Well friends, if you’re Polish, you’ve got a little extra reason to hold your head high these days.
The top-performing country ETF in the world this year? Yep.. Poland.
Check this out: it's up a staggering 41% year-to-date. Sure, a big part of that surge comes from the strength of the Polish złoty, but still this is a serious flex in a year where most ETFs and indexes are swimming in red.
Not bad, Polska. Not bad at all.
In general the Polish market is doing very well compared to its counterparts. The WIG20, which is a capitalization-weighted stock market index of the twenty largest companies on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, is up almost 25% since January 1st.
In the United States, the Dow Jones is down almost 7% on the year.
I was actually deep in the weeds working on an Apple piece. The idea was to figure out where the tech giant goes from here and whether they can bounce back from the recent AI missteps and that whole Vision Pro mess. It’s still a fascinating story. But then, on Good Friday, something massive dropped—news from Palantir that I just couldn’t ignore.
So I shelved the Apple deep dive for now, because what Palantir is doing might be one of the most important shifts in enterprise software we’ve seen in years. And I personally am ecstatic.
It’s easy to underestimate a company like Palantir. For years, people called it a consulting firm in disguise. A black box. Too complex to scale. But now we’re entering a new chapter.. and it’s not just hype. It’s product evolution. It’s deployment acceleration. And it’s about to get wildly profitable.
At the center of it all? AI Forward Deployed Engineers, or FDEs.
Palantir’s traditional approach involved sending brilliant engineers (FDEs) to the client’s site to customize and implement its software. These weren’t just tech folks, they were the ones who made Palantir work in the real world. They took the raw software and shaped it into something meaningful for each business or government agency.
Now imagine if those engineers never had to sleep. Never took a break. Never hit capacity. That’s what AI FDEs are. And that is what Palantir CTO just confirmed on a call, that the company has built AI FDE's which are ready to be deployed. Check out the short clip below.
These AI agents are trained to replicate what human FDEs do: understand client systems, tailor solutions, and bring Palantir’s platform to life. But they can do it at scale. On demand. With zero marginal cost.
Let’s break this down.
1. Scaling Without Hiring
Palantir used to grow in a linear fashion. More clients meant more engineers. More projects. More effort. AI FDEs flip that equation. Now, one AI model can serve countless clients at once. That means Palantir can grow without bloating headcount. The same team can serve 10 clients, then 100, then 1,000.
2. Margins Go Vertical
Deploying software used to be slow and expensive. Each client was a new lift. With AI FDEs, implementation becomes faster and cheaper. Less manual work. More automation. That feeds directly into gross margins. It’s like software-as-a-service on steroids.
3. More Value for Customers
Here’s the best part. AI FDEs don’t just benefit Palantir, they make the product more powerful for customers too. You can now customize Palantir’s digital twins however you want. In hours, not months. That unlocks insane levels of operational efficiency for any business using the platform.
You want to automate your factory floor? Your logistics chain? Your compliance workflow? Done. AI FDEs help make it real without waiting for a consultant to fly in and code for weeks.
4. Accelerating the Flywheel
The more Palantir productizes its software, the easier it is to sell, deploy, and scale. The easier it is to deploy, the more clients it attracts. And the more clients, the more data Palantir captures and learns from. This creates a flywheel effect and AI FDEs just made that wheel spin faster.
5. The Road to Autonomous Enterprises
All of this is driving toward a bigger picture. Fully autonomous organizations. Companies that use digital twins and AI to run operations with minimal human involvement. We’re not talking about replacing everyone overnight, but it’s easy to see where this is going. AI handles support. AI handles logistics. AI handles decisions. And Palantir is the backbone.
AI FDEs are step two in that evolution. AIP was step one.
That’s why I believe this changes everything. Not just for Palantir’s customers. For Palantir itself. Higher margins. Greater reach. More predictable revenue. And a massive moat that gets harder to cross with every deployment.
If you’re a long-term investor, this is exactly the kind of inflection point you wait for. Quiet. Underappreciated. But deeply transformational.
And if you’re already holding the stock at lower levels, congratulations. The future looks pretty damn good from here. I keep saying that Palantir is the next Microsoft, and I am bullish as ever on their stock.
Regardless of your personal views on Donald Trump, the reality is that he will be serving as President of the United States for the next 3.5 years, and it’s clear he will remain a highly polarizing figure throughout his term.
His recent tariff announcements have sent shockwaves through the stock market, triggering a sharp sell-off, with signs pointing to further declines as we head into Monday’s session. While I had anticipated a broader market pullback in the first half of 2025, this downturn is proving to be more severe than expected.
I’ve always acknowledged the cyclical nature of markets, and following the exceptional gains we saw in 2023 and 2024 in the S&P 500, I believed 2025 would bring slower, more muted growth. Unfortunately, what we’re seeing now is far more abrupt and driven by geopolitical uncertainty rather than just market rotation.
So if you’ve been reading financial headlines lately, you might think the current market crash, down 20% from the February highs, is entirely Trump’s fault, right? All because of his tariffs?
Well, I’m not entirely convinced. Here’s why.
First off, I don’t believe this sell-off is solely the result of Trump’s trade policies. The markets were already showing signs of weakness ever since DeepSeek shook investor confidence with its supposed low-cost LLM that allegedly didn’t require NVIDIA GPUs (which, of course, turned out to be false). That was the spark, but deeper fears are at play, some are worried that 1) our economic expansion has peaked, and 2) the so-called American empire may be entering decline.
And let’s talk about China. If you still think China is just producing cheap knockoffs of Western innovation, you’re way behind. Take a few minutes on YouTube to check out some of China’s new luxury car brands, they’re not just catching up; they’re starting to impress.
But does that mean American industry is in trouble? Not necessarily.
Yes, China is advancing, but they’re also facing major headwinds: a collapsing housing market, aging demographics, rising debt levels, slowing economic growth, and rampant youth unemployment. Those aren’t the hallmarks of a country ready to take over the world, they’re signs of deep structural issues.
Now, Trump has long been critical of China. His current play seems to be about “leveling the playing field,” using tariffs to pressure countries he believes are exploiting the U.S. economically. You could argue that these tariffs are more of a bargaining chip, his way of pulling other nations into negotiations. We all know how much he thrives on deal-making.
But does this mean American industry is doomed? Or is it part of a broader, more aggressive economic strategy?
Trump’s approach appears to be centered around reviving domestic manufacturing and energy independence. His plan includes tax cuts, reduced government spending (cue the return of the deficit hawks), deregulation, expanded domestic drilling, and tariffs designed to bring jobs back to the U.S. Will it work? Hard to say.
What is clear is that this strategy marks a sharp pivot away from globalization. It’s protectionist. And that shift, combined with the unpredictability of Trump’s methods is what’s really shaking investors. We’re not just seeing a market correction; we’re witnessing a potential reset of the global economic order. And uncertainty like that spooks the market.
If you believe in Trump’s vision, if you think his plan will bolster U.S. industry, then maybe this is the perfect time to buy the dip. Companies like Apple and NVIDIA have already pledged to invest billions domestically and shift some manufacturing back to the U.S., and the Fed might respond to the volatility with rate cuts, injecting liquidity back into the system.
But if you think this strategy won’t work, if you believe the U.S. is heading toward a deeper crisis while the rest of the world struggles through a downturn, then maybe it’s time to hedge. Think gold, Bitcoin… and yes, maybe even Chinese equities.
As for what I’m doing? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.
