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ASML, for instance, makes these things called extreme ultraviolet lithography systems. I imagine them as the Swiss Army knives of chip-making, but with fewer blades and more existential dread. Their machines are so complicated that even the engineers who build them might as well be speaking a different language. Which, honestly, is probably why ASML’s CEO, Christophe Fouquet, said something about “increasing uncertainty” during his earnings call. It’s not that he’s worried about the future-he’s worried about the present, which is a lot like trying to predict the weather in a hurricane.

The numbers, oh the numbers! Revenue, a tempest of 168% growth, net income, a resurrection from the grave of loss. EBITDA, a crescendo of 395%. Yet these figures, so seductive, are but the masks of a masquerade. What lies beneath? A company, trembling on the precipice of its own ambition, trading in the currency of hype, its soul adrift in the void between promise and peril.

Behold the stock, now trading at $47, a price that whispers of untold riches-or perhaps the hiss of a snake in the grass. The question lingers like a ghost in the machine: can this number, this mere numeral, be coaxed into a sylph-like $100?

First came Korea Zinc, that industrious titan from South Korea, sweeping in with an $85.2 million investment. Quite the endorsement, darling-one might say it was TMC’s first proper coming-out party. Then NOAA, bless their bureaucratic hearts, reconfirmed compliance under U.S. law for TMC’s exploration applications. How thrillingly pedestrian.

Over the past three years, its stock has ascended like a particularly ambitious goblin in a tournament of dragons. A $10,000 investment? That’s now nearly $44,200, assuming you’ve been riding the wave of a company that seems to believe “revenue growth” is a spell that can be cast indefinitely. But as any seasoned wizard knows, even the brightest spells can fizzle when the ingredients are questionable.

A 7% yield is a red flag in a market full of green. Pfizer trades at 8.1 times forward earnings-a number that screams “caution.” Earnings are projected to decline 3% annually through 2029. Peers like Johnson & Johnson (2.9%) and Merck (3.9%) offer lower yields but stronger balance sheets. AbbVie’s 3.1% isn’t bad either. These companies trade stability for greed. Pfizer’s dividend is a gamble that management can outwit patent cliffs and pipeline failures. It’s a bet with no guaranteed payout.

Shiba Inu launched in 2020, long after Dogecoin had claimed its spot as the meme coin monarch. Yet here we are, discussing a token that now commands a $7 billion market cap. It’s the financial equivalent of a second-hand bookstore suddenly becoming a literary sensation-not because it invented the novel, but because it mastered the art of shelf arrangement.