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Let me take you back to 2011, a simpler time when tele-a-what-now? was a term you’d only hear in sci-fi. That year, Progressive took the industry by storm with the very first mass-market telematics device. If you’ve ever been tempted by a discount on your insurance in exchange for a little gadget that monitors how you drive-well, that’s telematics. It’s as if someone decided, “Let’s use technology to track people’s driving habits and make them feel okay about it.”

The “Ten Titans”-Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Broadcom, Tesla, Oracle, and Netflix-now account for a substantial 39% of the S&P 500. And, as if this were not enough to whet one’s appetite for capital, the technology sector alone claims a third of the entire index.

In the rustbelt of e-commerce, where giants trample small hands, Shopify remains a plowshare in the hands of the overlooked. Tobias Lütke, its founder-CEO, is no court jester of Wall Street. He’s a man who built a kingdom not for himself, but for the millions of merchants who sell socks, spices, and secondhand dreams. Since 2015, the company has turned 12% of American shoppers into unwitting allies of its cause. Yet here it stands, priced like a cathedral-106 times free cash flow, 19 times sales. Is it a temple or a tollbooth? Time will judge. But for now, it’s a machine humming with the grit of its users.

Behold the irony: the same semiconductors that power our cars and washing machines now dictate the rhythm of our civilization. Clouds in the sky? No-clouds of data, hoovered by these tiny, infernal engines. Artificial intelligence, smartphones, data centers-each a Sisyphean task for the modern man, who rolls the boulder of innovation uphill, only to watch it crush him. And still, the demand grows. Not for bread, nor water, but for faster, newer chips. A hunger that gnaws at the very fabric of reason.

But which stock offers the better growth profile at today’s prices? Let us peer through the sugar-coated window of the market and see.

The fitness industry has been dominated by high-profile names like Peloton, whose struggles are well documented. In contrast, Planet Fitness has quietly endured and adapted. When the pandemic shuttered gyms, the company faced a crisis. Yet it emerged with a strategy rooted in affordability and accessibility, two pillars that have since driven its recovery.