Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Back to today

From X

@convequity

Convequity on X

$PANW and $DDOG both put something real inside the customer's systems that an AI lab cannot recreate by calling SaaS APIs. Palo Alto's install is still harder to replace with AI. 1. Datadog's agents mostly sit outside the traffic and watch production. A bad agent version rarely takes the business down the way a bad firewall rule can. 2. Palo Alto's firewalls and SASE cloud gateways sit inside the traffic and decide what to allow, deny, decrypt or inspect. A wrong allow or deny hits live traffic and live machines. 3. Many Datadog users start the day in a coding agent and open Datadog when something looks wrong. Many Palo Alto users start in its console and stay there through alerts, triage and response. For them, an outside AI agent is an add-on. Cybersecurity work splits two ways on AI risk. Work done before code ships ("shift-left") or from outside the traffic, such as scanning code, checking cloud settings and sorting collected alerts, gives answers that are easy to check. AI agents are already taking over more of it. Work in live traffic and on live machines ("shift-right") means judging whether an attacker is still inside and whether blocking them is safe. That is more ambiguous and mistakes cost more, so enterprises move slower and demand earned trust. Palo Alto is not risk-free. In our view its exposure is the easily checked detection and vulnerability work inside its platform, which AI agents can take over sooner. The threat is not an AI-native firewall startup.

Hindsight Capital

Hindsight Capital tests crisis-era investment decisions using anonymized company financials, including TransDigm, Halma and Texas Pacific…

The Brookfield Moat Masterclass

Brookfield’s BN, BAM, BIP, BEP and BBUC span asset management, infrastructure, renewables and private equity, with BN valued at a 15–20%…

SYK · long

Stryker CORP

Stryker (SYK) trades near a 52-week low after a late-Q1 cyberattack disrupted revenue and earnings, framing a long-term compounder…

Maker of Men

James B. Duke built American Tobacco into a monopoly, then extended his legacy through Duke Power and the Duke Endowment.

Under The Hood - Rollins ($ROL)

Rollins ($ROL) pairs automatically renewing pest-control contracts with route density and family-business acquisitions, producing 24…

Adobe

Adobe’s bear case is that generative AI breaks new-user habit formation, leaving its professional base sticky but aging as growth slows and…

[VRSK] Verisk has standards

Verisk’s exit from healthcare, financial-services and energy data restored a pure-play insurance analytics model, but D.E.

Brown & Brown

Brown & Brown compounded revenue 14.4% annually since 1998 through more than 650 acquisitions, capped by its nearly $10 billion Accession…

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

110 publications

Newsletters 93

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

72 accounts

Investor letters we follow

189 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.