But let us not lose ourselves entirely to the intoxicating fumes of speculation. Valuations matter, my dear dividend hunters, just as much as the air matters to one caught in a bureaucratic meeting without an escape route. Let this truth anchor you as we explore three AI stocks whose dividends might one day grace your coffers.
Among these overlooked titans, three stand out: Enbridge, Enterprise Products Partners, and NNN REIT. Their stories, though buried beneath the clamor of market trends, whisper of resilience and the quiet labor of sustaining growth against the tide.
The S&P 500 is the stock market’s answer to a best-of compilation album: 500 of America’s most popular companies, including the “Magnificent Seven,” who are less like Seven Dwarfs and more like Seven Deadly Sins with better stock options. But here’s the rub: You can’t invest in the S&P 500 directly, because it’s not a product-it’s a concept, like a pyramid scheme for capitalism. The workaround? The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO), which is like buying a ticket to the S&P 500’s party without needing to dress up or remember the password.
Consider the irony: as the titans of tech-Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft-plunge into their own Sisyphean quests for AI supremacy, they pour billions into capex, their hands trembling with the fever of creation. Yet in this frenzy, do they not merely court the god they themselves have birthed? The capital expenditures swell like the hubris of Icarus, and Nvidia, the unwitting Midas, finds itself both architect and spectator to this madness. What solace can it take in quarterly reports when the very world it fuels may one day render its chips as obsolete as the quill?
Now, the cracks are widening. The labor market, once a sturdy oak, has become a sapling in a hurricane. July’s payrolls added 73,000 jobs-nice, if you ignore the fact that May and June’s numbers were revised downward by 258,000. That’s like baking a cake and then eating half of it before it cools. “The cracks have widened,” said Kathy Bostjancic, a prophet of sorts. “Pressure on the Fed to lower rates.” But the Fed, that timid squirrel, is now faced with a riddle: lower rates to save jobs, or raise them to kill inflation? A lose-lose. A stagflation. A word that tastes like burnt toast.
One might imagine Broadcom’s engineers as industrious gnomes, their semiconductor creations stitching the very fabric of the internet. “99% of all digital whispers pass through our machinery,” they boast, their inventions humming in data centers like clockwork hearts. Yet here lies the absurdity: just as AI’s golden goose swelled their coffers-a 46% quarterly growth, mind you-Tepper flees the banquet. Why? The stock’s valuation had ballooned into a gilded throne, its forward P/E ratio of 41 a precarious perch indeed.
But earnings season isn’t the only act in this play. One week ago (Aug. 14), institutional investors with at least $100 million in assets under management faced a deadline that, if forgotten, might have resulted in a bureaucratic scolding from the SEC. This was the filing of Form 13F, a document that, if you squint, resembles the opening of a treasure map, but with more legalese and fewer pirates.
Indeed, Portillo’s has long been the toast of Chicago, cultivating a loyal following as steadfast as any dowager’s devotion to tradition. Yet, as it ventures beyond its native city into broader pastures, the question arises: can an investment of $1,000 transform itself into $5,000 by the year 2030? Such aspirations are not unheard of, but they do require scrutiny that goes beyond mere hope.
Alright, first things first: Shiba Inu is a layer-2 cryptocurrency, which, if you’re not already a blockchain wizard, means it’s built on Ethereum‘s well-established blockchain. Think of Ethereum as the classy, successful older sibling, and Shiba Inu as that weird, artsy cousin who shows up to Thanksgiving dinner with a notebook full of “ideas.” The upside? Shiba Inu taps into Ethereum’s infrastructure to access all the benefits of decentralized apps (those things everyone talks about but can’t explain). The downside? Oh, did I mention the supply is *massive*-over 589 trillion SHIB tokens in circulation, which is why each individual SHIB is worth next to nothing. But hey, at least you can buy a million of them without needing to sell your kidney.
Hertz Global Holdings, that eternal thorn in Avis’s side, had just inked a pact with Amazon Autos – the digital colossus whose marketplace could sell ice to a polar bear. This alliance transforms the internet’s omnipresent bazaar into a showroom for Hertz’s pre-owned steeds, where buyers might find anything from a Toyota Corolla to a Cadillac Escalade without leaving their couch.