So, you’ve got five hundred bucks burning a hole in your pocket? Good. Don’t buy shoes. Buy exposure. Specifically, exposure through an exchange-traded fund, or ETF. It’s a grown-up way of saying “basket of stocks.” And the one I’m looking at? The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. (VOO +0.06%). It’s got a cool $1.5 trillion sloshing around inside. Which, if you think about it, is a terrifying amount of trust. People really believe in this thing.
Since the commencement of the current cycle, beginning again on a designated date – January 20, 2025 – the pattern has, predictably, persisted. Through the closing bell of February 11, the same indices registered further gains: 15%, 16%, and 18%. One begins to suspect the very act of measurement is not a recording of reality, but a self-fulfilling prophecy, a bureaucratic ritual performed to legitimize the inevitable.
The current dip, then – a momentary loss of altitude – invites a question, not of panic, but of precise calculation. Is this merely a shedding of excess plumage, or a genuine vulnerability? The answer, as always, lies in the details, in the delicate architecture of the thing itself.
There are those who readily see the threat to the traditional rocketeers – United Launch Alliance, Rocket Lab, Arianespace. Obvious targets, naturally. They build cathedrals of fire and steel, while SpaceX… SpaceX seems to be seeding the heavens themselves. A valuation of $1.5 trillion is spoken of, a sum that feels less like a financial calculation and more like a geological epoch. A mere $50 billion, a droplet in this cosmic ocean, would dwarf the entire capitalization of Rocket Lab, and exceed, by a considerable margin, the space-bound revenues of Lockheed Martin. It is a disparity that speaks of a changing wind.
I’ve been obsessively tracking dividend stocks, you see. It’s a slightly desperate attempt to feel like an adult with financial responsibility. And PepsiCo, apparently, is one of these ‘Dividend Kings’. Which sounds…regal. And possibly slightly terrifying. They’ve been increasing their dividend payments for 54 years. 54! That’s longer than I’ve been alive, and frankly, it’s a bit intimidating. It’s like they’re mocking my inability to consistently save for a rainy day.
Ethereum’s current trajectory appears to be heavily influenced by the burgeoning world of Real World Asset (RWA) tokenization. Now, tokenization, in essence, is taking things that exist in the real world – stocks, property, your Aunt Mildred’s collection of thimbles – and turning them into digital representations on a blockchain. (It’s a bit like turning lead into gold, only with more coding and significantly less alchemy. Though, frankly, the line is becoming increasingly blurred.) Currently, around $24.1 billion of these tokenized assets are being traded, and Ethereum, remarkably, holds about $14.6 billion of that. Which means, if you were to visualize this as a digital real estate market, Ethereum is currently experiencing a rather enthusiastic building boom.
The year past was, by most measures, a good one. Not a year of explosive gains, but of solid building. The company’s three pillars—asset management, wealth solutions, and operating businesses—each contributed, not as separate entities, but as parts of a single, interwoven structure. The asset management arm swelled to $603 billion, a considerable weight of responsibility, and with it, a $3 billion increase in fee-related earnings. The wealth solutions side saw a 24% rise, fueled by prudent investment and a growing base of insured assets. And the operating businesses—infrastructure, renewable power, industrial services, and real estate—continued to generate a flow of cash, the lifeblood of any enterprise.
The self-correcting mechanisms of the market—often as subtle and insidious as the fading of a daguerreotype—are at work. It would not be imprudent, therefore, to consider a re-allocation of capital, a gentle tilting of the portfolio towards those undervalued entities that have been languishing in the periphery. Herewith, a trio of specimens, poised, perhaps, for a decade of subtle bloom.
Presented below is a preliminary assessment of two such cryptocurrencies, suitable for consideration over extended, perhaps indefinite, periods.
There’s a good deal to commend it, this CoreWeave. They’ve cornered a rather lucrative niche – renting out the computational muscle needed for all this AI tomfoolery. And not just any muscle, mind you, but the top-of-the-line stuff from Nvidia – a firm with a reputation as solid as a bank vault. A most promising arrangement, wouldn’t you agree? They seem to have the knack for providing exactly what the market craves, which, in this instance, is computing power by the hour. A bit like hiring a particularly strong fellow to move some furniture, only with silicon chips instead of brawn.