicked off in earnest when China was allowed to join the WTO, which was after 2000.  That upcycle was interrupted by the US financial crisis, which some Americans prefer to label as the Global Financial Crisis.  However, China actually stepped on the gas pedal very hard at that time, and so there was a final rebound to 2011, when it was really over.  

I lived [and invested] through that period, saw it first hand every day.  So I wouldn't say it is as precisely rhythmic as illustrated here, but the basic idea certainly holds.  

I also prefer not to encounter that type of language in content that I am also paying for -- and I appreciate that you normally do not use it.   

I have not listened to the odd lots pod about this yet, though there was an article on the subject here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/business/helium-chips-iran-war.html

If extended, it will be a problem.  However, with respect to semi mfg, note the last two paragraphs: 

"When helium is scarce, it goes to whoever can pay the most. In past shortages, chip makers, with their deep pockets, have outbid the competition, leaving other sectors dependent on helium like pharmaceuticals and medical imaging short of supply.

“The semiconductor industry will pay whatever they need to pay to get that helium,” Mr. Brook said. Since the cost of shutting down a chip factory would be enormous, “they’ll outbid anybody,” he said."  

The question does not make sense for the present situation.  

The current Supreme Leader of Iran, Mojtaba Khamenei, is not an Ayatollah, but rather he is a Hojjatoleslam (a mid-ranking cleric without the title of Ayatollah).  

So one could ask whether it will be TACO or WHCO (or perhaps WSLCO)?  

But likely a more relevant question for markets is: when will there will be a CO?  

It's not something that I follow regularly, but AFAIK silver, and to a lesser extent gold, has been trading at a premium in Shanghai already for a while.  

Inverse CPCE closed above BB two days ago => would imply a correction coming if it triggers below that candle 

https://stockcharts.com/sc3/ui/?s=%24SPX&id=p64260396815&p=D&st=2025-02-12&a=2011237976&listNum=27

> Do you also have a calculation for ORCL ? 

For ORCL, the historical numbers might not tell you very much, because they are planning to significantly ramp up both capex and borrowing over the coming years.  So the concern is about the [economics of the business in the] future.  

Let's look at the street's forecasts for FY2028.  ORCL has a May year end, so that would be 2027 for some people.  The average forecast for net debt and EBITDA gives us a net debt:EBITDA of about 2.4x.  At first glance it could be manageable, putting aside for a moment the motivations of sell-side analysts, which, let's say tends to influence their estimates.   

But one wants to consider, among other factors, what kind of assets are on the B/S, and their ability to generate cash flow.   In this case, they are data centers filled with GPUs.  What is the productive life of a GPU?  Well, I think that it was earlier this year that during an Nvidia AI conference, Jensen quipped that with the launch of the  newer and more powerful Blackwell GPUs, “when Blackwell starts shipping  in volume, you couldn't give Hoppers away,” suggesting jokingly that the older Hopper GPUs might have so little value they'd be difficult to  dispose of even for free.  (I saw that as a very rare foot-in-the-mouth moment for Jensen.)  Perhaps they could be used for inference, but I would guess that not many hyperscalers would still use them for training.  That would imply that their ability to generate cash flow could be significantly impaired.  And that is over just 2 years.  

OTOH also relevant for consideration is that most hyperscalers still have a depreciation period for their servers of 5-6 years.   Although if their auditors are listening to Jensen perhaps that will have to change.  

> How does AAPL have that much debt?  

It doesn't.  

When a company buys back and cancels shares, it reduces common equity.  That can make debt:equity look large, because the equity left on the B/S is small.   

A better metric of a company's ability to carry debt is net debt: EBITDA.  Net debt nets out the cash on the B/S with the debt, and then compares it with a measure of gross margin.   On average, one wants net debt:EBITDA to be less than approximately 3x.  A safe level varies according to things like the cyclicality of the specific company, the strength of supporting measures etc.  

In FY2024, apple had net debt of  $50 bn, and EBITDA of $ 135 bn.  So net debt:EBITDA of 0.37.  Nothing to be concerned about.  

There are even some companies with negative common equity.  For example, some consumer companies like Philip Morris.  It generates lots of cash flow and has bought back so many shares over the years that it's common equity is negative.  So it's debt:equity would be infinite.  Is this a red flag?  Not in my book!  

$NOW looks like it is coming to the pointy end of a 2025 flag, more obvious on the weekly 

est 2026 P/E is 80x, yet average target is +26%  

Which way will it go?  

Robert Prechter: History and Outlook for Gold | Cycles TV Oct. 21 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKa3dn2T3Mo

(1 hour) 

Love him, hate him, or somewhere inbetween, it can be useful to be aware of someone else's long term context 

Hi Matt:

Glad that you are feeling better.  
Something here for a Friday afternoon.  
There has been increased attention on the small caps these days as they have been outperforming.  The best small/mid cap ETF that I know of for the LT is:
XMMO
the midcap momentum ETF.  Since launch in 2005, it has approximately tripled the return of IWM.  Interestingly, it has also significantly outrun the SPY.  
It has also bested both over the past 10 years.  How many US equity ETFs with no MAGS exposure have done that?  I guess it's a short list.  
As it holds momentum names, it tends to trend, playing into the hands of the KISS system.  So perhaps it is worth setting up a KISS [high-frequency] system for this little gem?  
Something to help keep you from getting bored over the weekend!  
In the last 3 mo as small caps have come into favour, XMMO has trailed IWM, but then again in this environment the microcaps (IWC) did even better.