If you asked the average American to name a company digging up these little bits of the planet, MP Materials (MP +1.77%) would probably come to mind. They’ve got the publicity. A $400 million deal with the Department of Defense tends to do that for you. Perfectly reasonable. But there’s another one, USA Rare Earth (USAR +9.07%), and they’re aiming for a slightly different niche. A niche, you understand, is just a comfortable place to be ignored.
I plan to add to my position in 2026. Not because there’s anything wrong with it now, but because, let’s be real, everything feels a little… precarious. I want something boringly solid. Something that won’t suddenly decide to pivot to NFTs. This is my “never sell” stock, and here’s why I’m treating it like a vintage wine – acquire and let it age.
MGK, they say, is about growth. The kind that comes with a hefty price tag and a whole lot of faith in the tech sector. IWM, on the other hand, is a scattergun approach, spreading bets across a thousand small caps. It’s the difference between backing a sure thing and playing the lottery. Neither’s a guarantee, but one feels…cleaner.
For those with a slightly more… grounded perspective, for those who prefer to observe rather than participate in this manic spectacle, there remain opportunities. Opportunities that don’t require a pact with a dubious algorithm. Two such shadows have caught my eye: Sprouts Farmers Market (SFM +1.26%) and Remitly Global (RELY 0.77%). They are, shall we say, islands of relative sanity in a sea of algorithmic frenzy.
It’s not that I dislike money, of course. It’s just… diversifying feels like a responsible adult activity, and responsible adult activities are often profoundly dull. But then I started noticing something. All this AI, all this processing power… it requires electricity. An obscene amount of it. Like, enough to make my electric bill blush. And where does that electricity often come from? Natural gas. Which brings us to Kinder Morgan (KMI 0.40%).
But here’s the thing. I’m looking at this, and I’m thinking, maybe, just maybe, it’s not a disaster. It’s just… irritating. Like when you order a burrito, and they put the sour cream on the bottom. On the bottom! It’s a structural integrity issue, frankly. And now Chipotle is having a little trouble. A little. They’re anticipating a slight dip in same-store sales. “Low single-digit range,” they say. Like that’s comforting. It’s still a dip! Apparently, people with less money are eating less Chipotle. Who knew? It’s a complex economic landscape, I guess. It’s always the little guy, isn’t it?
Goldman Sachs is predicting over $500 billion in AI spending this year. Let that sink in. That’s enough to buy a small country. Or a lot of GPUs. So, who’s going to get a piece of this digital pie? Forget the hype. Forget the metaverse. Let’s talk about companies actually making things. And by “things,” I mean profit.
Yet, despite this impressive dominion, Amazon, over the past half-decade, has performed with a curious lack of alacrity, lagging, as it were, behind the broader market’s exuberant gallop. A mere 44% ascent in share price, a figure that, while respectable in isolation, pales in comparison to the S&P 500’s 79% and the Nasdaq Composite’s 73%. A peculiar deceleration for a company so often heralded as the vanguard of progress. One might almost suspect a deliberate, if subtle, act of contrarianism.
The question, then, is not whether this fintech enterprise can flourish, but whether it will merely…persist. A subtle distinction, perhaps, but one that often separates the genuinely promising from the merely…adequate.
The situation is paradoxical. Some companies involved in AI – those providing the necessary hardware, for instance – are not unreasonably priced. They trade at multiples comparable to other established technology firms. However, certain companies focused on applying AI – particularly those not yet accessible to public investment – command valuations that defy logic. This disparity is crucial. It suggests that the market is not irrationally exuberant across the board, but selectively so.