Chips and Clouds: A Reluctant Portfolio

People keep asking me what I think about the market. As if I have a crystal ball, or even a functioning understanding of most modern appliances. Honestly, the whole thing feels a bit precarious, like balancing a stack of antique teacups on a Roomba. The S&P 500 is hovering, they say, near “record highs.” Which just means it’s that much further to fall. My aunt Mildred, who once invested heavily in Beanie Babies, keeps emailing me charts. I try to avoid her emails. But, I’ve been slowly, cautiously, dipping a toe into things. Mostly because the alternative – admitting I have no idea what I’m doing with my money – feels worse.

I’ve landed on two companies, not because I’m particularly optimistic about the future, but because they seem… less terrible than most. Broadcom and IBM. I’m not suggesting you remortgage your house, of course. But a few thousand dollars? It could be worse. It could be spent on another limited-edition porcelain cat.

Broadcom

Broadcom makes chips. Lots of chips. Wireless chips, networking chips, the kind of things that hum quietly inside our devices, silently judging our poor life choices. They also, apparently, make chips for artificial intelligence. Which is terrifying, but also potentially profitable. They’ve been gobbling up companies, too, most recently VMware. It’s like watching a particularly ambitious hamster build an ever-expanding network of tunnels. I don’t understand the specifics, but the sheer scale is impressive.

The real money, it seems, is in these AI “accelerator” chips. Apparently, they’re faster and cheaper than Nvidia’s chips, at least when you buy enough of them. I tried explaining this to my brother, a philosophy professor, and he just stared at me blankly. “So,” he said, “it’s like a faster abacus?” Close enough, I thought. Their sales jumped 65% last year, fueled by this AI boom. They’re growing at a ridiculous rate, even for a company trading at a pretty hefty price. I’m not sure what any of this means, but the numbers look… good. Relatively speaking.

IBM

IBM. Now, that’s a name that conjures up images of grey flannel suits and punch cards. For years, they seemed to be… fading. Like a favorite sweater that’s lost its shape. But then they got a new CEO, Arvind Krishna, who decided to spin off the slow bits (Kyndryl, a name that sounds suspiciously like a medieval plague) and focus on cloud computing and, you guessed it, artificial intelligence. It’s like watching a dinosaur attempt yoga. Clumsy, but surprisingly effective.

Instead of trying to compete directly with Amazon and Microsoft, they’ve taken a different approach. They bought Red Hat, a company that specializes in “open-source” software. Apparently, this allows businesses to move data between their own private clouds and the public cloud. It sounds complicated. My neighbor, a retired accountant, tried to explain it to me over the fence. I nodded politely and pretended to understand. The point is, it’s a flexible solution for companies that don’t want to put all their eggs in one cloud. Which, frankly, seems like a sensible idea.

IBM’s revenue and earnings are up. Not dramatically, but steadily. And their stock is still reasonably priced, at least compared to some of the other tech companies out there. It’s not a guaranteed win, of course. But it’s a solid, unglamorous company with a history of innovation. Which, in this chaotic world, feels like a pretty good bet. I’m not expecting to retire to a tropical island, but maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to afford a slightly nicer porcelain cat.

2026-02-19 23:52

Broadcom

IBM

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