So, you listened to someone – me, let’s say – about chips last year. Nvidia, Taiwan Semi, ASML. Good for you. Money is a strange thing. It buys you very little, really, except the illusion of control. And maybe a slightly nicer coffin. If you held on, you made a profit. A lot of people did. It doesn’t mean a thing, of course. Not in the grand scheme. So it goes.
Nvidia went up 39 percent. Taiwan Semi and ASML did even better, 54 percent. Monstrous gains, they call it. As if the universe cares about percentages. It’s all just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, isn’t it? Still, people want to know what to do next. Whether to buy more. Or hold on. A perfectly reasonable question, I suppose, even if the answer is ultimately meaningless.
How the Chips Fall
These companies, they make the little brains for everything. Nvidia designs them, mostly for showing pretty pictures and now, for artificial intelligence. Which is just a fancy way of saying machines pretending to be smart. Taiwan Semi actually builds the things, a factory turning blueprints into reality. Neutral, they call it. As if anyone truly is. And ASML? They make the machines that make the machines. A machine to make a machine. It’s turtles all the way down, you know.
Nvidia doesn’t make its own chips. Too complicated, too expensive. Easier to just design them and let someone else worry about the messy details. It’s a good system, I suppose. For them. ASML makes the machines that etch these tiny circuits onto the silicon. They’re the only ones who can do it. A monopoly, they call it. A guaranteed profit as long as people keep wanting smaller, faster, more pointless gadgets. So it goes.
All vital, yes. But which ones deserve your money in 2026? A question I wouldn’t bother asking if I weren’t being paid to write this.
Expensive Machines and Diminishing Returns
The experts – and what do they know? – predict 51 percent growth for Nvidia, 31 for Taiwan Semi, and a mere 15 for ASML. A clear difference, wouldn’t you say? But the market doesn’t always care about logic. It cares about hype. And stories. And the illusion of something for nothing.
ASML trades at 34 times earnings. Nvidia and Taiwan Semi? 25 and 21, respectively. ASML is getting expensive for what it is. A very good machine, certainly. But a machine nonetheless. I’d rather put my money on Nvidia and Taiwan Semi. They’re still building the future, even if the future is mostly just more ways to distract ourselves from the inevitable. So it goes.
Read More
- 39th Developer Notes: 2.5th Anniversary Update
- The 10 Most Beautiful Women in the World for 2026, According to the Golden Ratio
- TON PREDICTION. TON cryptocurrency
- Gold Rate Forecast
- Bitcoin’s Bizarre Ballet: Hyper’s $20M Gamble & Why Your Grandma Will Buy BTC (Spoiler: She Won’t)
- Nikki Glaser Explains Why She Cut ICE, Trump, and Brad Pitt Jokes From the Golden Globes
- Dividends: A Most Elegant Pursuit
- Venezuela’s Oil: A Cartography of Risk
- AI Stocks: A Slightly Less Terrifying Investment
- The Apple Card Shuffle
2026-01-25 01:53