The AI Boom and the Devil’s Dividend

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Behold, the market’s latest obsession: silicon and algorithms, two ancient forces now donning the garb of progress. The “Magnificent Seven,” as they are called, have summoned a gilded age where free cash flow is alchemy and market caps bloom like mushrooms after rain. Yet one might ask, as the devil once asked in a Moscow apartment, *”What is the cost of this feast?”* The answer, whispered through the cobblestones of Wall Street, is a 25-year silence-until now.

These titans, with their $1 trillion crowns, have turned the S&P 500 into a circus where eight performers hoist 37% of the ring’s weight. Nvidia, that digital Icarus, soars at 7.8%; Microsoft, the old fox, naps at 6.9%. Apple, Amazon, and the rest-oh, the alphabet soup of ambition-each drowns their shareholders in promises of AI’s endless spring. But here lies the rub: when the crowd chants for miracles, the stage is primed for collapse.

The Devil’s Algorithm

In 2000, the internet’s siren song lured investors into a delusion so grand it could only end in flame. Now, the same melody plays, but with a new chorus: *”AI will save us!”* Venture capitalists, once content to fund dreams of paperclips, now fund dreams of neural networks. The S&P 500, that venerable beast, has grown fat on five years of 20% gains, its belly full of quantitative easing and the delusion that this time, it’s different. The devil, ever hungry, has taken a seat on the board.

And yet, is this truly a bubble? Or merely a new kind of madness? Microsoft, that octogenarian in a tech suit, boasts a credit rating better than the U.S. government. Nvidia’s cash flow could buy a small country. But what of the dividend hunter? These companies, for all their splendor, offer little in the way of quarterly dividends. They are phoenixes-beautiful, but incinerating their own nests to rise. The devil, after all, does not pay coupons.

The Tragedy of the Commons

History, that fickle harlot, never repeats itself neatly. The dot-com crash was a storm of vaporware and unchecked hubris; this, perhaps, is a storm of silicon and self-importance. The Magnificent Seven may yet falter, their valuations as fragile as a spider’s web in a hurricane. But the dividend hunter knows this: when the dust settles, it is not the giants who endure, but the ants who carry crumbs. Dollar-cost averaging, for all its mundanity, is the alchemy of survival. And for the long haul? One must hold AI like a saint holds faith-neither blindly, nor with trembling hands.

So let the devil toast the next earnings call with a glass of champagne. We shall toast with patience. 🧨

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2025-08-13 03:12