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The stock, a fragile vessel upon the currents of the market, has diminished by seventeen percent this year, a further descent from the heights it briefly touched last year. Five years hence, it has managed a modest climb of fifteen percent – a performance dwarfed by the robust ascent of the S&P 500, which has surged eighty percent, and the Nasdaq Composite, with a gain of seventy-two percent. One is compelled to ask: can Take-Two, a company seemingly rooted in the past glories of its franchises, truly outperform in the years to come, or is it destined to remain a shadow of its former self?

The wider market, of course, felt the same chill. The S&P 500 dipped, a slight shrug, while the Nasdaq bore the brunt, falling a steeper three and a half percent. But these are just numbers, markers on a chart. They don’t tell you about the faces behind the investments, the hopes riding on a company’s success, or the quiet disappointment when those hopes begin to fade.

Now, NuScale. These folks are building…get this…small nuclear reactors. Tiny! Like, fit-in-a-slightly-larger-than-average-garage tiny. 65 feet high, nine feet wide. It’s like they’re trying to build a nuclear power plant for your suburban bungalow. Prefabricated, assembled on site…it’s the IKEA of nuclear energy. And, bless their hearts, they’ve actually gotten the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to sign off on the designs. That’s a feat, folks, a genuine accomplishment. They approved a 50 MWe reactor in 2023, and another, slightly larger one, is coming down the pike in 2025. Progress! Or is it?

The filing says Grizzlyrock upped their stake. A tidy sum, calculated on the fourth quarter’s average price. Seven-point-eight-five million added to an existing nine-point-six-one. Numbers. They rarely tell the whole story, but they can point you in the right direction. This wasn’t a scattershot buy. This was a deliberate move.

This particular company, USA Rare Earth, had enjoyed a period of favor, its valuation rising some seventy-five percent over the preceding year. A curious thing, this eagerness to invest in the extraction of earth’s hidden treasures, as if by possessing these rare elements, man could somehow conquer his own limitations. The pronouncements from Washington, of bolstering domestic mineral access, offered a temporary uplift, yet proved, as so often happens, a fragile foundation upon which to build lasting prosperity.

Five years ago, to invest in Nvidia was to touch a future that few could envision. The stock has ascended, a relentless climb nearing 1,300%, a number so vast it loses all meaning, like counting the stars. The S&P 500, a more earthbound creature, has merely padded along, a respectable 78% gain, but a pale imitation of Nvidia’s soaring trajectory. It wasn’t simply outperformance; it was a different order of reality. The company now holds a market capitalization of $4.4 trillion, a sum that feels less like a financial metric and more like a geological formation, a new continent rising from the sea of capital.

Two companies trying to capitalize on this potential future are D-Wave Quantum (QBTS +1.37%) and IonQ (IONQ +0.84%). Both are currently trading at levels that suggest the market is either deeply skeptical or just hasn’t fully processed the implications. Or maybe everyone is still hungover from the AI boom. Either way, they’re worth a look, if you’re the type who enjoys a little pre-apocalyptic investing.

We’ve been poking about in the history of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY +0.79%) in this Voyager Portfolio series – a rather sensible chap, if you don’t mind saying so. It’s made a tidy profit for quite a few, you see. But there’s one thing this particular beast hasn’t managed yet: reaching a trillion dollars in assets. A truly enormous sum, wouldn’t you agree? This is the final chapter, and we’re going to have a good look at whether it’ll manage it, and if it will be first across the line.