MONITOR GROWTH

“They're recovering from the trauma that they experienced living in captivity. And for them to open up and trust you while you are there with them, helping them work through it, it's indescribable.”

“The dominant political story of the year has been the 270-day-long speakership of Representative Kevin McCarthy, whose slim majority in the House of Representatives has enabled a far-right rebellion to exert more weight over the lower chamber. The battle between the rebellious Freedom Caucus and McCarthy has been at the heart of an averted debt ceiling crisis and the annual budget debate nearly devolving into a government shutdown.”

“2023 also saw the roots of a global banking crisis arise out of four American regional banks, the two largest being Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank. 2021's inflation surge moderated in 2023, while the Federal Reserve continued to raise its interest rates in the first half of the year.”

“The rise of artificial intelligence and large language models dominated not only the economy but has also been at the root of a Hollywood double strike conducted by Writers Guild of America and a SAG APTRA strike. These were part of a larger phenomenon of labor strikes across the country, in which such large diverse groups, such as Teamsters and Auto Workers won new contracts.”

“Additionally, the latter half of the year saw many large mergers and acquisitions, some of the largest announcements being in oil and gas with ExxonMobil's purchase of Pioneer Natural Resources for nearly $60 billion and Chevron's acquisition of Hess Corporation for $50 billion, both in October and pending regulatory approval prior to closure.”

“They're recovering from the trauma that they experienced living in captivity. And for them to open up and trust you while you are there with them, helping them work through it, it's indescribable.”

“The dominant political story of the year has been the 270-day-long speakership of Representative Kevin McCarthy, whose slim majority in the House of Representatives has enabled a far-right rebellion to exert more weight over the lower chamber. The battle between the rebellious Freedom Caucus and McCarthy has been at the heart of an averted debt ceiling crisis and the annual budget debate nearly devolving into a government shutdown.”

“2023 also saw the roots of a global banking crisis arise out of four American regional banks, the two largest being Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank. 2021's inflation surge moderated in 2023, while the Federal Reserve continued to raise its interest rates in the first half of the year.”

“The rise of artificial intelligence and large language models dominated not only the economy but has also been at the root of a Hollywood double strike conducted by Writers Guild of America and a SAG APTRA strike. These were part of a larger phenomenon of labor strikes across the country, in which such large diverse groups, such as Teamsters and Auto Workers won new contracts.”

“Additionally, the latter half of the year saw many large mergers and acquisitions, some of the largest announcements being in oil and gas with ExxonMobil's purchase of Pioneer Natural Resources for nearly $60 billion and Chevron's acquisition of Hess Corporation for $50 billion, both in October and pending regulatory approval prior to closure.”

“The language we had been talking, we've been using over the last couple of years with Cloudflare, and with a number of enterprise software type companies, the elongated sales cycle, sort of the trepidation of their customers to commit to spending, those days seemed to be well past us. It was another very solid report. They grew revenue 34% for the quarter, well exceeding their own guidance, guiding for another tremendous year, 28% revenue growth.”

“Increasingly, when I look at Airbnb, I see Marriott. I see a mature lodging business, asset light, that can outperform but is not going to be a high-growth stock. I've kind of given up on experiences as kind of a new rocket ship. I think now we're just kind of waking up to this is more of a lodging company than it is a tech company, maybe?”

“I think one of the question marks I have with Shopify, it's not really specific to their business, but we just hear more and more talk about this agentic commerce, right? And exactly what that means. And so I think we're going to see how that opportunity and agentic commerce shapes up over the coming quarters and years. They certainly discussed their AI investments on the call. They're very excited with the opportunities, the efficiencies, helping their merchants run better businesses.”

“They're only guiding for minimal revenue growth in 2026, under 5%, no margin expansion. This, they say, is temporary. They're doing model changeovers, but look, the Ferrari model is you got a huge waiting list. Just sell the cars, just jack up prices. I don't get why it's working. I think I still like this company, but it's still trading at more than 30 times expected earnings.”

“I saw operating margin for the quarter 15.5%. That's versus 11.2% a year ago. And so I think we had some questions really early on in the Spotify story as to exactly how quickly they could get to profitability and how profitable the company could be given the nature of the relationships with publishers and just the music business in general. You know, Travis, I just realized they passed a $2 price increase on the family plan... I'm happily, happily paying.”