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It’s a curious thing, this habit of tech stocks moving in unison. One company announces a breakthrough, and suddenly the entire sector seems to bask in the glow of progress, like a group of startled moths fluttering around a single lightbulb. September saw this phenomenon in full swing. For instance, Rigetti’s 14% jump on Sept. 11 was partly due to IonQ’s restructuring-a business pivot that, to the uninitiated, sounds about as thrilling as watching paint dry. But Rigetti, it seems, was cooking its own batch of market-moving alchemy.

October, that most auspicious month when the Veil Between Budgets² thins, brings with it earnings revelations and the sacred locking of purses for 2026. Behold three companies whose spellsheets might charm a dividend hunter’s heart: CoreWeave (CRWV), the GPU cloud conjurer challenging the Hyperscaling Trinity; Nebius (NBIS), a dark horse now hitched to Microsoft’s comet; and SoundHound AI (SOUN), whose voice-activated charms finally find mortal patrons.

Cullen’s divestment, as per the SEC’s apocryphal records, reduced its Chevron stake to 904,996 shares, a mere 1.48% of its reportable assets. One might imagine Professor Alaric Voss, the fictional scholar of financial recursion, noting this reduction as a step toward equilibrium-or perhaps a misstep in the ever-shifting maze of portfolio strategy. The remaining shares now occupy a shadowed alcove in Cullen’s portfolio, their value oscillating like the pendulum of Babel’s forgotten clock.

Amidst its sprawling enterprise lies a singular trait that beckons for investment today: its profound growth optionality.

The numbers, though modest, carried the weight of a long-forgotten promise. Revenue, after years of slumping, had inched upward-a flicker of light in a room still cloaked in shadows. Yet, as the sun dipped below the horizon of confidence, the shadows lengthened, revealing the cracks in the foundation. Gross margins, once a fortress, now sagged like a weary traveler, their decline measured not in percentages but in the silent sighs of investors who had seen too many such revivals.

Let us examine the matter with due gravity. The concept of quantum computers – machines that harness the spectral dance of superposition to process data – remains as elusive as Margarita’s lost brooch. While rivals chase ion-trapped qubits like hounds on a scent, QCi has chosen photons, those slippery wraiths of light, as their foundation. A noble gamble, perhaps, but one that thus far has produced more press releases than prototypes.

Enter Kura Sushi USA, a company that’s like a well-rehearsed play-small in number of performances (81 locations), but with a solid script and a plan to expand. It’s the kind of business that makes you wonder, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

The artificial intelligence (AI) cloud services firm has been aggressively securing contracts to utilize its computing capacity. Over $20 billion in new agreements were announced last month, excluding $16 billion already tied to a single client. Such figures, while impressive, beg the question: how much of this is substance, and how much mere spectacle?