Alphabet is a holding company that wholly owns internet giant Google. The California-based company derives slightly less than 90% of its revenue from Google services, the vast majority of which is advertising sales. Alongside online ads, Google services houses sales stemming from Google’s subscription services (YouTube TV and YouTube Music, among others), platforms (sales and in-app purchases on Play Store), and devices (Chromebooks, Pixel smartphones, and smart home products such as Chromecast). Google’s cloud computing platform accounts for roughly 10% of Alphabet’s revenue. The firm’s investments in up-and-coming technologies such as self-driving cars (Waymo), health (Verily), and internet access (Google Fiber) make up the rest.

The United States economy is full of innovation. It has to be. Manufacturing industries that dominated the economy decades ago - textiles, televisions, even automobiles to a large degree - have moved overseas, where labor and materials costs are lower. Yet the U.S. economy, even during the pandemic and the recent period of high inflation, has expanded to record levels. If U.S. corporations weren't innovating, creating new products (such as AI and vaccines) and services (such as Zoom calls and Netflix), as well as moving into new markets (clean energy, rare drugs), the domestic economy would not be growing, and capital would not be flooding into the country. Consider that U.S. GDP was approximately $1 trillion in 1930 but was almost $31.5 trillion at the end of 2025. That's growth of 30-times. Meanwhile, the U.S. population has grown less than 3-times during that time span, to 340 million from 120 million. The delta between GDP growth and population growth has been driven, in large part, by innovation.

Alphabet maintains the largest online index of websites accessible through automated search technology. It generates revenue through online advertising, cloud services, and consumer devices. Google is now an operating segment of Alphabet. The company was founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page and went public in 2004. Google's AdWords is an auction-based program that lets businesses display ads along with particular search results. Google's AdSense program enables websites in the company's network to serve targeted ads, based on search terms or web content, from AdWords advertisers. Most of the revenue generated through AdSense is shared with network partners. In addition, Alphabet owns YouTube.com, the web-based video site. It has expanded into mobile telephony with its Android smartphone operating system, into cloud services, and most recently, into autonomous driving. About 52% of Alphabet's revenue is generated outside the U.S. On April 3, 2014, Alphabet's non-voting class C shares began trading under the ticker GOOG, and Alphabet's publicly held class A shares switched to the ticker GOOGL. The effect of the class C share issuance was a non-economic 2-for-1 stock split. On July 15, 2022, Alphabet executed a 20-for-1 stock split on its Class A, Class B, and Class C stock. The stock split had no impact on the economic value of GOOGL shares.

Whiplash remains the order of the day on Wall Street, with good news about the war in Iran pushing stocks higher and bad news about the war in Iran forcing stocks lower, this on either side of periods when the news is neutral. Turning to insider sentiment, the current weekly data from Vickers Stock Research is volatile as well. Focusing on the one-week sell/buy ratios from Vickers, we see a bearish pop. As earnings season has started and stocks have forged higher even though the Iran conflict is far from resolved, insiders appear to be taking advantage of high stock prices at a time of great uncertainty. Vickers' one-week sell/buy ratio for stocks that trade on the NYSE has popped to 7.40, and into the bearish territory that starts at 6.00. So too has the Nasdaq ratio, currently at 9.26. That has led to a Total (all exchanges) Sell/Buy Ratio of 8.65. Drilling down to sector sell/buy ratios, sentiment has improved in some areas while worsening in others. On the positive side, the Utility sector recorded a bullish one-week sell/buy ratio this week, improved from a neutral rating last week, as more insiders bought shares than sold shares. In all, there were four sectors that logged a bullish one-week ratio during the period, with Utilities joining Consumer Staples, Energy, and Financial. That's down from six bullish sectors last week. Meanwhile, there were five sectors that recorded bearish sentiment, up from just one sector last week. These sectors included Communication Services, Healthcare, Industrial, Information Technology, and Real Estate. From a longer-term perspective, the eight-week sell/buy ratio for Information Technology has now fallen into bearish territory from neutral territory last week, driven by the negative insider sentiment seen in the sector over the past two weeks. This week, analysts at Vickers highlighted insider transactions of interest at Micron Technology Inc. (NGS: MU) and Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C).