SURVIVAL INSTINCTS ARE OVERRATED

(NVDA), (AMD), (GOOGL), (MSFT), (AMZN), (META), (ORCL), (SNOW), (PLTR), (CRWD), (NOW), (ADBE), (INTU), (CRM)

Did you know the human brain reacts more intensely to bad news than good news? Wonderful for dodging lions on the savanna, disastrous for judging a routine 4% market wobble. 

November offered a perfect demonstration: a few spicy headlines about AI exhaustion and Fed grumbling, and suddenly half of Wall Street was reenacting a fire drill. 

Meanwhile, those of us who rely less on adrenaline and more on earnings trajectories quietly scooped up shares from the folks sprinting for the exits. If evolution handled portfolio management, every caveman would’ve retired early.

The comedy of it all is that the numbers behaved like nothing happened. 

Short volumes spiked and fear gauges lit up like Vegas, yet fundamentals stayed put. The market actually became undervalued. Actually, Morningstar had it 3% cheap by early December and almost 7% off during peak drama. 

It was the financial equivalent of watching someone abandon a perfectly good cheeseburger because the bun looked worried.

If you’ve survived as many cycles as I have, you start to see patterns. Corrections like this are pop quizzes. They check whether you can still think straight when everyone else is shouting “bear market” into their coffee. 

And right on cue, S&P risk models drifted back toward low-risk zones like a student turning in a neat exam after the classroom meltdown.

Recession fears? Mild. Layoffs? Still low. Consumers? Morose but spending anyway, which is my favorite American paradox. 

And the market had already priced in an 87% chance of a December rate cut. The only people panicking were the ones who panic professionally.

Which brings us to rotation, aka the investor’s version of rearranging furniture when the house isn’t dirty. 

Yes, some pointed to energy, but crude prices are still being sat on by a supply glut that refuses to budge. Communications and real estate? CapEx-heavy and rate-sensitive – basically cats in a bathtub whenever the Fed makes a noise.

And AI, the actual engine of this market, kept moving. 

Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD (AMD) paused for breath, but that’s just intermission. 

Alphabet (GOOGL) is stuffing Gemini into every nook of productivity, Microsoft (MSFT) is sprinkling AI across Office like parmesan, and Amazon (AMZN) is turning Bedrock into the Costco of corporate AI. 

Meta (META) is training frontier models at a pace that would embarrass most AI startups. 

Oracle (ORCL) decided to reinvent itself as an AI cloud heavyweight. 

Snowflake (SNOW) is turning enterprise data into an AI vending machine. 

Palantir (PLTR) is finally getting paid for being weird and brilliant for 20 years, and CrowdStrike (CRWD) is proving that AI-powered cybersecurity isn’t just a PowerPoint fantasy.

But the real opportunity is in software. Boring, wonderfully reliable software. 

While semiconductors took the spotlight for two years, enterprise software has been treated like it forgot to RSVP to the AI party. The IGV/SMH ratio is so oversold it should come with a sympathy card. 

Inside that group – Microsoft (MSFT), ServiceNow (NOW), Salesforce (CRM), Adobe (ADBE), Intuit (INTU) – you have companies positioned to monetize AI not through dramatic reinventions but through something better: invoice line items.

And for anyone predicting an overnight takeover by “agentic AI,” I invite them to sit in on a Fortune 500 software integration meeting. Changing enterprise systems is slower than Congress during an election year. 

Atlassian’s CEO put it neatly: AI isn’t magic. It’s a back-and-forth between human and machine. In that environment, incumbents don’t get replaced; they get more indispensable.

Looking ahead, the second act of this bull market has more support than a Kennedy at a Boston fundraiser. 

Earnings expectations continue climbing toward $306 for 2026. Capital flows are strong. AI adoption is shifting from “maybe we should try this” to “please install this by Friday.” 

And the beneficiaries span the alphabet: NVDA, AMD, MSFT, AMZN, GOOGL, META, ORCL, CRM, NOW, ADBE, INTU, SNOW, PLTR, CRWD.

So treat this November dip as a calibration. A market stretching its legs while investors with steady pulses accumulated positions at prices we may not see again anytime soon.

And remember: if our ancestors overreacted to shadows and lived, that’s wonderful for human history. 

But in the stock market, reacting to shadows is exactly how your portfolio starts looking like it belongs in the Stone Age.