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Sixteen times, if one has bothered to count – a task for pedants, surely – did the word “memory” grace the lips of Apple’s representatives. Not the recollection of past glories, alas, but a feigned distress over a present inconvenience. They spoke of ‘supply constraints’ and ‘chase mode’ as though afflicted by a most grievous malady. One almost expected a physician to be summoned, rather than a procurement officer. The air was thick with a carefully cultivated desperation.

The company in question is Western Digital (WDC +7.99%). Now, before you start picturing dusty hard drives and the faint clicking sound of obsolescence, bear with me. Because data, it turns out, is rather important for artificial intelligence. Shocking, I know. You need a lot of it. Training these AI models isn’t like teaching a parrot a few phrases; it’s more like trying to cram the entire Library of Congress into its digital brain. And all that information needs to be stored somewhere. For years, we’ve been assured that everything would move to ‘the cloud,’ and it has, to a degree. But the cloud isn’t some ethereal realm of floating data. It’s actually a vast network of data centers, filled with…you guessed it…hard drives. And Western Digital, as it happens, is rather good at making them.

The key, I’ve discovered, isn’t chasing the flashiest returns. It’s finding companies that seem stubbornly determined to not disappear. The kind that could probably survive a zombie apocalypse, or at least offer a discount to the undead. Which brings me to Walmart and Coca-Cola. Both are “Dividend Kings,” a title that sounds suspiciously regal for a supermarket and a sugary beverage company, but apparently means they’ve been steadily increasing their annual dividend for half a century. Fifty years. My houseplants haven’t managed that.

Let us, then, indulge in a little calculation, a harmless foray into the arithmetic of aspiration. How many shares of this particular green-energy concern must one accumulate to coax forth a yearly income of precisely one thousand dollars? The question, though seemingly pedestrian, reveals a fascinating interplay of price, yield, and the subtle art of financial layering.

So, you’ve got the guys who get the oil and gas – the “upstream” people. And then you’ve got the guys who turn it into, I don’t know, plastic sporks – the “downstream” people. And in the middle? These midstream guys. Just… sitting there. Charging a fee. It’s the ultimate in taking a cut. Like a toll booth operator for the energy industry. But here’s the thing – people still need energy. Even if the price of oil goes down, the stuff still has to move. So, they’re somewhat protected. It’s not brilliant, it’s just… not completely stupid. Which, frankly, is a low bar these days.

Next year? Fifty-five billion. Numbers like that…they lose meaning, don’t they? Still, someone has to build the machines that do the thinking. Or, at least, the pretending. And a few companies are doing very well indeed. Let’s look at two of them.

Having, with characteristic tardiness, missed the earlier ascensions of IonQ (IONQ 3.68%), I ventured a purchase of its shares, now languishing at more than half their former altitude. A speculative gamble, certainly, but one predicated on a careful, if admittedly imperfect, assessment of the landscape. Is it the ne plus ultra of quantum investments? A question demanding a degree of circumspection often absent in these frenzied times.

ASML’s uniqueness lies not in innovation, precisely, but in the absence of rivals. They are the sole purveyor of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines. These machines, immense and costly – each one resembling a mobile fortress and demanding a price approaching half a billion units of currency – are, apparently, indispensable. Indispensable not because of any inherent brilliance of design, but because the entire industry has, through a series of largely undocumented agreements and tacit understandings, become reliant upon them. The logic of it escapes easy scrutiny.