#investors

Looks like Humana executives are at it again with their artificially inflating the stock market with their stock buybacks.

I wonder if actual investors are that easily fooled with this utter nonsense. Seems like you would have to be rather naive if you didn’t first research what was presented in yesterday’s Q2 Earnings call in regards to the announced exiting of many Medicare plans, which will effect some 600k members and only 40% of them possibly might get recouped under other larger plans. Doesn’t give me a lot of confidence.

INVESTORS DUMP YOUR STOCK BUD. YOU NEED A NEW APPROACH.

Hearing that our ELT had just returned from time away in Aspen together.

While we never see them here in Houston and never take meetings off the executive-only floors, they apparently need fresh mountain air to recover from the rigors of their hectic schedules entertaining on the private island, flying $60MM private jets to New York to speak to investors, and host happy hours with VIPs on the 14th floor.

AI is overhyped and I think investors are starting to catch on. I have yet to hear how the AI companies, (ChatGPT, Claude...etc....) are going to make back the money money being spent on datacenters,(100s of billion$). As far as I can tell there really doesn't seem to be a big demand since both Meta and Google are selling their comute to the AI firms rather than using it for their own needs. Also, there is now a race to the bottom on token pricing further exacerbating the issue of profits. I don't see the profits meeting the expenses or even coming close. So, How does this effect Corporate America's embrace of the tech?

1. Continued market share losses across beverages and snacks, last four weeks, last 12 weeks, last 52 weeks, last 5 years
2. GLP-1 adoption accelerating in US, rest of the world is just getting started.
3. A disappointing M&A track record that generates negative shareholder value
4. Executive Leadership that you wouldn’t trust to look after your dog and even worse bench of leaders

You can solve the first three but you can’t solve the fourth one. Investors also have just given up.

Performance gap is widening.

Investors don’t see value in the integrated strategy; reason: there is not an investor base for such a company. You have the majors and then focused companies in refining and midstream. No one buys PSX unless they have to. If you want Refining exposure you buy VLO or even PBF; midstream, you buy EPC or TRGP. We are ruled by index buyers.

We will never outperform the sum of the parts.

Nike will report its full fiscal year earnings today. Analysts predict a two percent revenue decline and a 21 percent operating income drop. CEO Elliott Hill faces mounting pressure due to continuous negative sales growth. Nike's stock has fallen 34 percent this year, reaching an 11-year low. Investors are impatient despite Hill's long-term turnaround strategy.

https://sportsverse.substack.com/p/a-fateful-day-ahead-for-nike-ceo

The writing is in permanent ink!

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/22/target-brian-cornell-shareholder-support.html

Q2 is looking good, lots of dead wood out of the door, strategic review going well, new positive investor from Czech Republic, things are looking good……..

You know if you don’t like the way things are going, you can vote for/against trustees. We are all investors through the 401k and the proxy stuff just was emailed out.

As the following article concludes, Oracle has debt obligations around a quarter of a billion dollars.

What is the interest on that amount?
Does everything have to happen perfectly for 15 years to pay that off?
What is plan B?

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/oracle-debt-fever-only-prescription-140741343.html

Is the break up the end of dividends?
I am expecting a pretty brutal rebalance as we exit the Dow and fixed income funds dump the stock.

Maybe we have been too hard on Dan. He has been walking a tightrope since he entered the role. Verizon is struggling as a company, and you can’t expect leadership to be fully transparent because that could create panic and trigger a stock selloff. That’s bad for everyone, especially when you are carrying around $175 billion in debt and backed heavily by institutional investors.

A lot of those institutional investors are tied to retirement accounts, pensions, city employees, and everyday people. A company like Verizon stumbling would not just affect telecom, it could shake confidence across the market. Imagine a major telecom provider, something most people view as a basic utility at this point, struggling to sustain itself. Rational people would immediately start asking what other companies are being held together by perception instead of fundamentals.

I genuinely feel for the employees and managers carrying the pressure right now, but some of what we are seeing may be the result of years of bad positioning, losing market share, and delayed course correction. None of this happens overnight.

M@rk, Kev, and Sean,

You can go to all the conferences and spin the story how you want, but it is not working. Results speak louder than spin. Investors are not buying it.

As a Xerox investor, I’ve realized some concerning challenges ahead for the company and it’s not on the balance sheet.

It feels like the team is focusing on disagreements instead of the big picture, and these conversations remind me a bit of middle school chats—definitely room to grow.

Investors bid the stock up on short‑term good news (earnings, investor stake, dividend), but the Q1 beat could be misleading because it’s pro‑forma and boosted by Lexmark purchase‑accounting adjustments rather than pure organic profit or cash‑flow improvement.

Great job Chris and team. Still poor fundamentals but have to celebrate the good moves too! In at 98.

bp’s leadership and culture is broken. As an employee, I have lost all trust and faith in our c-suite and board of directors. Just imagine how all this looks to institutional investors. At some point they’re going to take their money and invest it with a company that shows it is stable and trustworthy. We are just too much of a risk right now. It feels like we’re living in a reality tv show - the Real Executives of Big Oil. Fire them all and start from scratch. Or just sell the company off.

The 1 year return for IBM is negative 13.58% while the SP500 is positive 25%
Is this a joke ?

https://share.google/w30SB41dKhLl0gABa

What a shame - this leadership team led by Mike is not getting it done for us investors.

Alot of major investors are buying up Fiserv stock. Blackrock just increased their holding position.

Any chance the last two CEO’s were planted by the investors? They both run this company like they want to bleed it out and then sell it to someone who may have pushed for them to get to the top.

LOL Larry is cooked: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/oracle-investors-know-openais-struggles-190500503.html

"Teradata struggled to consistently generate demand over the last five years as its sales dropped at a 2.3% annual rate. This was below our standards and is a sign of poor business quality."

https://www.financialcontent.com/article/stockstory-2026-5-5-teradata-nysetdc-posts-better-than-expected-sales-in-q1-cy2026

to put out a statement that either confirms or denies this event if it is indeed true or just rumors.
It’s bad business keeping it out there it can shake investors too hearing about this. Everyone wants stability. Needs stability so transparency is paramount.

They’ve now published 2 customer PRs this week, must be desperate to have something positive to talk about on the call. If they think Gyro hut is going to move the needle with investors, things must be even worse than they appear.

Obviously, I am not asking for binding financial advice, just curious, do you guys think there will be any stock market movement on this big Investor Day and if so, do we think it'll be up or down? Earnings calls are already regularly terrible and I'm not sure what an "investor day" would do differently since people already see through the smoke and mirrors of those.

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/04/30/3285301/0/en/trian-calls-on-solventum-s-board-to-create-value-publishes-open-letter-and-slide-deck.html

Humana probably should do their very best to artificially raise their stock today (e.g., buybacks, corporate partnership temporary buys, etc.) before the Q1 Earnings Report comes out tomorrow; before the big flop in stock price, once investors see Humana’s true financial state. Womp womp! :(

He better beat the expectations on Monday morning, otherwise stock is going back to under 40.

Nike's profit will skyrocket, Guaranteed! Replace all decision makers with a chatbot. No more consultants or consulting companies. Distribute profits to workers and investors.

SAP is in freefall because investors are reacting to weaker-than-expected cloud backlog growth and a softer 2026 cloud outlook, which raised fears that near-term growth is slowing. The selloff was also amplified by analyst downgrades/target cuts after SAP’s recent results. Is this doomsday for SAP?

Down 5% today. Looks like the bounce is over

VOO is up 70% at the same time. No pressure Cigna leadership, take your time.

Source: Google Finance.

https://www.marketbeat.com/instant-alerts/optimum-communications-inc-nyseoptu-given-consensus-rating-of-reduce-by-analysts-2026-04-21

KEY POINTS

Analysts give Optimum Communications a consensus "Reduce" rating from seven analysts (two sell, five hold) with an average 12‑month price target of $1.875.

Insider selling and institutional stakes: General Counsel Michael Olsen sold 250,000 shares at $1.60 (insiders sold 290,000 shares in the quarter) and now insiders own 44.60% while institutional investors hold 54.85%, including new large stakes by Vanguard, Empyrean, Deutsche Bank, Millennium and Redwood.

Weak recent results and valuation: Optimum reported a quarterly loss of ($0.15) EPS versus a ($0.01) consensus, revenue fell 2.3% year‑over‑year, analysts forecast -0.4 EPS for the year, and the stock trades around $1.69 with a market cap of about $792.7M.

I feel that Q1 earnings call will be a complete disaster. CK and DA are unhinged and have not grounded in reality anymore. They keep blaming employees, the market and even shareholders for their own personal failures. In a market where many companies are ki-ling it, SAP is left so far behind because of only one thing. A complete lack of strategy. There is no strategy besides we are doing AI in this feature. It is d-mb and shareholders will not be impressed anymore. Layoffs will take the price up a bit. They're increasing the dividend so shareholders will like that and the price will go up a bit. But there are no technical fundamentals that show growth compared to competitors. The Gartner magic quadrant and similar things are all bought for and even shareholders see through it. Even institutional investors are reducing stake in SAP. And SAP is trying to buy back its own stock like crazy because they want to pump it up temporarily. And so the share price will go up but come crashing down again. To less than 100. This is bound to happen before the end of 2026. And then in 2027, we will find out that CK gets a bonus of a quarter of a billion for this Katastrophe.

What was a great company has turned into a heartless bag of cashless Pennies!
This is what happen when investors buy and they want to make money!! All you can do is hope those silver lined parachute pants are useless after this!! They’ve ruined soooooo many lives in 3 years!!