Making Cents Sense

Meta Platforms is one of those companies that makes investors sound slightly unwell. The bulls describe it as the greatest advertising machine ever assembled, now being upgraded with artificial intelligence and plugged into nearly half the planet. The bears describe it as a social-media empire pouring an industrial quantity of cash into data centers, virtual reality, superintelligence, smart glasses, and whatever Mark Zuckerberg becomes interested in after breakfast. The annoying part is that both sides are right. As of August 7, 2026, Meta shares traded around $592, giving the company a market value of roughly $1.52 trillion and a trailing price-to-earnings ratio near 22.3. That is not a bargain-bin valuation, but it is also not the kind of multiple normally attached to a company growing quarterly revenue by 28%. Meta sits in an uncomfortable middle: too expensive to call obviously cheap, too profitable to dismiss as hype, and too ambitious to value with a calm little spreadsheet that...

A few years ago, it felt like everyone had written Meta off. The headlines were brutal. Investors questioned the company's spending on the metaverse, critics declared Facebook was becoming irrelevant, and the stock became the poster child for what happens when Wall Street loses confidence in a tech giant. If you listened to the loudest voices at the time, Meta was supposedly destined for a long, painful decline. Fast forward to today, and the conversation couldn't be more different. The stock has staged one of the most impressive recoveries in recent market history. Revenue growth has accelerated, profits have expanded, artificial intelligence has become a major catalyst, and investors who held through the storm—or had the courage to buy when sentiment was awful—have been rewarded handsomely. Now comes the question I'm hearing more than almost any other: Is Meta still a buy after its massive comeback, or has the easy money already been made? Looking Beyond the Headlines One...

There are very few companies that can spend tens of billions of dollars on artificial intelligence, unsettle investors for a quarter or two, and then casually remind everyone that they're still printing mountains of cash. Meta has become one of those rare businesses. Every earnings report seems to follow the same emotional cycle. Investors panic over soaring capital expenditures, analysts debate whether Mark Zuckerberg has finally gone too far, and then another quarter arrives showing advertising revenue climbing, margins remaining surprisingly healthy, and billions more flowing onto the balance sheet. I've learned not to underestimate businesses that dominate their core market while simultaneously investing heavily in the next one. Meta isn't simply running Facebook anymore. It's operating one of the largest digital advertising platforms on Earth while trying to become a leader in artificial intelligence, messaging, creator tools, wearables, and whatever comes after th...

Every few years, Wall Street finds a new obsession. First it was the internet. Then smartphones. Then cloud computing. Now it's artificial intelligence. The difference this time is that Microsoft somehow managed to have a front-row seat for every one of those revolutions. Just when investors begin wondering whether the company has become too large to grow, it quietly discovers another trillion-dollar opportunity. That's a remarkable habit, and one that deserves a closer look before deciding whether Microsoft still belongs in a long-term portfolio. Whenever I evaluate Microsoft, I try to ignore the daily headlines and focus on the bigger picture. The stock has become one of the market's favorite AI investments, which is both exciting and dangerous. Exciting because Microsoft isn't simply talking about artificial intelligence—it has embedded AI into nearly every major business it owns. Dangerous because expectations have become incredibly high. When investors expect perfe...