Semiconductors, you understand, are the new oil, or so the chaps in the know are saying. They’re the building blocks of absolutely everything digital – powering factories, data centers, automobiles, those infernal smartphones, computers, and all sorts of other contraptions. And with everyone going absolutely gaga for artificial intelligence, demand for TSM’s services has been, shall we say, rather brisk. A jolly good show, all around.
These are not recommendations, mind you, but rather observations—notes taken from a slightly detached vantage point, where one can observe the currents without being swept away by them.
If a steady stream of passive income for, oh, the next few decades appeals, one requires companies unlikely to succumb to the rather vulgar habit of suspending their dividend programs. Abbott Laboratories (ABT 0.23%) and Medtronic (MDT +1.71%) present themselves as possessing a certain…sturdiness. Let’s examine, shall we?
I’ve been staring into the abyss of earnings reports, and TSMC’s Q4 numbers… they’re not just good. They’re a flashing neon sign screaming about the impending AI singularity. And Nvidia? Nvidia is strapped to that rocket, clutching a fistful of stock options and praying to whatever silicon deity watches over this madness. The connection is… visceral. You can feel it. Like a low-frequency hum in the bones.
This Palo Alto bunch has been itching to go public for longer than a troll under a bridge, hoping to ride the wave of everyone suddenly wanting a piece of the digital asset pie. Last September, they filed for a US IPO, dreaming of seeing their Class A shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BTGO. Fancy that!
It all starts with cosmic rays. These aren’t rays in the sun-tanning sense, but incredibly energetic particles flung out by, well, exploding stars – supernovas, to be precise. Think of it as stellar shrapnel, travelling at nearly the speed of light. When these particles collide with Earth’s atmosphere, they create a cascade of other particles, including muons. Now, muons are fleeting – they exist for only a few microseconds – but travelling at such speeds, they can cover vast distances. One muon hits every square centimeter of the Earth every minute, apparently. Which, when you think about it, is a frankly astonishing statistic. They’re also about 200 times heavier than electrons, which is important because when they collide with materials, they lose energy, and that energy loss tells you something about what they hit.
The altcoins, ever the opportunists, smirked as Bitcoin flailed. ETH flirted with $3,000, XRP nudged $2.00, and Canton (CC)-that sleeping dragon-awoke with a roar, spitting fire at a 10% surge. The market, it seemed, had finally grown tired of Bitcoin’s midlife crisis.
Nvidia, Alphabet, Apple – a combined $12.2 TRILLION. Let that number soak in. It’s obscene. It’s a monument to the relentless march of technology and the sheer, unadulterated greed of the market. This isn’t about building a better mousetrap; it’s about controlling the entire cheese supply. And the Vanguard Growth ETF? It’s a direct line to the heart of that operation. They’ve been quietly accumulating the spoils, and the numbers don’t lie.
On the 22nd of January, Santiment took to X to declare, “According to our social data, XRP has fallen into ‘Extreme Fear’ territory!” Retail traders, those fickle creatures, now whisper of doom, their pessimism as thick as the air in a Parisian theater. Yet history, that most unreliable of narrators, suggests that such bearish chatter often precedes a rally. Alas, prices dance to the tune of retail expectations only when the plot demands it!
Calacanis, you see, is not a product of the polished academies, nor a scion of venture capital dynasties. He began, if memory serves, by scribbling opinions into the ether – a digital pamphleteer, if you will. AOL, in a moment of inexplicable generosity (or perhaps desperation), acquired his digital broadsheets for a sum that briefly startled the financial press. It was a transaction that proved, if nothing else, that even the most fleeting of digital fancies can command a price. Since then, he’s navigated the turbulent waters of innovation, backing ventures with a gambler’s intuition and a peculiar knack for identifying the genuinely disruptive from the merely fashionable. Uber and Robinhood, those emblems of the modern age, bear the imprint of his early confidence.