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The year was 1970 and Johnny Cash wanted to perform a hangover lament called “Sunday Morning Coming Down” on his primetime television show. ABC network executives were nervous about a line in the song: “I’m wishin’, Lord, that I was stoned.” Couldn’t Mr Cash change “stoned” to “home”? No, Mr Cash would not. As the cameras rolled in the Nashville theatre and the Man in Black delivered the line, he looked up to the balcony where the song’s writer was sitting — Kris Kristofferson.

Kristofferson, who has died aged 88, broke the Nashville mould. Songs such as “Help Me Make It Through the Night” and “Me and Bobby McGee” brought emotional daring and depth to country music, better known for folksy sentimentality and conservatism. Rarely satisfied with his work, including a successful Hollywood side-career, he was less sure of his achievements than his admirers. They were effusive. According to one of his idols, Bob Dylan: “You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything.”

Born in Texas in 1936, Kristofferson grew up in an officer-class military family. He excelled at sports at his Californian high school and had two prizewinning essays published in The Atlantic magazine. In 1958, he won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford university to study English literature. There he fell hard for William Blake, from whom he learnt, in Kristofferson’s words, “if you buried your talent, sorrow and desperation would pursue you throughout life”.

He wrote most of a novel while in Britain: its rejection by a New York editor wounded him severely. He also recorded songs in London as Kris Carson, but the “Yank at Oxford”, as he was cornily promoted, came to naught. In 1960, he joined the US army as a helicopter pilot. To his parents’ anger, he left in 1965 to try his hand as a Nashville songwriter. With a young family to support, including medical bills for one of his children, he took an irregular variety of jobs, from oil-rig helicoptering to record-studio janitor. 

Country’s great maverick, Johnny Cash, became his mentor. He brought Kristofferson out to perform with him at the Newport folk festival in 1969 and wrote the sleeve notes for his protege’s self-titled debut album the following year. It featured “Me and Bobby McGee”, a beautifully tender elegy about parted hobo lovers, and “Help Me Make It Through the Night”, perhaps the most romantic song about a fleeting sexual encounter ever penned. 

Kristofferson could combine vivid characterisation, tantalising scenarios, deep feelings and philosophical epigrams within the brief compass of a song. “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,” from “Me and Bobby McGee”, was worthy of Dylan. Other country songwriters shared his literary sophistication, such as Bobbie Gentry and Jimmy Webb. But Kristofferson was coloured by rock music and the counterculture too. The singer Merle Haggard called him “Nashville’s own hippie”.

His songs were covered by acts ranging from Frank Sinatra to Janis Joplin. His own recordings, sung in craggy drawl, made him a big star in the 1970s. Alongside the likes of Haggard and Cash, he represented “outlaw country”, a challenge to Nashville’s squaresville character. He and his second wife, the singer Rita Coolidge, were a golden couple who released a series of joint albums until their divorce in 1980.

Kristofferson’s good looks — bearded, tousle-haired, redolent of outdoor ruggedness and late nights indoors — attracted attention from Hollywood, home of the beautiful people. He brought a square-jawed charisma to films by Sam Peckinpah and Martin Scorsese. Music critics complained that acting was a distraction from music, a concern that niggled at him. A persistent sense of discontent (“that old familiar pain,” as he sang in “Best of All Possible Worlds”) fuelled the heavy drinking and infidelities that wrecked his first two marriages. 

He sobered up after hitting rock bottom on the set of A Star Is Born in 1976, a box office hit with Barbra Streisand in which he played the lead but hated making. Both his film and music careers headed south in the 1980s, but Kristofferson’s personal life reached a state of calm with marriage to his third wife Lisa Meyers in 1983 (who survives him, as do his eight children). He formed a supergroup, The Highwaymen, with fellow outlaws Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings in 1985 and continued working as a solo artist up to 2021.

“Never’s just the echo of forever,” he declared in the song “Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends”. The laureate of the break-up song leaves behind an imperishable body of work.

A FLIGHT attendant has revealed the types of passenger he hates the most – and it happens before travellers even get on board.

“Gate lice” is the derogatory term give to those passengers who lurk around the airport gate well before it’s time to actually start boarding.

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It seems the phrase originated in a 2005 FlyerTalk discussion forum where one user coined the phrase to denote those who wait close to the gate so they can board as early as possible and ensure they get plenty of overhead bin space.

Brian Hart Hoffman, who was a flight attendant for eight years with US Airways and Alaska Airlines, told the Thrillist: “I absolutely hate gate lice.

“There is no need for it and it absolutely hinders the flow of boarding.”

He added those people who engage in this behaviour were making themselves “appear like [they] are more important than anyone else flying.”

Brian said that not only can gate lice delay take-off by stopping people from boarding but they can also prevent people from getting off the incoming flight.

He said: “Some of the dedicated ‘lice’ are in place and blocking things while the airplane is being deplaned from the inbound flight.”

Other experts agree with Brian’s point of view, saying that gate lice can cause delays to both people getting on or off a flight.

Flight attendant Rich Henderson, who is also the creator of Two Guys on a Plane said that gate lice sometimes also prevent the crew or cleaners from getting on a plane, also causing delays.

Samantha Facteau, a spokesperson for Delta Air Lines, said crowding the gate can make it difficult for those who need assistance to reach the gate and for those with mobility devices to get by.

Uncover Mental Health Counselling psychologist Kristie Tse said that “crowding the gate often stems from a mix of anxiety and a desire for control.”

She added: “Individuals may feel an overwhelming urge to secure their position, fearing they might miss out or face consequences if they don’t act quickly.

“This behaviour can indicate underlying insecurities or a lack of trust in the process.”

Frequent traveller Pip Davidson said that for him, anxiety is definitely a motivator as he gets stressed and is “hypersensitive” to crowds.

He said: “The actions and behaviour of a crowd [at the airport] can be overwhelming and trigger heightened anxiety that causes me to feel more alert and more worried.”

As a way to cope with this, he lingers by the gate before boarding.

Pip also noticed that his “gate anxiety” was triggered by other gate lice.

He said there was a “ripple effect” where numerous people start to head towards the gate.

Pip said that once one person started to head towards the gate, “that triggers another person to worry that they’re being cut in line, and that causes another person to have the same worry.”

SECRET CABIN CREW WORDS

Flight attendants have a special language they use to talk about passengers, including the ones they find attractive.

There are a number of other secret phrases used by pilots and cabin crew too, some serious and others less so.

• Cropdusting: If a passenger is being very rude and difficult, then it’s not unheard of for a flight attendant to break wind and ‘cropdust’ past the offender.
• Code Adam: This is used by airport staff to alert other staff of a missing child, in honour of Adam Walsh, a child who was abducted in a department store in 1981.
• 7500: If a pilot “squawks 7500” it means the plane has been hijacked, or a hijacking is a threat.
• Crosscheck: If you hear this phrase, usually made by senior cabin crew, it means that the emergency slides attached to each door have been deactivated.

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Welcome back. Ukraine has scaled back its war aims. Although it remains committed to recovering the lands seized by Russia over the past decade, it regrettably lacks the manpower, weaponry and western support to do it.

Ukraine’s new strategy — presented by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to US leaders last week — is to ask its allies to strengthen its hand, militarily and diplomatically, to bring Russia to the negotiating table. 

Western diplomats and increasingly Ukrainian officials have come round to the view that meaningful security guarantees could form the basis of a negotiated settlement in which Russian retains de facto, but not de jure, control of all or part of the Ukrainian territory it currently occupies. I’m at ben.hall@ft.com

Land for Nato membership

To be clear, neither Kyiv nor its supporters are proposing to recognise Russia sovereignty over the one-fifth of Ukrainian territory it has illegally grabbed since 2014. To do so would encourage further Russian aggression and severely undermine the international legal order.

What is envisaged is tacit acceptance that those lands should be regained through diplomatic means in the future. Even that, understandably, is a sensitive issue for Ukrainians, especially when presented as the basis of a compromise with Moscow. Ceding land to gain Nato membership may be the “only game in town”, as a western diplomat told us, but for Ukrainians it remains a taboo, in public at least.

What is being more openly discussed is the nature and timing of the security guarantees Ukraine will need to underpin a settlement.

In Washington Zelenskyy restated his pitch for accelerated membership of Nato.

The problem is the US is against moving beyond the agreed position of the alliance that Ukraine’s “future is in Nato”, that its accession is on an “irreversible path” and that it will be invited to join “when allies agree and conditions are met”. It fears that offering a mutual defence guarantee under the Nato treaty’s Article 5 before the war is over would simply draw in the US and its allies. 

But some of Ukraine’s allies say this need not be the case. “There are ways of solving that,” Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian who stood down as Nato secretary-general this week, told my colleague Henry Foy in a farewell Lunch with the FT interview.

Stoltenberg pointed out that the security guarantees that the US provides to Japan do not cover the Kuril Islands, four of which Japan claims as its own but which are controlled by Russia after being seized by the Soviet Union in 1945.

He also cited Germany, which joined Nato in 1955, despite being divided. Only West Germany was covered by the Nato umbrella. 

“When there is a will, there are ways to find the solution. But you need a line which defines where Article 5 is invoked, and Ukraine has to control all the territory until that border,” he said.

From Bonn to Kyiv

The West German model for Ukraine has been discussed in foreign policy circles for more than 18 months. 

Dan Fried, a former US assistant secretary of state for Europe, was one of the first to make the argument in this piece for Just Security. Kurt Volker, a former US ambassador to Nato and Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, Stoltenberg’s predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen and FT contributing editor Ivan Krastev have made similar arguments.

The idea is also gaining traction in official circles. 

“I don’t think that full restoration of control over the entire territory is a prerequisite,” Petr Pavel, the Czech president and a former Nato general, told Novinky a Právo newspaper.

“If there is a demarcation, even an administrative border, then we can treat [that] as temporary and accept Ukraine into Nato in the territory it will control at that time,” Pavel said.

Most proponents acknowledge that Moscow would hate this idea. Sceptics fear it could provoke an escalation. Nato membership would guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty and allow it to pursue its western orientation, goals that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is determined to destroy.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument came from the US cold war historian Mary Sarotte in this piece for Foreign Affairs. 

Sarotte’s contention is that the terms of Nato membership can be adapted to suit individual circumstances. Norway pledged not to house a Nato base on its territory when it became a founding member. West Germany’s strategy was to make clear its borders were provisional. It had to tolerate division indefinitely but not accept it, and renounce the use of force to retake East Germany. 

Ukraine should, she wrote, define a military defensible border, agree to not permanently station troops or nuclear weapons on its territory unless threatened with attack, and renounce use of force beyond that border except in self-defence.

Nato membership under these terms would be presented to Moscow as a fait accompli, Sarotte added. But there would still be an implicit negotiation: “instead of a land-for-peace deal, the carrot would be no [Nato] infrastructure for peace”.

The bear does the poking

Other analysts argue West Germany is a bad parallel because its borders, though provisional, were recognised by both sides. In Ukraine they are being fought over every day.

Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, head of the German Council on Foreign Relations, told Foreign Policy’s Anchal Vohra last year “you have the potential of all kinds of problems emanating from the revisionism of both sides. For example, it will be up to Vladimir Putin to define Article 5, whether some of his poking falls below or above that threshold.’’ 

There is also the big question of whether the US, let alone its European allies, would be prepared to make the force commitments necessary to defend a Ukraine inside the alliance. While France has warmed to the idea of faster Ukraine Nato accession, German chancellor Olaf Scholz is firmly opposed, fearing his country could be drawn into another war against Russia.

In the US, the Biden administration has so far refused to budge on accelerating Kyiv’s membership. Would a Kamala Harris presidency treat it differently? Could Donald Trump imagine the West German model as part of his proposed “deal” to end the war? Could Zelenskyy sell it to his people?

There are many obstacles still on Kyiv’s Nato path. But the west patently lacks a strategy for Ukraine to prevail.

As Sarotte concludes, following the West German route “would be far preferable, for Ukraine and the alliance, than continuing to put off membership until Putin has given up his ambitions in Ukraine or until Russia has made a military breakthrough. This path would bring Ukraine closer to enduring security, freedom, and prosperity in the face of Russian isolation — in other words, towards victory.”

More on this topic

Russians do break: historical and cultural context for a prospective Ukrainian victory. For War on the Rocks, Ben Connable examines when and in what circumstances Russia might quit Ukraine

Ben’s pick of the week

‘Hizbollah is voiceless’: Lebanon’s most powerful force reels from loss of leader, by Raya Jalabi 

A FORMER homeless man who lived in a tent after his parent kicked him out revealed that he is now worth a whopping £5million.

Adam Pope transformed his life after admitting that he often found himself in trouble during his youth.

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The now-millionaire would regularly host illegal raves and joyride in cars.

He was no stranger to the police who almost threw him in jail after he was caught driving whilst disqualified several times.

Despite his illegal activities, Adam claimed that his parents did everything they could to keep him on the right path.

He said: “I came from a good background; my parents are still together. It’s not like I came from a broken home.”

However, at the age of 20, he was kicked out of his family home in Bolton after his parents became fed up with his behaviour.

Adam began sofa surfing at friends’ houses, but unfortunately, their parents soon grew tired of his disruptive behaviour as well.

He told Manchester Evening News: “I was on a self-destructive trail.

“I’ve always been a nice person – I was never a bad person – I just never knew why I was going down this path or what the cause was.”

With nowhere left to turn, he was forced to sleep on the streets where he would walk for hours “just to pass the time”.

He added: “By the end of the night, I would have walked 20 miles instead of going to sleep.”

Fearing for his safety on the streets, Adam would sleep in his parents’ back garden, ensuring he was out of sight by the time they woke up.

The millionaire Brit added: “I was paranoid about staying in the same place for any length of time.

“I would rarely stay in the same place every night. It became challenging.”

Eventually, he managed to take a tent from their garage, which he used to camp in a local woodland.

Despite his homelessness, Adam continued to attend college to finish his business course. 

Anything and everything would freak you out

Adam Pope

A lecturer confronted him about it after rumours about his living conditions spread.

“I had gone to college and I wasn’t far from finishing,” he said.

“I got there and one of my tutors went, ‘I heard you’re sleeping in a tent in the woods’.

“I got back from college and the very few belongings I had left had been stolen along with my assignments that were due in a few weeks. I couldn’t finish college.”

Adam slept rough for a total of six months, during which he recalled how terrifying “sleeping in the woods” can be.

He added: “All sorts go through your mind. There are all sorts of characters about.

“It was the winter and it was freezing. Anything and everything would freak you out.

“You could hear shuffling about and you would think, ‘What was that?’ and quickly get back in your tent.

“Sleeping was never a thing. You couldn’t switch off properly.

“But I knew I was better off in the tent compared to some of the other places I was in.”

BACK ON TRACK

Fortunately, Adam’s grandma learned about his situation and offered him a place to stay with her.

With a roof over his head, he began trying to get his life back on track and even managed to find employment.

However, it was short-lived after he was fired from several jobs over poor punctuality and other issues.

Failing to hold down jobs, his dad allowed him to work in his business as a tea boy.

This proved to be a humbling moment for the now 43-year-old, who decided he wanted more out of life.

At the age of 27, Adam started a financial services dispute company before going on to launch Spencer Churchill five years later, a law firm based in Bolton.

The company specialises in corporate law, commercial mediation, dispute resolution, employment law, real estate, intellectual property and private client services.

Incredibly, the business now turns over £5million.

Although the business is already hugely successful, Adam has no intention of slowing down – aiming to scale the firm even further in both revenue and size.

But the entrepreneur says he probably wouldn’t be in his position today if it weren’t for the hardships he’s had to overcome in life.

“It’s not where you started, it’s where you finish,” he added

“I’ve had a very difficult early few years. It would have ruined a lot of people.”

Is Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) stock overvalued? This question, while simple on the surface, is extraordinarily hard to answer.

Many investors use a valuation metric called a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio. This popular metric is useful because it measures the stock price against a company’s profits. And in Nvidia’s case, its P/E ratio of 57 certainly looks expensive, considering it’s roughly double the P/E ratio for the S&P 500.

Then again, context is important. Nvidia stock might look expensive now. But it actually trades at a steep discount to its average P/E ratio valuation over the last five years, as the chart below shows.

Many say to avoid stocks with a high P/E ratio. But Nvidia’s high P/E over the last five years didn’t prevent the stock from rising over 2,700%.

Nvidia stock is now cheaper than its five-year average valuation. Moreover, it’s not even the most expensive constituent of the S&P 500. In fact, Axon Enterprise (NASDAQ: AXON) and CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) trade at higher P/E ratios, as of this writing. And even Costco Wholesale (NASDAQ: COST) has been more expensive than Nvidia at times in recent weeks.

Axon provides hardware and software to law enforcement agencies. CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity specialist. And Costco is a grocery and home-goods retail chain known for its membership-business model and low prices. As the chart below shows, none of these companies are necessarily cheap when looking at the P/E ratio.

Should investors sell stocks when their valuations are high? Should they only buy stocks that trade with below-average valuations?

If the path to long-term wealth were this simple, all investors would be rich. The entire investing process could be automated to sell when a P/E ratio was high and buy when a P/E ratio was low. But it’s not that simple. As I said at the start, it’s extraordinarily hard to say when a stock is actually overvalued.

Famous investor Bill Miller succinctly explains why valuing a stock is difficult. Miller has said, “100% of the information you have about a company represents the past, and 100% of the value depends on the future.”

Imagine for a moment a company valued at $10 billion and that has only made $1 million in profit. That stock would look extremely overvalued using the information we have from the past. But Miller reminds us that value has to do with the future. If this same $10 billion company earns $100 billion in profit over the next five years or so, then the stock is a screaming value stock.

In my opinion, whether Nvidia is overvalued or undervalued today largely depends on how sustainable its profit margins are. As the chart below shows, its margin has soared as artificial intelligence has fueled demand for its hardware products.

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I believe it’s reasonable to expect more growth from Nvidia in coming years. And if the company can defend its current profit margins, then the stock likely has more upside. But if its margins drop back down to more normalized levels, the stock might not fare as well. That’s a question that every Nvidia investor needs to answer.

But what about the other three companies that are as expensive or more expensive than Nvidia when looking at the P/E ratios? Well, here’s how I think about their valuations.

Two stocks I’m not so sure about today

Costco is a fantastic business, enjoying stability from 137 million membership card holders with a greater-than 90% renewal rate. But one thing it’s not is high growth. It only had 5% top-line growth in its fiscal 2024, which ended Sept. 1. This led to 14% growth for operating income, which is respectable. But investors shouldn’t expect these growth metrics to materially improve in its fiscal 2025.

That’s why I’m not a fan of the valuation of Costco stock today. Its valuation implies better-than-average long-term growth with the business whereas it’s more likely to be modest.

Turning to Axon, its growth is far superior to Costco, and it should stay robust for quite some time. The company has a competitive advantage because it sells its hardware in a package with its cloud-software services. Agencies are eager to renew their contracts with Axon because they don’t want to find a new solution for all their data. And there are still plenty of places that aren’t using Axon yet that could in the future.

However, I still think there’s room for caution with Axon stock today. Its growth rate has been higher at times in the past. But by contrast, its price-to-sales valuation is almost double its 10-year average.

A clear winner?

CrowdStrike stock is by no means the cheapest stock on this list when using various valuation metrics. But once again, value is about the future. And CrowdStrike’s potential is still so large because of its market. Management projects that the market for its security platform will skyrocket from $100 billion in 2024 to $225 billion in 2028.

For perspective, CrowdStrike only has $3.5 billion in trailing-12-month revenue. In other words, it doesn’t even need to grab a significant portion of this market to have significant growth. Moreover, it has an easy path to growth. Only 29% of its customers use seven or more of its software products, whereas it has more than 20 options to chose from.

Cross-selling to existing customers is an easy path for growth for CrowdStrike. And what’s stunning is that its pipeline for new deals has completely recovered from its catastrophe earlier this year when a software defect caused a massive IT outage. The speed of its rebound strongly implies that its customers love its cybersecurity platform and products.

CrowdStrike stock is quite expensive when looking at the valuation metrics that measure its past results. But when considering its path for future growth, I believe the stock could still be a good value today and perhaps the best value of the four stocks mentioned here.

Should you invest $1,000 in CrowdStrike right now?

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Think Nvidia Stock Is Expensive? These 3 Members of the S&P 500 Trade at Even Higher Valuations. was originally published by The Motley Fool

(Bloomberg) — Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.’s revenue growth accelerated last quarter, sustaining a bounce-back as demand for the servers that drive AI development offset weak smartphone sales.

Most Read from Bloomberg

Apple Inc.’s main manufacturing partner, also known as Foxconn, reported sales rose 20.2% to NT$1.85 trillion ($57.9 billion) for the three months ended September from a year earlier. That compares with the average analyst projection of NT$1.78 trillion compiled by Bloomberg.

The company said the third-quarter sales figure was a record for that period and exceeded its own expectations for growth, without specifying the estimate. Sales increased 19% in the June quarter, the Taiwanese company’s first revenue gain since early 2023.

Foxconn’s sales is helped by a growing business supplying servers containing Nvidia Corp.’s AI chips. In August, it said it expected revenue to grow for the rest of the year. The company’s shares are up more than 85% in 2024.

What Bloomberg Intelligence Says

Hon Hai’s sales growth could accelerate in 2024-25 as the proliferation of AI emerges as the company’s key growth engine and iPhone demand stabilizes. Its vertical integration and global footprint put it in a favorable position as AI server complexity increases and demand for local production rises. More upside could be unlocked in the next few quarters as the supply of Nvidia’s GPUs improves and new models such as Blackwell GB200 are launched. Smart consumer electronics and computing products, which together accounted for 64% of total sales in 1H, could stabilize as smartphone and PC demand bottom out. Its EV contract manufacturing business might be lackluster amid a slowdown in global EV demand, and the contribution to sales could remain marginal.

— Steven Tseng and Sean Chen, analysts

Click here for the research.

Hon Hai and other hardware suppliers are riding a wave of spending on servers and data centers from big tech firms including Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet’s Google. But questions are bubbling up about how long the spending will last without a home run AI application that can bring the tech firms a return on the massive infrastructure investment.

As the world’s biggest assembler of the iPhone, the Taiwanese company’s business still remains closely tied with Apple’s. In the second quarter, about 40% of Foxconn’s revenue was still from the Smart Consumer Electronics category including the iPhone, while Cloud and Networking Products including AI servers, contributed to about 32%.

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Investors had anticipated a rebound in smartphone demand in 2024, though some analysts warn initial signs suggest the latest iPhone hasn’t spurred as much demand as expected.

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