Making Cents Sense

Apple has accomplished something most companies can only fantasize about while their marketing departments rearrange adjectives in a PowerPoint presentation: it has convinced millions of people that purchasing its products is not merely a transaction but an expression of personal identity. People do not simply own an iPhone. They live inside an Apple ecosystem. They do not replace a laptop. They “upgrade their Mac.” They do not buy headphones. They purchase tiny white membership badges that occasionally fall between couch cushions and cost approximately the same as a respectable weekend vacation. That loyalty is why Apple deserves a premium valuation. It is also why investors can become dangerously comfortable paying almost any price for the stock. As of August 21, 2026, Apple shares trade near $311, giving the company a market capitalization of roughly $4.58 trillion. The stock changes hands at approximately 35.7 times trailing earnings, based on earnings per share of about $8.71. Tho...

When I look at Meta’s artificial-intelligence spending, I have two reactions. The first is admiration. Meta is one of the few companies on Earth with enough money, users, data, engineering talent and distribution to make a bet of this size without immediately requiring a rescue operation. If artificial intelligence becomes the foundation of the next computing era, Meta does not want to rent its future from somebody else. My second reaction is the financial equivalent of watching a neighbor begin construction on a private airport. I understand the ambition. I can even imagine why it might be useful. But I would still like to know how many planes are coming, when they are arriving and whether anyone has calculated the maintenance bill. Meta expects its 2026 capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, to fall between $130 billion and $145 billion. That is up dramatically from the $72.22 billion it spent in 2025. At the midpoint of the new range, Meta could spend ...

I have never stood in my kitchen, opened an empty refrigerator, and thought, “What this evening needs is a careful analysis of unit economics.” I have, however, ordered a pizza. That distinction explains a surprising amount about Domino’s. Domino’s Pizza is not selling culinary transcendence. Nobody opens the box and expects a tiny violinist to appear beside an artisanal basil leaf. The company sells something more dependable: familiarity, convenience, speed, and the comforting knowledge that dinner can arrive without anyone in the house demonstrating competence. That may sound simple, but simplicity at scale is a serious business advantage. Domino’s has built a global system of more than 22,500 stores across over 90 markets. Independent franchisees operate approximately 99% of those locations. During the twelve months ending June 14, 2026, the system generated more than $20.6 billion in global retail sales. Yet as of August 19, 2026, Domino’s stock traded around $336 per share, with a...

When I first started paying serious attention to Microsoft as an investment, I still thought of it as the company behind Windows, Word, Excel, and the little Teams notification sound that somehow creates anxiety before I have even read the message. That version of Microsoft still exists, of course. Windows remains deeply embedded in personal and corporate computing. Microsoft 365 remains one of the most powerful collections of productivity software ever assembled. Millions of employees continue to spend their days inside Outlook, Excel, Teams, PowerPoint, and Word, occasionally pretending they did not see the meeting invitation that arrived five minutes before lunch. But when I look at Microsoft as an investor today, I do not begin with Windows. I begin with Azure. Azure is Microsoft’s cloud-computing platform, but that definition does not fully convey what it has become. Calling Azure a cloud platform is a little like calling an airport a collection of runways. Technically correct, bu...