usdaed

There’s a passel of these “exchange-traded funds” – fancy names for baskets of stocks – all claimin’ to be the best way to dip your toes into these faraway lands. But pickin’ the right one? That’s like tryin’ to choose the fastest mule in a stampede. One that stands out, though, is the Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets ETF (VWO 0.02%). It’s got a bit of everything, spread around, and charges a fee so low, it’s practically givin’ the money away. Which, in my experience, is usually a sign of somethin’ clever or somethin’ about to go sideways.

This, naturally, gives one pause. Where will Nvidia be a year hence? A perfectly legitimate question, and one that requires a bit of jolly good thinking. The whole business, you see, hinges on this artificial intelligence business. It’s the latest craze, and everyone’s throwing money at it with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy let loose in a sweetshop.

The company, having successfully monetized a vaguely guilty conscience, now faces the more subtle challenges of maintaining its position. Investors, accustomed to breathless pronouncements of ‘user growth’ and ‘margin expansion’ – terms which, frankly, suggest a limited understanding of human nature – should direct their attention to the structural deficiencies which threaten to undermine this carefully constructed edifice.

Still, there’s always a glimmer of hope, isn’t there? The market, as usual, is being excessively gloomy. Solana, despite its current woes, possesses a certain… resilience. It might, just might, triple in value this year, though one wouldn’t wager the family jewels on it.

They made $1.90 a share last quarter, which was better than the quarter before. Numbers go up, numbers go down. It’s the nature of things. They’re now predicting somewhere between $5.60 and $5.70 for the year. Which means, roughly, they’ll make that. Or maybe they won’t. It’s hard to say. The stock didn’t move much after the last report. People aren’t easily impressed. But it has gone up about 17% recently. Apparently, lower interest rates and the dream of artificial intelligence needing a lot of power are good for utility stocks. A curious thought, that machines will require more electricity. It feels… inevitable. So it goes.

The prevailing explanation, naturally, is Artificial Intelligence. The worry, as it’s being widely circulated, is that AI will somehow render all this perfectly good software… unnecessary. The logic, if you can call it that, is that if AI gets sufficiently clever, it will simply do everything the software does, only better, and at no cost beyond the electricity bill. It’s a bit like fearing the invention of the wheel would put shoemakers out of business. A bit dramatic, perhaps?

The pronouncements echo through the financial districts – whispers of a coming ascendancy, comparisons to Nvidia, a name now synonymous with speculative fervor. Such pronouncements, however, rarely withstand the scrutiny of a dispassionate observer. They are, more often, the carefully constructed narratives of those who profit from the prevailing currents.

Ethereum, in theory, is the cool kid in the blockchain playground. It’s the platform where all these ‘decentralized applications’ – or dApps, because acronyms are essential in tech – hang out. Apparently, these dApps are going to revolutionize everything from finance to gaming. Which is great, if you enjoy waiting five minutes for a digital cat to load. The idea is that every time someone uses one of these apps, they pay a fee in Ether, creating demand. It’s a lovely ecosystem, assuming enough people actually use the apps and aren’t just collecting digital dust.