They’ve got a pipeline of power, three and a half gigawatts worth. Most of it’s just… waiting. Like a lot of us. They’re hoping tech companies will rent it. It’s a good plan, if the tech companies keep needing power. And if the sun doesn’t explode.
The question before us is this: where will Rigetti’s stock be in three years’ time? A bit of a crystal ball exercise, naturally, but let’s have a go, shall we?
Canopy Growth Corp. (CGC +2.78%) once stood as a monument to this aspiration, briefly achieving a market capitalization that now appears a phantom limb of a bygone era. The peak valuation, nearly $18 billion, now feels less like a rational assessment of potential and more like a collective miscalculation, a shared hallucination fueled by the promise of easy returns. The results, predictably, have been…disappointing. The continued, and indeed increasing, consumption of cannabis has even begun to exert pressure on the established alcohol industry, a curious side effect, yet one that does little to alleviate the predicament of those invested in Canopy Growth.
The company is enjoying a bit of a moment. A surge, even. Up 11.1% in January, 12.9% year-to-date, and over 100% in the last twelve months. It’s a remarkable turnaround, considering they were once the problematic bits of the old General Electric. Back then, everyone worried about solar and wind. A clean future, they called it. But somebody still had to keep the lights on, didn’t they?
Chevron (CVX +0.91%) is in the oil and gas business. I know, groundbreaking. It’s a sector that’s basically a rollercoaster powered by global instability. But Chevron, bless their corporate hearts, has a strategy. It’s called “being an integrated oil and gas company.” Which basically means they do everything from pulling the stuff out of the ground to turning it into gasoline, so they can, you know, profit no matter which way the price swings. It’s like having a hedge fund built into an energy company. Very efficient.
Both funds dabble in the long end of the bond market – a realm where duration, and thus sensitivity to interest rate fluctuations, becomes rather pronounced. The appeal, ostensibly, lies in anticipating a shift in the yield curve. Though one suspects many investors simply seek a place to park capital whilst awaiting the inevitable, and usually disappointing, returns of more adventurous ventures. The differences, as we shall see, are subtle, yet potentially significant, for those who deign to notice.
The United States, in a burst of cosmic brilliance, has given the green light to a new crypto-friendly national bank. Yes, indeed! In the second term of our dear leader Donald Trump, the regulators have decided to bless Erebor Bank with a national charter. One must wonder if this is a sign of deep trust in the unknown or simply a gamble in a game where the house always wins!
It is a story not merely of rockets, but of a striving for vertical integration, a desire to wrest control from the fragmented supply chains that have long characterized the space launch industry. And, as with all such endeavors, it carries within it the seeds of both promise and potential disillusionment.
The prevailing narrative, of course, centers upon the artificial intelligence craze. A fever dream, if you will, fueled by GPUs from Nvidia – those gleaming black boxes promising untold computational power. But the true source of this recent effervescence, it appears, lies not in the grand ambitions of AI, but in the mundane reality of memory. DRAM, NAND flash… these humble components, previously relegated to the shadows, have suddenly found themselves at the center of attention. A most unexpected turn of events. It is as if the very foundations of the digital world are trembling with newfound demand.
Analysts, those oracles of the obvious, anticipate further ascent. One wonders if they’ve actually seen a data center, or merely consulted a spreadsheet. Still, they predict, and we, as cynical observers, are obliged to note their predictions. Let us examine, then, the potential for further…elevation.