Palantir bought $50M in gold bars in August as cash pile grows

I'm no economist, but companies putting their cash away into assets like this is a bad sign right? My understanding is that money flowing indicates a healthy economy of people unafraid to spend.

Peter Thiel, himself, mocked this type of behavior from Google when Eric Schmidt couldn't find anything else to do with Google's hoards of cash rather than buying back shares. Thiel likened paying a dividend to admitting that your shareholders know what to do with the money more than you. It's even worse in Palantir's case because it is supposed to be a growth company that should be reinvesting the capital into growth.

Gold as a hedge against inflation always confuses me.<p>Why not buy a productive asset instead? Maybe even your own shares if they’re actually good?<p>Why would you sell your stock if you have no need for the cash? If I wanted to invest in gold, then let me do that myself. I have many better options than Panantir.

Interesting choice, gold has lost 5-10% of its value measured in USD over the last 10 years. One of the most inflationary periods ever and it hasn&#x27;t even kept up with fiat.

Palantir is also buying up Bitcoin. Palantir is also trying to create more customers by buying startups via SPACs and giving them its software. Palantir is also largely run at the whims of its eccentric presidents-for-life and printing stock to compensate them like there&#x27;s no tomorrow. Palantir is many things, and this is just one. I doubt it tells any larger truth about the market by itself.

My late friend who was a BFF of Peter Thiel because they were Stanford chums, used to describe Palantir as an evil company wrapped up in Harry Potter metaphors despite taking money from them as a consultant. I see nothing but confirmation bias here. Commence the downvotes for even mentioning this.

Is it common for companies to buy gold like this?<p>Where does someone (or in this case some company) store a big pile of gold bars?

Nothing says growth like blowing a bunch of money on unproductive assets.

selling stock in a loss making company to buy gold bars? great.

Palantir is unprofitable?