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Ten years. That’s the timeframe we’re talking about. Enough time for competitors to catch up, for customers to decide DIY is the way forward, and for valuations to experience a healthy dose of gravity. It’s a long time. A lifetime, almost, in tech years. So, let’s talk about two businesses that I think have a fighting chance of eclipsing Nvidia by 2036. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it’s a sure thing. Investing is rarely a sure thing. It’s more like a carefully calculated gamble with a hefty dose of wishful thinking.

These ETFs, hovering near all-time highs like vultures circling a dying carcass, are a prime example. Momentum is shifting, the easy money is drying up, and suddenly, picking winners isn’t just about jumping on the bandwagon—it’s about cold, hard analysis. About understanding where the bodies are going to pile up. It’s about survival, people. Pure and simple. The stakes? Higher than ever. We’re not talking about pocket change here. This is the future of everything, and it’s all built on these tiny, fragile chips.

The particulars are these: the exercise of options, a commonplace ritual in the choreography of equity, followed by the indirect sale of 888,000 common shares. This reduced Mr. Yu’s indirect holdings to 8,724,000, a diminution of approximately 9.24%. One might observe, with a certain melancholic detachment, that even the architect of a nascent nuclear future is subject to the same currents as any other mortal – the need to secure resources, to plan for contingencies, or perhaps, simply to observe the natural unfolding of events.

The question, as always, is which of these two offers the marginally better prospect for the discerning investor. Let us have a look, shall we?

Even at these elevated altitudes – Rigetti at sixteen, D-Wave a touch over twenty – the valuations bear no discernible relation to reality. It’s as if someone whispered a captivating fiction into the ears of the market, and the market, weary of accounting, simply believed it. One anticipates a rude awakening, a sort of financial hangover accompanied by a profound sense of foolishness.

One suspects that ‘operational excellence’ is merely the latest palliative in a long line of corporate euphemisms, designed to mask the rather unromantic reality of squeezing a few extra barrels from a dwindling resource. But Occidental, it seems, has embraced the mantra with a vigour that is, if not admirable, certainly effective. The fourth quarter yielded a result that exceeded the expectations of those who make a living predicting such things – a feat accomplished despite a rather uncooperative global economy.

The firm, it appears, added a substantial, yet not immoderate, 879,651 shares to its existing portfolio of these meticulously dated obligations. This expansion, translating to roughly $18 million, isn’t a seismic shift in the financial landscape, but rather a carefully calibrated adjustment. The quarter-end valuation experienced a further, almost coquettish, rise of $19.1 million – a delightful confluence of added shares and the subtle, unpredictable dance of market pricing. One suspects the portfolio managers aren’t merely chasing yield, but composing a delicate financial still life.

You see, small businesses – the backbone of this nation, mind you – account for near half the world’s wealth, yet they’re beset by rascals and rogues at a rate that’d make a bank robber blush. Cloudflare’s Stephanie Cohen, a shrewd woman, calls ’em “target rich, but resource poor.” A plain speakin’ truth, if ever I heard one.