Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company with a wide array of subsidiaries engaged in diverse activities. The firm's core business segment is insurance, run primarily through Geico, Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance Group, and Berkshire Hathaway Primary Group. Berkshire has used the excess cash thrown off from these and its other operations over the years to acquire Burlington Northern Santa Fe (railroad), Berkshire Hathaway Energy (utilities and energy distributors), and the companies that make up its manufacturing, service, and retailing operations (which include five of Berkshire's largest noninsurance pretax earnings generators: Precision Castparts, Lubrizol, Clayton Homes, Marmon, and IMC/ISCAR). The conglomerate is unique in that it is run on a completely decentralized basis.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is the world's largest dedicated chip foundry, with mid-60s market share in 2024. TSMC was founded in 1987 as a joint venture of Philips, the government of Taiwan, and private investors. It went public in Taiwan in 1994 and as an ADR in the US in 1997. TSMC's scale and high-quality technology allow the firm to generate solid operating margins, even in the highly competitive foundry business. Furthermore, the shift to the fabless business model has created tailwinds for TSMC. The foundry leader has an illustrious customer base, including Apple, AMD, and Nvidia, that looks to apply cutting-edge process technologies to its semiconductor designs. TSMC employs more than 73,000 people.

Palantir develops and provides software that enables customers from government agencies to commercial enterprises to integrate data for decision-making and operations at scale. The company initially provided its software to the U.S. intelligence services before broadening its customer base. 55% of company revenue is generated by its government segment and 45% from its commercial segment; 34% of revenue is generated outside the U.S. Palantir's class A shares trade publicly under the symbol PLTR. Palantir's super-voting class B and class F shares, held by insiders and founders, do not trade publicly. The company is effectively controlled by founders Alexander Karp, Stephen Cohen, and Peter Thiel through the super-voting class F shares that represent a 49.99% voting interest. Palantir was founded in 2003 and went public at $10 per share on September 30, 2020.

In addition to the FOMC meeting and interest-rate decision (and Powell's presser), this is another big week for first-quarter EPS, with results from PLTR, CMI, AMD, ANET, MAR, DUK, NVO, UBER, DIS, ARM, APP, MELI, HUBS, DASH, SHOP, BUD, COP, MCK, and COIN (to name but a few). With almost 75% of S&P 500 companies having reported, 76% have beaten the analyst consensus on EPS and 62% have beaten on revenue. After a torrid nine-day surge, the major indices and many stocks are overbought for the short term, so it wouldn't be surprising to see some near-term consolidation. The five-day relative strength index (RSI) hit 84% on Friday and the five-day exponential moving average (EMA) was 1.7% above the 13-day EMA, the largest spread since November 2022 -- when the S&P 500 (SPX) was emerging from a bear market. We also saw these over-bought levels during the 2022 bear market and months before the actual bottom in October. Another potential reason for a possible market pause is that the major indices are in "no man's land." The SPX is sitting in between its 50-day and 200-day average and, unfortunately, so is the S&P 100, Nasdaq, and Nasdaq 100. As well, the majors are sitting at or slightly below the key 61.8% retracement of their corrections. Generally, a strong break above this retrace level sends the all-clear for indices to march back to prior highs and possibly to new highs. While the majors all have completed bullish ABC reversals, the targets based on the size of these patterns have been fulfilled. It looks like they are all working on much larger inverse head-and-shoulders patterns -- but more upside is needed. (Mark Arbeter, CMT)