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Think of the CPI as the celebrity gossip of inflation – gets all the attention, but often a bit… sensationalized. The PCE? That’s the Ken Burns documentary of inflation – thorough, meticulously researched, and likely to put you to sleep if you’re not caffeinated. But the Fed? They’re the Ken Burns types. They prefer a good, solid, deeply-researched metric. They’re aiming for 2% inflation, and they’re judging everything against this PCE number. It’s like a high school English teacher grading our economic report card.

The analysts, those oracles of modest foresight, had anticipated earnings of $3.16 per share on revenues just shy of $1.4 billion. EPAM, with a flourish, delivered $3.26 on revenues marginally exceeding that figure. A triumph, one might suggest, though one quickly discovers that appearances, particularly in the realm of finance, can be deceiving.

The prevailing estimations – those ephemeral pronouncements of the oracles known as ‘analysts’ – suggest a sustained expansion of this AI domain. A growth rate of 31% annually through 2033, culminating in a revenue of approximately $3.5 trillion. Such figures, while impressive, are merely coordinates on a map of infinite potential, a Library of Babel containing every possible computation. We turn our attention, therefore, to the specific cases of Nvidia and SoundHound, not to predict their success, but to trace their paths within this labyrinth.

Amazon. A name that echoes with the promise of convenience, yet delivers it at the cost of countless small shops, of faces lost to the digital ether. It is a paradox – a behemoth built on the backs of delivery drivers, warehouse workers, and the erosion of local communities. Yet, the machine works. Technically, it’s a blend of calculation and consumption, a cloud of data draped over the mundane. They claim it trades at a discount to Walmart and Costco, but what is a discount when the price is measured in human hours? Still, the machine’s efficiency is undeniable. Robots and algorithms, these are the new serfs, toiling without complaint, driving down costs, and increasing the yield for those at the top.

This shift, naturally, has been most advantageous to those companies which distribute a portion of their earnings to shareholders. Such strategies, though lacking the immediate allure of speculative ventures, possess a quiet dignity, and under circumstances where prudence is valued, they may, one observes, provide a most agreeable return. A steady income, after all, is rarely unwelcome.

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.