A week of Warsh's can-kicking, a hedge fund margined out, and earnings from companies converting themselves from capital-light compounders into capital-intensive businesses that finance their own largest customers. The index Graham and Bogle prescribed for the defensive investor now carries counterparty risk to two private labs that have never published a financial statement.

Adobe grew earnings by two-thirds and lost two-thirds of its price. All of the decline was the multiple, and what a multiple prices, at bottom, is the moat. The note weighs the record against the fear and ends in the too-hard pile.

Graham fixed his test for second-grade bonds to the late-1971 tape, when first-rate paper paid 7 1/4 percent. Run against the AI bond wave of 2026 and a 2.69% high-yield spread, it returns the one conclusion this publication permits itself, dated and entered beside its base rate.