Dick Johnson

Free markets and property rights lead to individual liberty. All human life is innately precious. Retweets aren’t always endorsements. Like=bookmark.

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

@mymixtapez What an idiot. But he has the right to spend his money as he sees fit. Fans don’t get rings.

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

@its_The_Dr 190 MPH lol

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

@TheresaAFallon I often wonder what Orwell would say about the state of affairs in the West.

Democracy means anything that feeds a globalist agenda.

It doesn’t mean giving the people voice in national politics.

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

@WarMonitor3 @zerohedge That’s one way to unite Catholics with the Protestants. 🇮🇪☘️

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

Yes, short gamma works both ways. If they are short puts, they will get longer the underlying with every tick lower, and will have to sell to remain neutral. You will be able to get a sense of this if we see a steady grind lower over time. The inverse of the past 30 month action

[Tracy Shuchart (𝒞𝒽𝒾 ) @chigrl]

Market makers took the opposite side of the relentless call buying. Thus they are short calls, forcing them to go into the futures market to buy to hedge their book. When that unwinds ...the downside could be ugly.

[Sachin Jose @Sachinettiyil]

Fr. Thomas Roussel Davids Byles, an English Catholic priest aboard the RMS Titanic, was praying his breviary on deck when the ship struck an iceberg. As it sank, he helped third-class passengers reach the lifeboats, twice refused a seat himself, and remained on board praying the Rosary, hearing confessions, and giving absolution to over a hundred passengers until the very end.

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

@TheCinesthetic Such deep, thoughtful utterly insightful analysis. Thanks Javier 🤡

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

@quotesdaily100 Howard Zinn’s book is light on history and heavy on opinion. Read it if you really enjoy Communist propaganda.

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

@Osint613 2021: Biden is sharp as a tack.

2026: Trump has dementia.

Ummmkay

[Sr. Mary Joseph Calore, SSCJ @sscjusa]

He wrote a single sentence before they came for him. Then he vanished from the world that knew his name.

On December 26, 1948, the day after Christmas, József Mindszenty stood inside the archiepiscopal palace at Esztergom. Outside, engines idled in the cold. The cars had been there long enough to make their purpose clear. Hungary had changed, and men like him were not meant to remain.

He was the highest Catholic authority in the country, a prince of the Church, and one of the last public figures who would not bend to the new order. He understood exactly what waited on the other side of the door.

Before he opened it, he sat at his desk and wrote a short note in careful handwriting.

If you hear that I have confessed or resigned, do not believe it. It will be the result of human frailty.

He left it where it could be found. Then he removed his formal vestments and chose the simplest robe he owned. From a drawer, he took a small image of Christ crowned with thorns and slipped it into his pocket. He said goodbye to his elderly mother, a quiet parting with no certainty of return.

Then he opened the door.

The agents of the State Protection Authority did not speak much. They did not need to. He was taken into the night and driven to Budapest, to a place already known in whispers, 60 Andrássy Street, a building that had served one regime after another and had learned how to break men for each of them.

For thirty nine days, he disappeared into its basement.

What happened there was methodical. He was stripped, beaten, deprived of sleep, and kept under constant pressure until the line between thought and confusion began to blur. They used drugs to weaken him, hunger to exhaust him, isolation to unmoor him. Time lost its shape. Day and night became the same dim stretch of endurance.

They wanted a confession. Not truth, but a statement that could be read aloud.

In the end, he signed.

On February 3, 1949, they brought him into a courtroom, thinner, unsteady, his words no longer fully his own. Five days later, the sentence was handed down. Life imprisonment.

The reaction beyond Hungary was immediate. Harry S. Truman condemned the trial. Winston Churchill spoke against it. Pope Pius XII excommunicated those responsible.

Mindszenty heard none of it. He had already been placed in solitary confinement.

Years passed in silence. Seven of them. Seasons changed somewhere beyond his walls, but for him time moved in smaller units, measured by routine, by endurance, by the slow work of staying intact.

Then, in October 1956, the country shifted again.

On October 23, students filled the streets of Budapest. Workers joined them. Soldiers hesitated, then in some cases changed sides. What began as protest became revolt. Within days, the government that had imprisoned him collapsed under the weight of it.

On October 30, the doors of his prison opened. After nearly eight years, he stepped back into a city that was already in motion. He was driven to Budapest, where his presence carried weight that had only grown in his absence. Over the radio, he spoke to the nation, his voice steady, urging order, recognizing the uprising.

For a brief moment, it seemed possible that Hungary might stand on its own.

It lasted three days.

On November 4, columns of Soviet tanks entered Budapest. The streets that had filled with hope filled instead with smoke and gunfire. Thousands were killed. Hundreds of thousands fled. The revolution was crushed with speed and force.

Mindszenty understood what that meant for him. He made his way to the United States Embassy Budapest and asked for asylum. The request was granted.

He stepped inside on November 4, 1956.

He would remain there for the next fifteen years.

The room given to him had once been an office. It was small, functional, and closed. The windows did not open. He could not walk freely in the building, could not step into the courtyard, could not risk being seen from the street. Outside, a car from the ....

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

Thoughtful analysis

[Rose Celine Investments 🌹 @realroseceline]

That’s where the math starts to change. Going from $15b to $30b is a completely different challenge than going from $1b to $2b. The base is bigger, expectations are higher, and execution has to be very good.

At around a ~$90b market cap, the setup starts to look more balanced to me. You’re no longer paying peak optimism for a perfectly clean narrative. You’re paying for a great business that is starting to show a few cracks. Historically, that’s where opportunities tend to lie, not when everything looks perfect.

The business didn’t suddenly change overnight, and that’s an important distinction. What really changed is the price people are willing to pay for it. Markets don’t just reprice bad businesses, they reprice great businesses the moment the narrative changes even slightly.

This is also a Silicon Valley darling, and that comes with both advantages and trade offs. The talent, the positioning, and the reputation all matter hugely. But it also comes with heavy stock based compensation, which I take seriously and don’t ignore. You’re getting a world class business, but you’re also paying for it through dilution over time, albeit they are buying back shares at an accelerated pace to offset some of that pressure.

For me, this ultimately comes down to a simple question. Does $NOW remain a core system for enterprises in an AI driven world, or does it slowly lose relevance over time. If it remains essential, then what we’re seeing right now is likely just a reset in expectations, not a structural break. If that assumption proves wrong, then the story changes.

There are also clear things I’m watching closely from here. If sales cycles continue to stretch and conversion weakens further, that would matter. If margins don’t show a credible path back over time, that would matter as well. For now, I don’t think we’re there yet, but those are the lines I’m paying attention to.

I’ve seen this pattern before in other businesses that looked almost perfect for a long time. They don’t usually break all at once, but they do go through periods where things get a little less clean. That doesn’t mean the opportunity disappears, but it does mean expectations need to reset. That reset is often where the opportunity comes from.

At the end of the day, I still believe this is a company that can be worth hundreds of billions of dollars over time. The combination of scale, deep enterprise integration, and the ability to expand across workflows is extremely powerful if they continue to execute. This is not a business that needs to reinvent itself, it just needs to stay disciplined and keep doing what it has already proven it can do. If it remains a core system for enterprises and continues to compound at a high rate, the outcome can be much larger than what the market is pricing in today.

The path is not guaranteed, and that’s what creates the opportunity. Expectations have come down slightly, the story is a bit less clean, and that’s exactly when these types of businesses become interesting. If they can work through the current friction and regain consistency over time, the narrative can shift again just as quickly as it changed.

These are my thoughts on the quarter, the business, and my investment in $NOW. It may be a bit lengthy, but like I said at the beginning, I don’t like leaving things unfinished and I wanted to put all the cards face up on the table since I already unlocked Pandora’s box. If you found it useful or interesting, I’d appreciate a like, comment, share, or follow.

🌹

3/end

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

@ModernCeasar Akexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

@EdwardLawrence Billion?

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

@FredSimonTLM Wow. I was just thinking of St Maximillion Kolbe. Ora pro nobis

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

@ExcessDefaults Sounds like a great way to sell CLO equity to retail suckers.

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

Informative thread

[Nick Timiraos @NickTimiraos]

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott suggested this morning that the committee had decided not to compel Fed Chair Jay Powell to produce his regular, Q1 monetary policy testimony, due to the fallout from the DOJ probe stemming from his June testimony. "He is more concerned about the criminal proceeding, and I get that," Scott told CNBC. The committee had initially planned a hearing for Feb. 11, he said.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill sounded somewhat less ready to throw in the towel last week, when he told Bloomberg TV that Powell had been invited and the committee was "trying to find a date and coordinate that date with the Senate Banking Committee because we typically do those hearings back to back, so I hope that that can happen soon." But there's nothing on the calendar, and Powell's term ends in nine weeks.

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

@Peter_Bukowski Haha total dick post. (Meant in the most flattering way)

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

@Peter_Bukowski Mitchell runs well between the tackles for a smaller back but has great speed and shiftiness. Absolutely would sign him. Very dynamic

[Dick Johnson @johnierighteous]

@GeneSohoForum @BjornLomborg Does Bjorn include governmental subsidies in his cost calculation?