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February 19th brings the reckoning, the quarterly report. Folks are asking if now’s the time to buy. It’s a fair question. A man has to consider the ground beneath his feet.

However, to declare all investments perilous would be to succumb to a pessimism as unproductive as it is widespread. Even amidst such turbulence, certain enterprises possess a resilience, a capacity to weather the storm and, perhaps, even flourish in its aftermath. It is to these, then, that we shall turn our attention, examining their strengths and weaknesses with a dispassionate eye, seeking not merely profit, but an understanding of the forces that shape our economic destiny.

They’re deep-sea miners, you see. Not the sort who strap on a helmet and go looking for coal, but a company trying to vacuum up polymetallic nodules from the bottom of the Pacific. Nodules, for the uninitiated, are lumpy little formations containing metals like nickel, cobalt, and manganese. Apparently, there are enough of these things scattered around the Clarion-Clipperton Zone – a rather remote bit of ocean – to make all our current land-based reserves look a bit…modest. The U.S. Geological Survey reckons it’s got more nickel, cobalt, and manganese than everything we’ve already dug up. And a comparable amount of copper. It’s a bit like discovering a spare planet, really, only this one is already here, just…underwater.

This season of earnings reports has confirmed a predictable truth: the building of things – data centers, in this case – continues apace. The large owners of these digital estates are committing considerable sums, driven by an insatiable appetite for processing power. It is a grand undertaking, really, though one wonders if they pause to consider what all this calculating truly means. Nvidia, of course, finds itself well-positioned. Their graphics processing units remain, for the moment, the engines of this infrastructure. They offer not just the chips themselves, but increasingly, the entire solution – a neat package, though one suspects the margins are more substantial than the innovation.

The numbers, as of Thursday’s close, are down 19.9% from last Friday. Which, let’s be clear, is not a percentage one enjoys seeing. It’s the sort of number that makes you question all your life choices, and possibly the existence of a rational market.

A billion dollars. Nearly. In revenue. Doubled year-over-year. Let that sink in. These aren’t incremental gains, this is a goddamn tidal wave of cash washing over the balance sheet. And what do we get? A collective shrug? The analysts, those self-appointed arbiters of value, were expecting… more. More! As if the market operates on some divine right of endless expansion. They wanted $1.15 billion. Alnylam delivered just under. Close enough for government work, I always say, but not close enough for Wall Street’s insatiable appetite. The net income? A respectable $169.8 million. Enough to fund a small nation, or at least a very lavish shareholder party.

Forget the shimmering mirage. There are actual companies, building things, making money, without needing a constant IV drip of venture capital. Two names. Two beacons in this digital wasteland. I’ve been digging, sweating, and mainlining data for weeks. And I’m here to tell you, these are the plays. The ones that won’t leave you clutching your portfolio as the market goes into freefall.

Units of Cryptocurrency Lost: 12. Hours Spent Watching Charts: 9. Number of Panicked Texts to Friends: 24. It’s a work in progress, this whole ‘sensible investor’ thing. Anyway, Sandisk makes NAND flash memory. Apparently, it’s quite important. They spun it off from Western Digital a year ago, which sounds… complicated. It’s one of the few pure-plays in this market, which means I have to pretend to understand what that means. Apparently, NAND has always been a bit of a rollercoaster, but now it seems like it’s at the start of a “supercycle.” A supercycle. It sounds… exhausting.

Both funds, in theory, give you a slice of the American consumer, those relentless shoppers who keep the economy from completely collapsing. They’re stuffed with companies that sell things people will always need, even when the market is doing its impression of a startled meerkat. The question, then, isn’t whether these are good sectors—they are—but which fund does it better. And, honestly, it’s a surprisingly subtle difference.