Palantir (NYSE:PLTR) has been a name both loved and hated, bought and shorted, talked about and forgotten. The real question for investors here is, what will my returns look like one, five, or 10 years from now? 

For the past month, profit-taking and shorting were the right move. It would be easy to say, with the NASDAQ 100 8% off its highs and PLTR over 40%, that maybe this stock is broken.

In the short term, I would agree. An overflow of new money, Reddit hype, and Cathie Wood buys have resulted in a highflyer becoming a bag holders’ nightmare. Even at recent lows of $21, Palantir was still up over 100% from its direct listing at the end of September. 

That being said, I still believe Palantir is a long-term buy-and-hold.

What You Get With Palantir

From controversy over how the company generates revenue to flat-out conspiracies, it is easy to get lost in the noise and forget what it is you’re even investing in with this company. 

See also: How to Buy Palantir Technologies (PLTR) Stock

With a mission to fight terrorism and protect our nation, Palantir has been adopted by the highest levels of our government and military. But the secret sauce with Palantir is not their government contracts, though they help. It is the time and energy put into creating this software on the government’s dime, while the whole time intending to become something more. 

This is where the technology that has the potential to turn Palantir into an extremely profitable tech company comes in. The platforms offered by Palantir are Gotham and Foundry, while Apollo continuously delivers the software that powers the two. 

Simply put, Foundry can take traditional data management, integration, and mining and turn it into an internal simulation to create the best possible outcome for a company’s success. Now, you’re probably thinking this sounds like something you may have seen in a sci-fi show like Westworld. In a much more realistic way, that is exactly what it is. 

The flaw in traditional data management tactics is they are targeted to individual departments of a business. When there is any single change in one department, it affects the outflows and inflows of other departments. What Foundry can do for businesses is integrate the data from all departments, as one entity, while still adjusting for any change in one single department and make the required changes to the affected departments. 

This is how the data management of Foundry can change the course of any business and help set the best possible path to success. The what-ifs of every business can be simulated in a way like never before, with actual analytics and results of an expansion that might have cost millions. Palantir essentially creates a digital twin of a business model and grows it alongside the actual business while using everything it learns to improve both.

There’s also something worth noting from the company’s last earnings report. Though Palantir was not profitable on an earnings basis, many missed that they offered $1.2 billion in stock compensation to their employees. Typically, this is something we would see with a startup. The fact that we are seeing actions like this from a company that has been around for almost 17 years is a strong indicator that they know what they have is impactful. 

With Foundry, businesses will be able to protect, innovate, and change themselves in ways never imagined, capitalizing on a market that has never been explored, with an addressable market that cannot be measured.

Investing in Palantir is investing in the visions of Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, and many others involved in the journey to change the way we look at automation.

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A technical analysis of PLTR was discussed on Tuesday's Get Technical with Neal: