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The weighted average price, as dutifully recorded by the SEC Form 4, came to $32.67. A price, one imagines, that will scarcely be remembered by the end of the fiscal year.

Diamondback, a name that evokes a certain resilience, is rooted in the Permian Basin – that vast, sun-drenched expanse of West Texas and New Mexico where the earth yields its dark treasure. It is a company that does not shout its ambitions, but rather, cultivates them with a deliberate, almost pastoral care. They are not gamblers chasing fleeting fortunes, but stewards of a resource, mindful of both its bounty and its limits.

And where does one presently locate this potential brilliance? Within the polished, almost unnervingly reflective realm of technology, specifically, the fabrication of semiconductors. A sector that, while enjoying a recent period of exuberant ascent, remains, I posit, in the nascent stages of a truly spectacular unfolding. The macrocosm, you see, continues to favor the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH 2.58%). A rather pedestrian name for a vehicle poised to carry one towards potentially above-average returns, but then, subtlety is rarely a virtue of the ticker symbol.

Palantir, you see, has become rather important in this whole artificial intelligence kerfuffle. Not by building robots, mind you, but by building the software that makes the robots (or, more accurately, the algorithms) useful. Their Foundry platform is, at its core, a data wrangler. It gathers information from all sorts of places – spreadsheets, databases, the back of cereal boxes, presumably – and organizes it into something coherent. This is a surprisingly difficult thing to do, as anyone who’s ever tried to assemble flat-pack furniture can attest. What Palantir does is create an ‘ontology’ – a fancy word for a structured understanding of how things relate to each other. It then links that to the real world. This is crucial, because AI, left to its own devices, has a habit of ‘hallucinating’ – making up facts. A well-organized data structure dramatically reduces the likelihood of that happening, and allows the platform to act as a sort of operating system for whatever large language model (LLM) a customer chooses. Think of it as the sensible shoes that keep the AI from stumbling around and saying embarrassing things.

Numerous contenders have entered the field, yet few have possessed the necessary combination of affordability, range, and, dare one say, fashionable reputation to truly disturb Tesla’s composure. However, a newcomer now approaches the scene, possessing qualities which suggest a contest of no small consequence. The year 2026, it is anticipated, will witness the emergence of a rival capable of making a substantial impression upon Tesla’s standing, and by 2029, a significant crown may be at risk.

The question wasn’t about believing the promises. It was about where to put five hundred bucks, and whether you wanted it back in three years. A simple equation, usually. Except nothing’s simple when money’s involved.

But hold on to your hats, folks, because things are about to get WEIRD. The past few weeks… a subtle shift. A twitch in the beast. And I’m telling you, it’s pointing towards a return to the usual suspects. The tech overlords. The megacaps. The digital deities who control our financial destinies. Why? Because in this twisted game, they’re still the biggest, baddest players on the board. They practically pulled the averages higher for years. And when they hiccuped in ’26, it just masked the strength bubbling beneath the surface.

There’s a certain poetry, wouldn’t you agree, in identifying potential fortunes before the hordes descend? I’ve been surveying the landscape, and three names have surfaced, each with its own peculiar charm and, more importantly, a glimmer of profitability. Symbotic, Fastly, and Astera Labs. Don’t expect overnight riches, mind you. Investing, as any seasoned gambler knows, is a long con, a slow accumulation of advantage. But these, I suspect, are worth a closer look.

The weighted average price of $47.38 per unit, a figure conjured from the ether of market forces, is as meaningless as attempting to measure the weight of a sigh. The March 18th closing price of $47.92 merely adds another layer of illusion to this dance of numbers. It’s a charade, of course, designed to soothe the anxieties of those who believe in the inherent logic of capital. I, for one, prefer to observe the chaos with a detached amusement.

One prefers, naturally, investments rooted in tangible creation, in adding genuine value to the world. A company that doesn’t merely promise returns, but enables them. And in this regard, ASML, the Dutch masters of lithography, present a case far more intriguing than any blockchain.