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Microsoft, it must be conceded, is not yet condemned to obsolescence. Windows, a persistent fixture in the digital landscape, continues to exert a degree of control, a lingering authority. Its cloud operations, too, yield a predictable, if diminishing, revenue stream. However, a subtle erosion is apparent, a quiet unraveling most visible in the realm of artificial intelligence. The company’s Copilot, a personal assistant intended to streamline productivity, functions instead as a symptom of a deeper malaise. The fact that a mere fraction of Microsoft 365 subscribers – a seemingly insignificant 15 million out of 450 – have opted for the premium version suggests a fundamental disconnect, a failure to convince its user base of the utility of its own innovations.

The reason? Artificial Intelligence, of course. A monstrous, ever-hungry beast demanding more and more memory to stuff its digital gullet. Data centers are popping up like particularly unpleasant mushrooms, and each one requires mountains of these memory chips. Supply is struggling to keep up, which, as any sensible market observer knows, means prices go… well, upwards! And upwards, and upwards. The good news for Micron investors is that this peculiar situation is likely to persist for a good few years yet.

According to a filing – a sort of official note left by grown-ups who like paperwork – Liberty Wealth scooped up 367,041 shares of this DFGX thing. Nineteen point three million dollars’ worth, they say. A truly enormous pile of cash, enough to build a small castle… or, you know, buy bonds.

The fund, having once held a rather more substantial stake, now clings to a mere 46,731 shares, valued at a comparatively modest $4.85 million. One pictures the portfolio managers, not in paroxysms of panic, of course, but with the sort of polite dismay one reserves for a slightly overcooked soufflé.

And so, these same bosses, with a rather sheepish grin, started muttering about… hybrids. Not the sleek, futuristic machines they’d been boasting about, but a sort of in-between contraption. A bit of petrol, a bit of electric… a bit of a compromise. You might think this a rather dull development, but oh, there’s a wonderfully sneaky little secret hidden within it.

Pfizer, a name synonymous with pharmaceutical innovation for generations, stands as a testament to both the power and the precariousness of such endeavors. Its dividend, yielding 6.2%, is not merely a number, but a pledge, a commitment to those who have entrusted their capital to its care. The company, however, has not been immune to the shifting winds of fortune. The pursuit of novel treatments is a costly and uncertain undertaking, and even the most formidable enterprises can find themselves adrift when the currents turn against them. Yet, there is a resilience inherent in such giants, a capacity to adapt and overcome.

The designation ‘rare-earth’ is a misnomer. These elements are not, in truth, scarce within the Earth’s crust. The difficulty lies in locating them in concentrations sufficient to justify the cost of extraction. Seventeen chemically similar elements fall under this classification, valued for their magnetic, luminescent, and electrochemical properties. They are integral to electric vehicle motors, robotics, wind turbines, and the ubiquitous electronics that now govern modern life. Their presence is also, disturbingly, felt in military applications – guidance systems, sonar, and the technologies of concealment.

This acquisition of 250,000 shares, representing 2.68% of Kanen’s reportable U.S. equity assets, is…interesting. It’s like deciding the best way to predict the weather is to study the migratory patterns of garden gnomes. Not necessarily wrong, just…unconventional. And potentially requiring a very large collection of gnomes.

ConocoPhillips (COP +2.42%), a name resonating with the muted thrum of extraction, presents itself as an opportunity. Or, perhaps, it is we who are presented to it. The company, headquartered in Houston, exists within a geography defined by subterranean wealth, a network of basins stretching across the lower 48 states, supplemented by assets elsewhere – a web of obligations and entitlements extending to the furthest reaches of the map. The recent acquisition of Marathon Oil feels less like expansion and more like an absorption – a consolidation of processes within a larger, inscrutable system.