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Progress, they call it. I call it a desperate scramble for altitude before the whole thing crashes and burns. But Joby has been making moves. They’re ahead in the FAA certification race, which, in this business, is like being the first rat to reach the cheese. Deals with Toyota, Delta, Uber… all these corporate behemoths throwing money at a dream of flying taxis. It’s beautiful, really. A symphony of greed and technological hubris.

The company, known simply as TSMC, had enjoyed a year of peculiar blessings. Shares had climbed, a dizzying ascent fueled by the insatiable hunger for chips, those tiny, inscrutable gods of the modern age. Fifty-nine percent, they said, a number that felt less like a statistic and more like a coded message. But the market, as Old Man Chen well knew, is a fickle mistress. A surge today is merely the prelude to a reckoning tomorrow. The reports spoke of a projected 26.3% increase in overall semiconductor revenue, a number that, while impressive, felt less like a guarantee and more like a postponement of the inevitable. A momentary reprieve in a world governed by entropy.

Enter CoreWeave. It’s a name that doesn’t immediately conjure images of silicon and supercomputers, but that’s precisely the business they’re in: renting out computing muscle to those who need it, providing access to the latest chips from the aforementioned Nvidia. When the company went public, it surged, becoming one of those AI stocks that everyone was talking about. It seemed a sure thing, a guaranteed path to riches. Or, at least, a decent return.

He laid it all out at the ICR Conference, didn’t he? A lot of promises about “deeply addressing customer problems.” Which, translated from corporate-speak, probably means subtly manipulating us into buying more things we don’t need. They’re not solving problems; they’re creating solutions to problems they manufactured. It’s brilliant, really. And terrifying.

Tyler Radke, a gentleman of some discernment at Citigroup, anticipates a continuation of this agreeable state of affairs. He has, with a degree of confidence that is not entirely unwarranted, upgraded his assessment of the stock, suggesting a price of $235. His reasoning, gleaned from conversations with those who direct the affairs of large organizations, is that the demand for Palantir’s services will only increase as budgets expand and the applications for their technology multiply. Moreover, the American government, ever mindful of its own security, appears determined to modernize its systems, a circumstance which, naturally, bodes well for those who provide such services.

Take Vertiv, for example. A perfectly respectable manufacturer of cooling and electrical systems. They’ve multiplied their dividend fivefold in three years. A commendable effort, certainly. But the yield? A paltry 0.1%. The share price, you see, has taken flight, propelled by the insatiable demand for servers and data centers. It’s a cruel irony. The dividend, meant to reward loyalty, is swallowed whole by the very growth it signifies. Micron Technology suffers a similar fate. A fleeting 0.9% yield, now reduced to a whisper. One begins to suspect a conspiracy. A deliberate attempt to mock the patient investor.

The company, unlike some of its rivals, did not succumb to the siren song of immediate expansion, of chasing volume at the expense of careful construction. A curious decision, perhaps, in a world obsessed with quarterly pronouncements, but one that hinted at a longer view. Indeed, the number of carriages delivered in 2025 diminished from the prior year, a fact readily seized upon by the more excitable observers. Yet, within this seeming setback lay a subtle strategy: a preparation, a focusing of resources upon the creation of a new model, one intended not for the wealthy few, but for a broader stratum of society. This ‘R2’, as it is known, is to be a carriage of modest cost, yet possessing the virtues of range, comfort, and a swiftness that would surely turn heads. A bold undertaking, to be sure, and one fraught with peril.

The disposal of company shares by those with privileged access to information.

Let us proceed, then, to examine this entity, to understand the currents that propel it, and to acknowledge, with a degree of sober realism, the inevitable vulnerabilities inherent in any such undertaking.