Bullpen.News From Edwin Dorsey
Get Daily Recap Feedback

Sunday, November 1, 2026

Back to today

Altria: Dutiful

Altria raised 2026 adjusted EPS guidance to $5.66 to $5.74 and authorized more buybacks, while on! loses share as cigarette margins hold.

MO $130B
Invariant 2 clicks

From X

@convequity 3 clicks

Convequity on X

Inference repeatedly reads the same model weights, with far fewer writes than training. 1. In training, weights are constantly updated, so the memory sees heavy read and write traffic. 2. In inference, the dominant pattern is repeated reading of the same weights, and the key-value cache alongside them, with far fewer writes. That is the case for putting AI model weights on flash. Flash has traditionally been weaker than DRAM on write endurance and write speed. A read-heavy, write-light workload plays to its strengths and gets around exactly those weaknesses. Today AI chips sit beside HBM built from stacked DRAM, and it is the expensive part of the memory bill. High-Bandwidth Flash (HBF) is the product built on the read-heavy observation. It aims to deliver HBM-like read bandwidth at far higher capacity and lower cost by using NAND flash instead of DRAM. Two caveats. These are aims, not measured specifications. As of our early-August note, the first prototype from Sandisk ($SNDK), developed with SK Hynix, was expected later in the year. HBF is also more specialised than commodity NAND, where Chinese producers are expanding capacity aggressively.
@convequity

Convequity on X

A bit of surpsied to see OpenAI Dot's VM spec is so low: CPU: 9 visible logical CPUs; host reports AMD EPYC 9V74 at ~2.6 GHz RAM: 9.7 GiB total, ~8.7 GiB available; no swap Storage: 32 GiB workspace filesystem, ~30 GiB free Also uses Cloudflare $NET network as egress like Grok Bot does but the computer spec is so much lower than Grok Bot. Maybe OpenAI is just more resource constrained vs. SpaceX given a much bigger user base. The demand for traditional compute, networking and storage will grow crazy as more people start to adopt this cloud agent architecture.
@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.

Investor Letters

All letters

FTAI 3Q26: Aero margins in focus

FTAI’s Aerospace Products margin rebounded to 31% as CFM56 module output rose, while Power deposits and contracted deliveries fund its 2027…

FTAI $20B
Stock Thoughts 4 clicks

CVX Earnings Review

Chevron’s Q3 revenue rose 35% to $65.2 billion and EBITDA 75% to $20.2 billion, while production trailed guidance and refining margins…

CVX $423B
Cestrian Capital Research 3 clicks

SNY Earnings Review

Sanofi raised FY26 guidance after Q3 sales grew 14.3% at constant currency, led by 34.8% Dupixent growth; vaccines declined 6.6%.

SNY $114B
Cestrian Capital Research 1 click
T · short

At&t INC

AT&T’s stalled deleveraging and share repurchase case has prompted a bearish turn on the telecom stock.

T $144B
Value Investors Club

Microsoft's AI Boom Has A Cost

Microsoft’s Azure grew 48% as AI monetization accelerated, but doubled CapEx, largely for CPUs and GPUs, reduced quarterly free cash flow…

MSFT $3.9T
Yiannis Zourmpanos 2 clicks

TSOH Weekly Roundup (10/30/2026)

Markel spent $315 million repurchasing shares in Q3 as Thrive agreed to buy ADT for $7.6 billion and Hasbro cited rising adult toy demand.

MKL $23B
TSOH Investment Research 1 click

AMZN Q3 FY12/26 Earnings Review

Amazon reported $201.9 billion Q3 revenue and 39% AWS growth, while $220 billion in 2026 capex drove trailing free cash flow to a $42.4…

AMZN $2.9T
Cestrian Capital Research 3 clicks

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

129 publications

Newsletters 109

YouTube 4

Blogs 15

Seeking Alpha 70 of 272

Nominate a publication

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

91 accounts
Nominate an account

Investor letters we follow

266 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.