Greetings from Mexico, where the Editor and Jim are enjoying some relief from the frigid Midwest. As such, this interim Brief will be exactly that.
This week was marked by a bounce back in the Fab Five (+$293 billion), erasing most of the previous week’s losses. So far, the Fab Five is up $253 billion in 2025. As we will cover in next week’s Brief, most of the Fab Five have very ambitious capital spending plans for the year, and, unlike previous capital bubbles, this one is funded mostly from cash on the balance sheet and not from debt.
The Telco Top Five had a great week, led by T-Mobile, now up 23% ($57 billion) year-to-date. These recent gains have catapulted Magenta to a dominant position: their market capitalization now exceeds the combined value of Verizon and Comcast (#3 and #4 of the Top Five). How they will leverage the value of appreciated stock remains to be seen, but we can think of several ways that stock + cash could be used both domestically and abroad.
We are reading our way through Bandwidth by Dan Caruso and find the book to be a solid read and definitely worth purchasing. We will have some final thoughts next week.
Enjoy the long weekend! File (updated with accurate share counts and Altice’s mobile adds) is below.
