What’s moving in the markets
In 2026, should you invest… or simply follow the crowd?
Everyone's Getting Rich. Should You Change Your Strategy?
It's easy to get swept up in greed and FOMO (fear of missing out), especially when a record number of stocks are sitting at all-time highs. Every day we're seeing moves of +10% to +30% in companies already worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And if you spend any time on Reddit, X, YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, you'll see people hitting major financial milestones daily: portfolios that doubled in months, "I told you so" screenshots of old trade calls, and an endless stream of victory laps.
All of that can breed feelings of inadequacy. It can make you question your strategy, make you want to jump ship toward something with faster returns. Maybe it's time to buy semiconductors. Maybe software is finally waking up and it's time to rotate in. The logic tends to follow the same pattern: what's running now, and where will the money flow next? In other words: chasing trends, timing the market.
As tempting as that is, these are exactly the moments to stop, recenter, and come back to a few basic truths:
Timing the market is not a winning strategy, unless you have an edge. The short-term is a brutally competitive time horizon. The most proven, repeatable path to market-beating returns is simpler: buy quality businesses with moats, strong profitability, and low risk, at a reasonable multiple. That's it.
Focus on the downside, and on survivability. Staying in the game long enough is how you actually win. You will miss good trades, that’s a guarantee. If your process is sound, you'll also miss plenty of bad ones. A stock going up after you passed on it doesn't mean you made a mistake.
Minimising trading activity (and the tax drag that comes with it) is probably the single most reliable way to improve your returns.
The (software) empire strikes back
AI was supposed to kill software. It might be feeding it instead.
Last week, Salesforce reported earnings that, on the surface, weren't bad. Revenue grew 13%, and the company is turbocharging its $25 billion share buyback program by taking on debt, buying back 10% of the entire company over the past year alone. This is exactly what you want to see when a stock looks cheap, and it's probably one of the best ways Salesforce can drive future shareholder returns.
Yet the market wasn't satisfied. The company's backlog (a closely watched indicator of future demand) grew less than expected, and guidance disappointed, pointing to only around 6% growth when you strip out a recent large acquisition. Salesforce had a chance to put the sector's fears to rest. Instead, it left them simmering.
Those fears stem from a creeping anxiety that has stalked the software industry through much of 2025 and into 2026: that AI isn't just a new product category, but an existential threat to the traditional software business model. Why pay for expensive SaaS subscriptions, the argument goes, when AI agents can do the same work for a fraction of the cost?
The answer, surprisingly, came from two other companies also reporting last week. Snowflake and Datadog both provide software that sits on top of their enterprise clients' data; helping store, organise, and monitor it in ways that allow companies to actually use it for AI.
Snowflake is seeing an explosion in AI-data workloads
Both just reported blowout numbers. Snowflake surged 36% in a single session after revealing that AI-active accounts on its platform exploded from 9,100 to 13,600 in just one quarter. Datadog told a similar story: quarterly revenue crossed $1 billion for the first time, growing 32% year-over-year and actually accelerating versus prior quarters. The message from both management teams was the same: AI isn't replacing their platforms. It's flooding them with new workloads.
Every AI model that gets trained, every agent that gets deployed, every inference query that gets run… it all generates data that needs to be stored, processed, and monitored. Far from cannibalising the software stack, AI is multiplying the demand for it.
Whether this marks an inflection point or simply a reprieve for a sector that has been under pressure for over a year remains to be seen. But for the first time in a while, software bulls finally had something concrete to point to.
Other Updates
Ratings
Compagnie Financière Richemont (SWX:CFR) got a rating downgrade
“Richemont’s jewellery success is a matter of brand strength, but also a case of being in the right place at the right time. As consumers have pivoted away from “soft” luxury like handbags toward tangible, investment-like assets crafted from precious metals and rare gemstones, fine and high jewellery has emerged as the industry’s most coveted growth category. That tailwind, however, is now attracting serious competition. Couture giants like Chanel and Dior have doubled down on their fine jewellery divisions, while houses like Gucci, Prada, and Armani have recently launched dedicated high jewellery collections.”
Click here to view the full update.
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