I watched EssilorLuxottica stock tumble nearly 6% Tuesday and couldn’t suppress the bitter laugh bubbling up my throat. Here we go again. The makers of Ray Bans partnered with Meta on smart glasses only to watch Google casually announce competing AI spectacles, vaporizing a cool $4 billion from their market cap before lunch. It’s like watching lions take down a gazelle in slow motion, except the gazelle paid for VIP seating at the savanna banquet.

What fascinates me isn’t the predictable market reaction, but how consistently companies misunderstand their dance partners in tech. Remember when retailers celebrated Amazon Web Services as a glorious cloud solution? Then watched in horror as Amazon used their infrastructure data to launch competing products? Or when newspapers embraced Facebook’s publishing tools only to become indentured content servants? EssilorLuxottica just became the latest lamppost in Silicon Valley’s dog walking franchise.

The timing feels especially vicious considering global investors already have enough indigestion. The entire European market held its breath Tuesday waiting for Jerome Powell’s Federal Reserve to whisper sweet nothings about rate cuts. Money markets priced in an 87% chance of relief, which in central banking terms means they’ve already ordered the champagne and booked the hotel room. I’ve seen this movie before. The 2019 “insurance cuts” that preceded pandemic chaos. The 2007 easing right before Lehman Brothers detonated. When central bankers start handing out monetary morphine, check your emergency exits.

Meanwhile, European policymakers demonstrated their own special brand of surrender. The EU proudly gutted corporate sustainability reporting requirements while Marie Bjerre of Denmark called this “boosting competitiveness.” Translation, We lost our nerve. Sustainability matters until German factories complain about paperwork. Having covered Brussels for fifteen years, I recognize this dance. Regulation tightens when economies boom. Loosens when recession looms. Principles have expiration dates, especially when French farmers start blocking highways.

Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump casually reshuffled the AI chessboard by offering Nvidia conditional permission to sell H200 chips to China. His price tag? Twenty five percent of proceeds flowing back to Uncle Sam. How wonderfully mafiaesque. The same administration that spent years tightening semiconductor exports now runs a protection racket. Imagine Pablo Escobar with a Treasury seal. This, after a federal judge overturned Trump’s ban on wind projects, allowing Orsted to resume construction on majority completed turbines off New England. Policy zigzags like a drunk college student.

Let’s discuss what nobody at Davos will admit. The AI hardware gold rush has less to do with consumer demand than executive FOMO. Google Glass failed spectacularly in 2013 because nobody wanted to look like a blinking cyborg at Starbucks. But now, with “generative AI” stapled to every product roadmap, companies are reviving augmented reality like Frankenstein’s monster dipped in ChatGPT. There’s no evidence humans actually want AI glasses, but when has evidence stopped a hype cycle?

I’ve strapped on every prototype from Microsoft HoloLens to Snap Spectacles. They all share the same fatal flaws, sweaty nose bridges and drained batteries and that faintly ridiculous feeling of whispering to your frames in public. Our facial real estate remains stubbornly resistant to commercialization. Yet the market punishes traditional eyewear makers because Google might crack the code this time? Please. The last wearable revolution gave us juiceros and Fitbits gathering dust in kitchen drawers.

Meanwhile, European investors navigate corporate whiplash. Deutsche Bank downgraded Volvo and Daimler Truck holdings, citing U.S. market contractions. Truck manufacturers struggling with demand should surprise nobody who tracks freight indexes. But the street continues pricing stocks like we’re perennially one quarter from paradise. I recall covering auto suppliers during the 2008 collapse. The denial plays identically today, just with Tesla logos plastered over the rot.

The Magnum Ice Cream IPO provided Tuesday’s comic relief. Unilever spun off the dessert division with great fanfare, only to watch shares freeze solid on debut. Nobody wants luxury ice cream stocks when rates could swing thirty basis points. Risk appetite disappears faster than a pint of double chocolate in my freezer.

Here’s what truly chaps my hide about these market theatrics. The same institutional investors dumping EssilorLuxottica will flood back into Google’s parent Alphabet within weeks. No memory. No consequences. Asset managers treat stock dips like clearance sales, ignoring structural threats. Google could bury eyewear partners precisely because antitrust enforcement remains as toothless as a toddler. European regulators fined the company $5 billion in 2018 for Android monopolistic practices. Did anything change? Does Android still dominate? Check your pocket.

We witnessed similar myopia in wind energy stocks. Orsted dipped slightly despite a judge reviving their offshore project. Long term contracts mean nothing when traders fixate on quarterly whispers. Green energy firms face political footballing across administrations while oil companies lock in thirty year drilling leases. No wonder Vestas shares barely flickered. Short termism strangles sensible investing.

Let me offer three predictions nobody’s brave enough to make at CNBC. First, Google’s AI glasses will flop harder than their stadia gaming service. They’ll sell fewer than 200k units worldwide before quietly rebranding the project in 2027. Second, European sustainability rollbacks will create more accounting scandals than Enron by 2030. Unverified corporate responsibility claims always do. Third, Trump’s Nvidia profit sharing scheme will collapse faster than his crypto ventures once lawyers realize export laws can’t become profit centers.

The real tragedy unfolds beyond ticker tapes. Consider the Italian craftsmen at EssilorLuxottica factories in Agordo, where premium eyewear gets hand polished. Or Danish technicians assembling Orsted turbines in Esbjerg. Their job security evaporates because American tech giants and politicians treat global markets like personal playgrounds. Workers don’t get analyst calls warning their industry might become collateral damage in some billionaire’s passion project.

On a brighter note, isn’t capitalism marvelous?

As central banks shuffle toward rate decisions, remember what matters. Corporate partnerships with tech titans often resemble children holding hands with grizzly bears. Eventually, the bear remembers it’s a bear. Regulatory courage dissolves faster than Alka Seltzer in hot water when lobbyists whisper recession fears. And markets will keep swinging between euphoria and terror no matter how many glasses projects get announced or abandoned.

Personally, I’ll stick to regular prescription lenses. At least they won’t try to sell me ads between blinks.