Markets value certainty. Whether terrible or euphoric, more certain outcomes make planning, valuing future revenues, and controlling for future costs much easier, and by extension makes valuing companies as a whole much more straightforward (as much as it can be). The corporate temptation of whether or not to merge, takeover, or take private becomes a much harder to ignore when the answer is seemingly self-evident.

One of the many overlooked components of a well-managed portfolio is original data - data which is often sanitized, re-analyzed, or downright omitted by the time it hits the news wires. Freeport-McMoran's recent call was particularly enlightening.

The behemoth of a company that is Amazon is becoming is dangerously similar to gilded-age monopolies.