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Broadcom (AVGO 1.02%), you see, is not merely favored by the analysts. It is approved. Ninety-eight percent of these oracles, these interpreters of financial tea leaves, are singing its praises. One suspects a secret society, a pact made in some dimly lit gentlemen’s club, fueled by vintage port and a shared aversion to independent thought. Or perhaps, simply, they’ve all glimpsed something the rest of us have missed – a phantom profit, a spectral growth trajectory.

They claim leadership in a promising field, this SoundHound. They teach machines to speak our language, to decipher the chaos of human utterance. A noble pursuit, if one overlooks the fact that most humans struggle to understand each other. The market, they assure us, is enormous. One imagines a future where refrigerators negotiate the price of milk, and automobiles offer unsolicited life advice. A chilling thought, frankly.

The official parchment, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (a body whose acronym, SEC, is often mistaken for a particularly grumpy sea serpent), revealed that Oxbow reduced its holdings in VBIL by the aforementioned number of shares. The value, as previously noted, hovered around $25.83 million, a sum large enough to impress a dragon, but hardly enough to bankrupt one. The overall value of Oxbow’s VBIL stake, however, declined by $26.20 million – a curious discrepancy that suggests either a particularly aggressive accounting gnome, or that the shares simply decided to take a short holiday.

The Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (VIG) is, on the surface, a sensible sort of fund. It seeks companies that have consistently increased their dividends for at least ten years. A noble goal, certainly. Though it then rather spoils the effect by discarding the highest yields. Why? Because apparently, a good dividend is one that doesn’t quite reward you as much as it could. It’s a bit like a wizard who insists on casting spells that are mostly harmless.²

Royal Bank of Canada, or RY as the ticker tape whispers, is a big bank. Two hundred and forty-six billion dollars big. It’s gained 46% in the last twelve months. That’s… something. They spread their bets around – wealth management, personal banking, capital markets, the usual. Diversification. A sensible idea, really. Especially for us Americans, who sometimes act as if the world ends at the border. They also happen to be based in Toronto. It’s a city. Like any other.

The company admits, with a practiced humility, to a “challenging environment.” A delicate phrasing for a slowdown. For the carpenter who sees fewer contracts, the homeowner postponing repairs. The markets, of course, react. A flat return in the last year, while the S&P 500 dances ahead. They call it a correction. I call it gravity. Everything falls eventually.

Western Digital has risen, a rather astonishing 465% in the last twelve months. Micron, not to be outdone, has managed a respectable 313%. Such figures, of course, invite skepticism. One wonders if the enthusiasm is based on genuine prospects, or merely a collective forgetting of past disappointments. Still, even after this display, a certain appeal remains.

There’s a good bit of chatter ’bout companies like Nvidia (NVDA 0.79%), and rightly so. They’ve built themselves a fine engine for these thinking machines, a sort of brain-builder, if you will. And Micron Technologies (MU 2.61%) is seeing a boom, as these machines are thirsty for memory – more so than a politician for votes, I suspect. These are good companies, no doubt, but chasing individual stocks in this whirlwind is like trying to catch greased lightning. A man needs a wider net, a bit more stability.

is this merely another iteration in the endless cycle of technological advancement, or does it represent a genuine disruption, a turning of the tide?