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The numbers, when examined without the haze of promotional fervor, possess a certain melancholy. D-Wave, a pioneer burdened by the weight of its early promises, commands a market capitalization of ten billion dollars despite trailing twelve-month sales barely exceeding twenty-four million. Rigetti, a company that once dreamt of building a quantum fortress, has managed a modest twelve and a half million in revenue, yet its value hovers around eight and a half billion. Quantum Computing, a fledgling enterprise, boasts a market cap of nearly three billion dollars on a mere half a million in revenue. These are not valuations; they are prayers whispered into the void.

Last quarter’s earnings were, shall we say, adequate. Revenue grew by a respectable thirty-three percent to eighty-one million dollars. A figure that, in the grand scheme of things, is less a roaring fire and more a flickering candle. However, their backlog – a delightful accumulation of promised future revenue – swelled by an astonishing two hundred and sixteen percent to seven hundred and thirty-four million. A paper mountain of potential, if you will. More and more entities – both those dedicated to the art of war and those simply obsessed with quarterly reports – are turning to Planet Labs for their aerial perspectives. They even entertain notions of constructing data centers in orbit. The sheer audacity! One pictures a celestial bureaucracy, endlessly filing paperwork amongst the stars.

AMD shares, as of this morning, have gained a respectable 3.8%. The question isn’t that they’ve gone up, it’s why. It’s rarely about simple good news, is it? More often, it’s about someone else’s bad news looking particularly good by comparison. Like finding a slightly less mouldy loaf in a bakery fire.

According to a filing on January 20th, GraniteShares just… let it go. A $3.29 million decrease in their position. Zero stake remaining. It’s a bit dramatic, really. One minute you’re in, the next… poof. Makes you wonder if there was a fight. A financial fight, obviously.

My own inclination, in navigating these uncertain waters, has led me to a particular class of investment: the high-quality dividend stock. And recently, after a period of observation, I added NNN REIT (NNN 0.17%) to my holdings. It is not a glamorous choice, perhaps, lacking the disruptive sheen of the new technologies, but it possesses a certain…sturdiness. A quality that, in these times, feels profoundly reassuring.

Nvidia, and Broadcom. These are not simply companies; they are currents in the rising tide of artificial intelligence. Should the projections hold—and the scent of possibility is strong—they could reshape portfolios, alter the very landscape of investment. One is the broad plain, the other a hidden spring. Both essential.

Data, those impartial observers of our financial dramas, reveal an increase of 12.1% from the week’s commencement to Thursday’s final curtain. One might almost suspect a conspiracy of optimism, were it not for the cold, hard logic of supply and demand.

Pfizer. The name itself holds a weight, a history etched into the very fabric of modern medicine. And now, it finds itself in a curious position. A period of transition, a shedding of old growth. The loss of patent exclusivity is not a death, but a dormancy. A necessary retreat before the next flowering. It is as if the company, having reached a certain height, is allowing some branches to fall, preparing for a new, perhaps more resilient, form.

They unloaded it all, you see. Gone. Zero shares held by quarter’s end. A clean break. $3.13 million moved around like so much dust in the wind. It’s all just numbers, really. Numbers dancing for a little while, then fading.

The so-called “Magnificent Seven” stocks, for example, are currently valued as if they hold the patents to gravity itself. At a combined price-to-earnings ratio hovering around 28, they seem to be betting heavily on humanity’s continued ability to ignore basic economic principles. As the late, great Warren Buffett (a man who clearly understood the universe’s inherent unfairness) observed, popularity and sensible investment rarely coincide. The truly productive positions, as a general rule, are the ones everyone else has forgotten about, or, preferably, never even considered. (This is largely because the universe is a profoundly illogical place, and things only become valuable when someone decides they are. It’s a system fraught with peril, frankly.)