Welcome to stock market, where the stock price is based on expectation instead of how well the company actually doing. There could be profit but if the profit is slightly less than last quarter, the day traders all gonna throw their baby tantrum.

The stock market is just rich people's feelings

Yet Tesla can do absolutely fucking nothing and then do a Nazi salute and shares go up 50%

You own land, and you decide to plant it full of one type of crop because the forecast promises you an excellent harvest. You don't have money, so you get a deposit from people buying the crop, in return of a certain share of the harvest. But most people that did so actually believe the forecast was very conservative and the crop will end up even bigger, so they'll expect more than you promised.

Then the forecast changes, and the harvest might end up smaller, and much smaller than the people expected. Some want their deposit back, but to do so they have to sell that share to someone else, but they buy it with the current forecast and demand, and pay way less for it.

People buying Caterpillar expected for a massive construction boom. Any kink to that forecast is going to cause some people to reconsider and pull their money to the next potential company able to fly to the moon.

This exact thing has been driving me crazy for like a decade now. Say a company makes $1 billion in profit one year, and the next year isn't as good but they make $800 million. Still a very profitable company, but because it was less then the year before it's considered horrible and the company is basically going out of business.

That tells you how insane the stock market is, if you needed any more proof that is.

They are trading at big growth multiples. So if the rate of growth slows then it gets repriced. Their assumption was double digit growth rate, which is one helluva bet.

This also points out how the AI bubble is affecting the economy far beyond the tech sector.

Construction equipment used to be used for other things, not just building datacenters. But, since the start of the AI bubble, almost everything else has slowed down because they're dedicating so much construction equipment and workers towards building datacenters.

https://futurism.com/future-society/data-center-spending-ai-bubble-construction

In just 1 year, construction work on DCs has gone up by 64.5%. And, that's from 2025 to 2026. It's not like it was at a standstill in 2025. Meanwhile, residential construction is down significantly. And, there has been a 25% cut in construction related to manufacturing.

Company I worked at a couple years back not only beat their projected earnings, but made record profits highest quarter ever. Stock prices dropped by a third

Buyers are extremely edgy because they know we are teetering on the edge of a potential collapse.

So, their earnings beat expectations, but they didn't beat the expectations for how much they'd beat expectations, so the share price went down.

That's why I always say that big shot, institutional investors are a bunch of cunts. They always think in short term. That's why I am in favour of half year earnings report so that there is less pressure for companies to think in three months time.

They are making less off of AI overviews than traditional ads, but their AI buildout costs are increasing, which is ass backwards. I don't know if it was in their report but they also supposedly don't have a strategy for making their customers pay for AI use.

You should see NVIDIA stock after every earnings. They beat, by a lot. Stock goes down. Every fucking time. Stock market runs on vibes now.

Yep, this is why managing speculative investor expectations is as much a part of managing a modern publicly traded business as actually running the business.

Mass manipulation. I wish I were smart enough and had enough to bribe the right people to be in on the looting.