Ed Ludlow

Basically, sentiment out there is quite negative right now.

Tariffs, software, geopolitical risk.

From the market participant side of the table, particularly focused on the tech sector, are things as dire as the news headlines would have us suggest at the moment?

It's such a unique environment because we've seen a handful, most software companies report fairly good

fourth quarter 2025 earnings.

Most of them issue reasonably good guidance for 2026, or at least the first quarter of 2026.

And yet investors don't care about that at all.

Their concerns lie further down the road a couple of years out as these AI tools continue to develop.

The last speaker talked about a doubling of capacity or capability every seven months.

If that continues for the next couple of years on end,

You will certainly see some of the more point solution software companies struggle with AI capability competition.

And then there will be other software companies that have really deep tentacles inside organizations, really form the backbone of companies' workloads and processes and data storage and data analysis.

And I think that they will thrive.

So it's a mixed picture.

Salesforce, Snowflake, they'd be a test of that, wouldn't they?

Jed Ellerbrook of Argent Capital Management, thank you very much.

I want to go back to PayPal.

The stock's up about 6% right now.

They've been halted for volatility after a big spike post that Bloomberg News report that it is attracting takeover interest.

The Bloomberg report details that one big rival is considering buying all of PayPal.