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For months now, the whispers have been growing louder. Non-U.S. stocks, those forgotten relics of a pre-American empire, are actually… outperforming. Yes, you read that correctly. The Vanguard Total International Stock ETF (VXUS +0.50%), holding over 8,000 global companies, is up a respectable 25% in the last year. Matching the Nasdaq, even. It’s a subtle shift, a hairline fracture in the bedrock of our financial hubris, but trust me, it’s there. And it’s growing.

The filing shows Driehaus increased its stake in Xenon during the fourth quarter. A tidy little addition to their portfolio. It’s now 1.4% of their 13F reportable assets. Which, let’s be honest, is a commitment. Like, “I’m seeing this through, even if it involves late-night stress-eating and questionable life choices” kind of commitment. The total position value bumped up to $36.03 million. Numbers. They’re mesmerizing, aren’t they? Especially when they represent someone else’s money.

The principal casualties, naturally, were the titans of memory. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, those vast, inscrutable organizations, saw their valuations diminish with an almost poetic inevitability. Together, they constitute a rather alarming proportion – over thirty-three percent – of the entire KOSPI. A concentration of risk that one might describe, with a touch of weariness, as ‘suboptimal.’ It speaks volumes, doesn’t it, about the fragile foundations upon which these modern fortunes are built?

The papers showed a transaction of around $110.72 million, calculated on the quarter’s average price. Driehaus now holds 14.27 million shares, a position grown by $88.76 million since last quarter. These aren’t just figures on a screen; they represent a confidence, a wager on the possibility of a different future. It’s a bet on holding onto what’s given freely, and releasing it when needed.

Everyone’s talking about the Magnificent Seven, but honestly, I find their hype exhausting. They’re the popular kids in high school, constantly demanding attention. TSMC, on the other hand, is the kid who builds the robots for the popular kids. They don’t need the validation. They just…make the chips. And right now, they’re making a lot of money doing it. The stock is up almost 11% to start the year, and 107% over the last 12 months. A market cap of over $1.8 trillion? It feels… precarious. Like a Jenga tower built on a foundation of optimism.

The current projections suggest these Alchemists will collectively spend some $650 billion this year on the infrastructure. That’s a figure that makes even the most seasoned accountant reach for the smelling salts. Last year it was ‘only’ $410 billion. Not that ‘only’ applies to sums that could fund a small kingdom. OpenAI and Anthropic are also getting in on the act, as are newer players like CoreWeave and Nebius, all desperate to build more and more ‘compute capacity’ – a phrase that sounds suspiciously like hoarding magical energy. It’s a bit like a dragon collecting gold, really. Except the gold is silicon, and the dragon is a data center.

The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveals an increase in Driehaus’s holdings, a deliberate weighting of their portfolio towards this particular venture. The transaction, valued at approximately $80.54 million based on the closing prices of December 31st, 2025, swelled the total PRAX stake by a considerable $248.48 million, a testament not merely to the purchase itself, but to the rising tide that carries such investments.