Why Palantir's stock is down despite a stellar first quarter

Palantir's stock is down after a gangbusters first quarter , and while the earnings report showed one or two tiny blemishes, signs of any real weakness for the company were basically nonexistent, even by the hyperbolic standards of tech-sector performance. The lukewarm investor response more likely signals wariness of soaring valuations and fatigue with idiosyncratic metrics at a moment of genuine uncertainty in big tech and national security, analysts said. Palantir has forward price-to-earnings of roughly 85 times and forward price-to-free-cash-flow of about 66 times, according to FactSet – eye-popping multiples at a time when leaps in artificial intelligence are forcing meetings at the White House and running roughshod over the legacy software business. PLTR 1D mountain Palantir shares in the past day Anthropic said its new Mythos model can reverse engineer hacks on even closed-source software. The company has reportedly been facing pressure from the White House to limit its rollout on security concerns. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai met with senior Trump administration officials last week about boosting AI processing power to make sure the government can "maintain its own defenses," according to The New York Times . The high-stakes confabs follow the software rout labeled "SaaS-maggedon" that's seen valuations within the historically high-margin sector take a dive. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) has fallen more than 16% year to date. …