The marketplace, a stage ever prone to spectacle, now presents a new diversion. Artificial intelligence, that most ambitious of automatons, threatens to disrupt the established order, and the players, predictably, are in a flurry. A recent tremor, a sell-off amongst the tech cognoscenti on the twenty-third of February, revealed a mounting anxiety – a fear, not of the machine itself, but of its potential to expose the fragility of certain enterprises, and, dare I say, the vanity of those who built them.
Consider, if you will, the case of International Business Machines. A mere announcement – that a fledgling AI, Anthropic’s Claude, might modernize the ancient tongue of COBOL – sent its shares tumbling. A decline of thirteen percent in a single day! One might almost suspect a theatrical exaggeration, were it not for the very real losses suffered by its investors. It is a poignant reminder that even the most venerable of institutions can be undone by a clever turn of phrase – or, in this instance, a line of code.
And then there is the report from Citrini Research, a cautionary tale of unemployment rates soaring above ten percent, of a demand so diminished it threatens to plunge the entire economy into a melancholic state. The authors, wisely, present it as a possibility, not a prophecy. Yet, the market, ever susceptible to a well-crafted dread, reacted as if the curtain had already fallen on prosperity. The S&P 500, in a display of collective nervousness, retreated by one percent.
A Search for Immovable Fortunes
From this disquiet, a curious phenomenon emerges: the pursuit of “HALO” stocks. An acronym, naturally, for “heavy assets, low obsolescence.” It is, in essence, a quest for companies immune to the whims of the digital age, those possessing a solidity that no algorithm can erode. One might ask why these investors didn’t seek such virtues before the threat arose, but then, prudence is rarely rewarded until disaster looms.
What constitutes a HALO stock, you ask? Consider those enterprises that are, shall we say, un-disruptible. Josh Brown, the wit who coined the term, speaks of companies impervious to AI’s advances. He points to ExxonMobil as a prime example. An abundance of tangible assets, of oil wells and refineries, offers a defense against the ethereal onslaught of code. They may even find the machine a useful servant, improving efficiency and, of course, bolstering profits.
Others join this procession of the seemingly secure: the ubiquitous McDonald’s, dispensing sustenance to the masses; FedEx, transporting goods across the globe; the ever-refreshing Coca-Cola; and the manufacturers of essential tools, Caterpillar and Deere. These five, it is noted, have prospered this year, while IBM languishes, and software companies tremble. A curious disparity, is it not? A reminder that the foundations of commerce are, at times, surprisingly…analog.
Naturally, there are others, companies possessing a similar resilience. They deserve a closer look, for in a world obsessed with the fleeting and the ephemeral, there is a certain comfort to be found in the enduring.
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2026-02-28 18:32