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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.

One might recall, with a degree of amusement, a pronouncement earlier this month, proposing a limitation upon these rates – a constraint, it was declared, to be enacted with all possible haste. The notion, though perhaps well-intentioned, appears to lack a certain practical consideration. For, as any observer of the financial world knows, such matters are rarely settled by mere declaration, but require the more cumbersome process of legislative approval. And Congress, as is so often the case, proves a body less easily swayed by executive pronouncements than might be desired.

Two pieces of legislation are on the horizon, and they could be the difference between a ghost town and a functioning marketplace. It’s not about making everyone rich, mind you. It’s about bringing a little order to the chaos, giving the cautious among us—the institutions with real capital—a reason to step in. A reason to believe the ground won’t swallow their investment whole.

Bill Ackman, a man who moves mountains of money, has spoken before the filings were even made official. He’s laid his cards on the table, a bold stroke in a game where silence is often mistaken for strength. He’s put a considerable portion of his fund, Pershing Square, into the workings of Meta Platforms – two billion dollars’ worth, a sum that feels both immense and, in the grand scheme, a mere ripple in the ocean of capital. But ripples can become waves, and waves can shape the shore.

LiDAR technology uses lasers and sensors to instantly and accurately measure distances and movement in the real world. This allows self-driving cars to create a constantly updating 3D map of their surroundings, helping them avoid obstacles like traffic, road closures, and people.

Kevin Hassett, a perfectly sensible fellow, suggests this should encourage further cuts in interest rates. A boon for businesses, naturally. But the S&P 500, that rather excitable barometer of public sentiment, decided to take a different view. One is beginning to suspect it operates on pure whim.