qfx

Now, there are a number of hopefuls in this field, dabbling in the arcane arts of superposition and entanglement. But two, for reasons that are currently baffling even the most seasoned observers of the Guild of Alchemists and Venture Capitalists¹, have caught my eye: IonQ (IONQ +0.09%) and D-Wave Quantum (QBTS 1.46%). They’re small, admittedly. More akin to promising apprentices than fully-fledged masters. But if they manage to pull it off – if they actually manage to build something that doesn’t just emit impressive sparks and vaguely threatening hums – the returns could be… substantial. Enough to fund a rather impressive collection of garden gnomes, at the very least.

The fourth quarter bore witness to a revenue increase of eight percent, reaching $123.5 million. Yet, a disquieting detail lurks within this figure: $5.8 million is attributable not to organic growth, but to the addition of a single operating week. A lengthening of the chain, as it were, rather than a strengthening. The system-wide comparable sales, a metric of revenue from establishments open for at least fifteen months, registered a modest 2.1 percent increase. A trickle, scarcely enough to quench the thirst of ambition.

It’s a curious thing, this business of rare-earth metals. You’d think, given the name, they’d be plentiful. They aren’t. For years, China has held a rather dominant position in their supply—something like 60% of the global market, give or take a few metric tons. This presents a bit of a geopolitical pickle, as it means other nations are, shall we say, reliant. And reliance, as any historian will tell you, is rarely a comfortable position to be in. It’s like being perpetually short of biscuits when your neighbor owns the bakery.

Nvidia, you see, isn’t just selling chips; it’s peddling potential. A potential born from the relentless demand for artificial intelligence, a force that’s reshaping the world, one calculation at a time. The numbers are, admittedly, impressive. The company has been climbing, a steady ascent in a market often given to sudden gusts and collapses. But it’s the why of that climb that matters. And the why, as near as I can tell, is a simple thing: they’ve built something people need, and they’re building more.

I present, therefore, three companies whose yields offer a degree of comfort, a small bulwark against the encroaching tide of economic uncertainty. Consider them not as investments, precisely, but as a means of maintaining a civilized existence.