I’m continuing to reset my “buy” prices and opinions for all of the companies in the Real Money Portfolio as part of my Annual Review process, so you’ll be seeing those “max buy” and “preferred buy” numbers popping up next to the stocks on the Real Money Portfolio page as those companies file their quarterly updates.

Those numbers represent the valuations I can rationally support, given my current opinion about those companies and flavored, to some degree, by the kinds of multiples those stocks are getting from other investors. I tend to be a long-term optimist, so the “preferred buy” levels are not bottom-fishing crisis prices that I’d hold out for in a crash, they’re just reasonably conservative buy levels that I can more easily justify — don’t be shocked if some of these stocks fall 50% below those levels if the market crashes. If you are more pessimistic about where the stock market is going in the next few years, or want to use more “lowball” numbers, you can certainly make your own call — maybe even just lop 20-30% off my “preferred buy” price and be more patient. I’ll continue to update those numbers as the year goes along, but I won’t update every one every quarter… my opinion doesn’t change that fast.

This was a pretty big week, with some of my larger holdings reporting. Here’s the narrative I had bouncing around in my brain on Wednesday and Thursday:

So Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) giveth some merry sentiment with its strong quarter and surprise stock split, all is happy and bright… then Spotify (SPOT) with its Joe Rogan controversy and weak guidance provides a sad little saxophone note to prepare us for the scary kettle drums of doom pounded by Meta Platforms (FB) as they taketh away some of that positive juju for the markets, with a little chorus from PayPal (PYPL) singing low notes in the background. That meant it was up to Amazon (AMZN) to finish the week with a rising crescendo to return us to optimism and send investors into the weekend with a smile.

Did they? Not so much. Amazon had a really strong quarter, but not a real surprise like Alphabet or Meta… and that Meta Platforms result was so worrisome that we might not be able to get over it for a while.

For those looking for that ray ...