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Ah, but what could possibly be amiss in this grand spectacle of electronic warfare? One must ponder, for the world is a stage, and AMD stands in a dimly lit corner, clutching its stock like a child clings to a tattered toy, its face a mask of bewilderment.

Enter stage left, two titans vying for mastery in this mystical domain: IonQ (IONQ), sprightly and spry, was the first to take a swan dive into public waters back in 2021, while the venerable International Business Machines (IBM), that ancient relic of tech-fueled wizardry, let loose its very own quantum computer into the cloud, a whimsical foray initiated way back in 2016.

Figma (FIG), the scrappy upstart with a $26 billion market cap, is the startup that got away. Adobe (ADBE), the $150 billion tech titan, is the aging rockstar trying to stay relevant. One is a caffeinated designer’s dream; the other, a corporate behemoth with a slight case of growth fatigue. Which one deserves your hard-earned cash? Let’s dissect this like a particularly dramatic episode of Shark Tank.

This morning’s spectacle unfolded when Intel revealed that Nvidia (NVDA), previously mistaken for that enigmatic, rivally entity playing the part of the villain at the sci-fi crossover film nobody asked for, will be investing a princely sum of $5 billion in Intel. The purpose? To assist the erstwhile opponent in conjuring up a magical realm of AI infrastructure (think of it as the next . . . well, the next everything) and personal computing contraptions.

However, all of this shiny future tech comes at a price. As of last week, Intuitive’s stock is in a bit of a rut, down 14% for the year. It’s like a stock-market version of an awkward high school reunion. Intuitive’s price recently dipped to $425-its lowest point in the last 52 weeks. It’s had a slight rebound since, but it’s still making the walk of shame back from that dip.

Let me take you back to 2011, a simpler time when tele-a-what-now? was a term you’d only hear in sci-fi. That year, Progressive took the industry by storm with the very first mass-market telematics device. If you’ve ever been tempted by a discount on your insurance in exchange for a little gadget that monitors how you drive-well, that’s telematics. It’s as if someone decided, “Let’s use technology to track people’s driving habits and make them feel okay about it.”

The “Ten Titans”-Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Broadcom, Tesla, Oracle, and Netflix-now account for a substantial 39% of the S&P 500. And, as if this were not enough to whet one’s appetite for capital, the technology sector alone claims a third of the entire index.

In the rustbelt of e-commerce, where giants trample small hands, Shopify remains a plowshare in the hands of the overlooked. Tobias Lütke, its founder-CEO, is no court jester of Wall Street. He’s a man who built a kingdom not for himself, but for the millions of merchants who sell socks, spices, and secondhand dreams. Since 2015, the company has turned 12% of American shoppers into unwitting allies of its cause. Yet here it stands, priced like a cathedral-106 times free cash flow, 19 times sales. Is it a temple or a tollbooth? Time will judge. But for now, it’s a machine humming with the grit of its users.