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| 24.08.25 23:12:00 |
Prediction: All "Ten Titans" Stocks Will Surpass $1 Trillion in Market Cap by 2030 |
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**Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!**
Key Points
The Ten Titans expand on the “Magnificent Seven” by adding three high-octane growth stocks. Buying Oracle near an all-time high is a bet that its aggressive AI spending will pay off. Netflix should be able to deliver high-margin growth as it shifts its business model from increasing subscribers to boosting free cash flow. 10 stocks we like better than Oracle ›
In early August 2018, Apple(NASDAQ: AAPL) became the first U.S. company to surpass $1 trillion in market cap.
Fast forward seven years, and there are nine S&P 500(SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) components with market caps over $1 trillion: the "Magnificent Seven" consisting of Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Microsoft(NASDAQ: MSFT), Apple, Amazon(NASDAQ: AMZN), Alphabet(NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL), Meta Platforms(NASDAQ: META), and Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), plus Broadcom(NASDAQ: AVGO) and Berkshire Hathaway(NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B).
The "Ten Titans" include the ten largest growth-focused companies by market cap -- the Magnificent Seven and Broadcom, Oracle(NYSE: ORCL), and Netflix(NASDAQ: NFLX).
Here's how Oracle and Netflix can join the rest of the Ten Titans in the $1 trillion club by 2030.Image source: Getty Images.
Oracle is a high-risk, high-potential-reward AI play
Oracle's market cap at the time of this writing is $660.2 billion. Oracle has gone from a dividend-paying tech stalwart to a business unlocking transformational growth in just a matter of years. And investors have responded, as Oracle is up a staggering 70% in the last year and 318% in the last five years.
Oracle's cloud business is growing faster than incumbents Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, as Oracle has done a masterful job leveraging cloud with its established data center model, implementing a competitive pricing model, and forming partnerships with the major cloud providers.
Oracle is pricey, at 34.6 times forward earnings estimates, making it more expensive than the larger, more established cloud players. However, Oracle has a number of advantages that could pole vault its market cap well above $1 trillion by 2030.TSLA PE Ratio (Forward) data by YCharts.
For starters, Oracle is a pure play enterprise software and solutions company. Unlike Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet -- which are basically tech conglomerates -- Oracle doesn't have a consumer-facing business. This gives Oracle a much more focused investment thesis and allows the company to zero in its capital expenditures (capex) on building out its cloud infrastructure and application network.
Oracle has been one of the most aggressive companies when it comes to deploying capex into artificial intelligence (AI). As you can see in the following chart, Oracle went from a company that was chugging along and maintaining its legacy business to pouring money into capex even though its operating income hasn't grown nearly as quickly.
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ORCL Capital Expenditures (TTM) data by YCharts.
If Oracle's investments translate to earnings growth, the stock could defend its premium valuation and have an easy path to a $1 trillion market cap and beyond.
However, it's worth mentioning that Oracle's balance sheet is highly leveraged with debt, and its free cash flow is negative as it front-loads AI investments.
Buying Oracle is a bet that its ultra-aggressive capex spending is worth it. If it disappoints, Oracle stock could correct and remain beaten down for some time, which could throw a wrench in gaining 51.5% from its current level to $1 trillion in market cap by 2030.
Netflix's road to $1 trillion won't be easy
Netflix is the second-best performing Ten Titan year to date behind only Oracle.ORCL data by YCharts.
Epic gains over the last few years have lifted Netflix's market cap to $515.8 billion at the time of this writing. But the company has a longer way to go than Oracle to reach $1 trillion by 2030. Specifically, the stock would have to achieve a compound annual gain of 14.2% between now and August 2030 to surpass a $1 trillion market cap. For context, the S&P 500 has historically averaged an annual gain of 9% to 10% per year, but that comes with a lot of variance.
Despite the uphill climb, Netflix thinks it can hit the mark. Management has set an internal goal to hit $1 trillion market cap by 2030, as well as doubling revenue and tripling operating income from 2024 levels, giving Netflix a projected $78 billion in revenue and a 40% operating margin for roughly $31 billion in operating income. At a $1 trillion market cap, that would put Netflix's valuation at 32.3 times operating income, which is expensive considering operating income doesn't even account for taxes.
Netflix's road to $1 trillion requires the company to hit its internal goals and maintain its premium valuation. However, Netflix has done a masterful job refining its secret sauce for content quality and quantity while managing spending. So it's reasonable to assume the company should be able to grow its margins over time.
Investing in Ten Titans for the right reasons
The Ten Titans have delivered market-beating returns over the long term. But the group's valuation is relatively stretched, so the "easy" gains are likely in the rearview. This means these stocks will have to rely on earnings growth, rather than earnings growth and valuation expansion, to drive future returns.
The S&P 500's valuation has gone up, and its yield has gone down as the Titans gobble up a higher percentage of the index. Investors should understand that the Ten Titans' influence on the index is a double-edged sword. When earnings are good and optimism is running high, the Ten Titans can drive the market to new heights. But when fear creeps in, the Titans can accelerate a rapid sell-off -- as we saw in April.
I believe Oracle and Netflix will one day reach $1 trillion market caps, but there's a lot that could go wrong between now and 2030 to delay that ascent. So investors considering either name should only do so with a long-term mindset and a relatively high risk tolerance.
Should you invest $1,000 in Oracle right now?
Before you buy stock in Oracle, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Oracle wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $649,657!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,090,993!*
Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,057% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 185% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.
See the 10 stocks »
*Stock Advisor returns as of August 18, 2025
Daniel Foelber has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, Oracle, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Prediction: All "Ten Titans" Stocks Will Surpass $1 Trillion in Market Cap by 2030 was originally published by The Motley Fool
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| 24.08.25 18:32:00 |
Is the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF the Simplest Way to Double Up on "Ten Titans" Growth Stocks? |
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**Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!**
Key Points
The Ten Titans have contributed more than half of S&P 500 gains in the last decade. Avoiding stocks just because they have run-up is a mistake. The S&P 500 should be viewed more as a growth index than a balanced index. 10 stocks we like better than Vanguard S&P 500 ETF ›
The largest growth-focused U.S. companies by market cap are Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Microsoft(NASDAQ: MSFT), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Amazon(NASDAQ: AMZN), Alphabet(NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL), Meta Platforms(NASDAQ: META), Broadcom(NASDAQ: AVGO), Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), and Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX).
Known as the "Ten Titans," this elite group of companies has been instrumental in driving broader market gains in recent years, now making up around 38% of the S&P 500(SNPINDEX: ^GSPC).
Investment management firm Vanguard has the largest (by net assets) and lowest cost exchange-traded fund (ETF) for mirroring the performance of the index -- the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF(NYSEMKT: VOO). Here's why the fund is one of the simplest ways to get significant exposure to the Ten Titans.Image source: Getty Images.
Ten Titan dominance
Over the long term, the S&P 500 has historically delivered annualized results of 9% to 10%. It has been a simple way to compound wealth over time, especially as fees have come down for S&P 500 products. The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF sports an expense ratio of just 0.03% -- or $3 for every $10,000 invested -- making it an ultra-inexpensive way to get exposure to 500 of the top U.S. companies.
The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF could be a great choice for folks who aren't looking to research companies or closely follow the market. But it's a mistake to assume that the S&P 500 is well diversified just because it holds hundreds of names. Right now, the S&P 500 is arguably the least diversified it has been since the turn of the millennium.
Megacap growth companies have gotten even bigger while the rest of the market hasn't done nearly as well. Today, the combined market cap of the Ten Titans is $20.2 trillion. Ten years ago, it was just $2.5 trillion. Nvidia alone went from a blip on the S&P 500's radar at $12.4 billion to over $4 trillion in market cap. And not a single Titan was worth over $1 trillion a decade ago. Today, eight of them are.S&P 500 Market Cap data by YCharts.
To put that monster gain into perspective, the S&P 500's market cap was $18.2 trillion a decade ago. Meaning the Ten Titans have contributed a staggering 51.6% of the $34.3 trillion market cap the S&P 500 has added over the last decade. Without the Ten Titans, the S&P 500's gains over the last decade would have looked mediocre at best. With the Ten Titans, the last decade has been exceptional for S&P 500 investors.
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The Ten Titans have cemented their footprint on the S&P 500
Since the S&P 500 is so concentrated in the Ten Titans, it has transformed into a growth-focused index, making it an excellent way to double up on the Ten Titans. But the S&P 500 may not be as good a fit for certain investors.
Arguably, the best reason not to buy the S&P 500 is if you're looking to avoid the Ten Titans, either because you already have comfortable positions in these names or you don't want to take on the potential risk and volatility inherent in a top-heavy index.
That being said, the S&P 500 has been concentrated before, and its leadership can change, as it did over the last decade. The underperformance by former market leaders, like Intel, has been more than made up for by the rise of Nvidia and Broadcom.
So it's not that the Ten Titans have to do well for the S&P 500 to thrive. But if the Titans begin underperforming, their sheer influence on the S&P 500 would require significantly outsized gains from the rest of the index.
Let the S&P 500 work for you
With the S&P 500 yielding just 1.2%, sporting a premium valuation and being heavily dependent on growth stocks, the index isn't the best fit for folks looking to limit their exposure to megacap growth stocks or center their portfolio around dividend-paying value stocks.
The beauty of being an individual investor is that you can shape your portfolio in a way that suits your risk tolerance and investment objectives. For example, you use the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF as a way to get exposure to top growth stocks like the Ten Titans and then complement that position with holdings in dividend stocks or higher-yield ETFs.
In sum, the dominance of the Ten Titans means it's time to start calling the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF what it has become, which is really more of a growth fund than a balanced way to invest in growth, value, and dividend stocks.
Investors with a high risk tolerance and long-term time horizon may cheer the concentrated nature of the index. In contrast, risk-averse investors may want to reorient their portfolios so they aren't accidentally overexposing themselves to more growth than intended.
Should you invest $1,000 in Vanguard S&P 500 ETF right now?
Before you buy stock in Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $649,657!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,090,993!*
Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,057% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 185% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.
See the 10 stocks »
*Stock Advisor returns as of August 18, 2025
Daniel Foelber has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Intel, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, Oracle, Tesla, and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft, short August 2025 $24 calls on Intel, and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Is the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF the Simplest Way to Double Up on "Ten Titans" Growth Stocks? was originally published by The Motley Fool
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| 24.08.25 18:23:00 |
The S&P 500 Hasn't Yielded This Little Since the Dot-Com Bubble. Here's What Investors Can Do. |
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**Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!**
Key Points
The S&P 500's rising yield is similar to what happened before the dot-com bubble burst. This time, the S&P 500 is being driven by earnings growth. Taking out the 20 largest S&P 500 components would push the index's yield close to 2%. 10 stocks we like better than Vanguard S&P 500 ETF ›
The S&P 500(SNPINDEX: ^GSPC)yields just 1.2% at the time of this writing. According to data by Multpl, that is the lowest monthly reading since November 2000 when the S&P 500 yielded 1.18% -- before the sell-off in the Nasdaq Composite(NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC) accelerated as the dot-com bubble burst. Many top growth stocks would go on to suffer brutal losses that took years or even over a decade to recover.
Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »
Here's what the S&P 500's current low yield says about the state of the U.S. stock market and what you can do about it.
Image source: Getty Images.
There's a clear explanation for the S&P 500's falling yield
With 500 holdings, the S&P 500 seems like a great way to invest in hundreds of top U.S. companies at once. But the index has become less diversified in recent years.
Just 4% of S&P 500 components make up 48% of the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF(NYSEMKT: VOO), an exchange-traded fund that closely tracks the index. Since the S&P 500 is weighted by market cap, massive companies can really move the index in a way smaller companies cannot.
Single companies are now worth the equivalent of entire stock market sectors, or multiple sectors. Nvidia(NASDAQ: NVDA) plus Microsoft(NASDAQ: MSFT) make up more than the combined value of the materials, real estate, utilities, energy, and consumer staples sectors -- illustrating the top-heavy nature of the index.
The following table shows the 20 largest S&P 500 components by market cap and their dividend yields as I write on Aug. 18. The "weighted yield" column is the dividend yield multiplied by the percentage weighting in the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF -- which shows the impact each stock has on the index's yield. Company Percentage of Vanguard S&P 500 ETF Dividend Yield Weighted Yield Nvidia 8.06% 0.02% 0.002% Microsoft 7.37% 0.62% 0.046% Apple 5.76% 0.44% 0.025% Amazon 4.11% 0% 0% Alphabet 3.76% 0.4% 0.015% Meta Platforms 3.12% 0.26% 0.008% Broadcom 2.57% 0.75% 0.019% Berkshire Hathaway 1.61% 0% 0% Tesla 1.61% 0% 0% JPMorgan Chase 1.48% 1.82% 0.027% Visa 1.09% 0.69% 0.008% Eli Lilly 1.08% 0.83% 0.009% Netflix 0.92% 0% 0% ExxonMobil 0.89% 3.72% 0.033% Mastercard 0.85% 0.64% 0.005% Walmart 0.79% 0.91% 0.007% Costco Wholesale 0.78% 0.51% 0.004% Oracle 0.77% 0.89% 0.007% Johnson & Johnson 0.74% 2.84% 0.021% Home Depot 0.62% 2.28% 0.014%Sum 47.98% N/A 0.25%
Data sources: Vanguard, YCharts.
The key takeaway is that 48% of the S&P 500 contributes just 0.25% of the index's yield. Meaning that if you took out the 20 largest stocks, the S&P 500 would yield around 2% -- just like it did a decade ago.
So it's not that companies have stopped paying dividends, it's just that low- or no-yield megacap growth stocks like the "Ten Titans" now make up such a large share of the index that the overall S&P 500 yield is lower.
A justified rally
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite underwent massive surges heading into the turn of the millennium that made stock prices go up faster than dividends. Similar to today's market, many of the top holdings in these indexes shifted to growth companies that prioritize reinvesting in their underlying businesses rather than distributing a portion of profits to shareholders through dividends.
The S&P 500's low yield illustrates the extent to which growth stocks dominate the stock market. But unlike the lead-up to the dot-com bust, this rally is much healthier because it is being driven largely by earnings growth and positive sentiment rather than euphoria.
Nvidia is a good example of a company with both a surging stock price and earnings that have compounded several-fold in just a few years. Investors aren't betting on what Nvidia could do in the future if everything goes right. Rather, they are betting on sustained momentum for what Nvidia is delivering right now.
As of Aug. 1, the forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of the S&P 500 was 22.2 -- which is about a 20% premium to its 10-year average. However, the quality of the S&P 500's earnings and growth rate is arguably better today than over that 10-year average. So buying the S&P 500 still makes sense if you agree that the quality is worth paying up for. By this metric, the S&P 500 is pricey, but it's not remotely at nosebleed levels like we saw during the dot-com bubble.
Achieving a more balanced portfolio
The S&P 500 can still be a great tool for building long-term wealth. However, risk-averse investors may be looking for stocks at less expensive valuations and higher dividend yields.
The simplest way to counteract the S&P 500's premium valuation and low yield is to allocate other portions of your portfolio to help fulfill value and income objectives. That can be done by investing directly in top dividend-paying value stocks or value-focused ETFs.
It's important to understand what makes up the S&P 500 and let the index work for you rather than accidentally investing too much in the index and taking on more exposure to growth stocks than you're comfortable with.
Should you invest $1,000 in Vanguard S&P 500 ETF right now?
Before you buy stock in Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Vanguard S&P 500 ETF wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $649,657!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,090,993!*
Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,057% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 185% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.
See the 10 stocks »
*Stock Advisor returns as of August 18, 2025
JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Daniel Foelber has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Costco Wholesale, Home Depot, JPMorgan Chase, Mastercard, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, Oracle, Tesla, Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, Visa, and Walmart. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom and Johnson & Johnson and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc. |
| 24.08.25 15:42:00 |
Prediction: Chamath Palihapitiya's $250 Million SPAC Could Create the Next Palantir for America's Energy Grid |
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**Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!**
Key Points
Palihapitiya's new SPAC focuses on four core themes: artificial intelligence (AI), energy production, crypto, and defense. While there are limitless candidates for the new SPAC, one software startup stands out as a compelling opportunity -- sharing some similarities with Palantir in its early days. SPACs have been overly risky investments for quite some time, and Palihapitiya's personal track record is mixed.10 stocks we like better than Palantir Technologies ›
Remember when special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) dominated Wall Street headlines just a few years ago?
At the center of the frenzy was Chamath Palihapitiya -- better known on Wall Street as the "SPAC king". A former executive at AOL and Meta Platforms turned billionaire venture capitalist (VC), Palihapitiya made his name taking bold bets on disruptive companies.
Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »
For a while, SPACs seemed to fade quietly into the background of stock market activity. But just as investors began to write them off, Palihapitiya reignited the conversation with a new prospectus for his latest $250 million "blank check company": American Exceptionalism Acquisition Corp. While details are limited at the moment, Palihapitiya has hinted at the kinds of businesses he's targeting.
Let's break down what investors need to know about this SPAC, why Palihapitiya's recent move matters, and which company I think could be on his radar -- a potential candidate to become the next Palantir Technologies(NASDAQ: PLTR).
What is American Exceptionalism Acquisition Corp.?
In the S-1 filing for American Exceptionalism Acquisition Corp., Palihapitiya outlines four core pillars he believes are essential to U.S. competitiveness -- artificial intelligence (AI), decentralized finance (DeFi), defense, and energy production.
At first glance, these may look like broad, boilerplate themes. But I see something deeper -- a unifying thesis that ties together some of the biggest secular growth opportunities underpinning the American economy.
Right now, the American economy is experiencing something akin to the Industrial Revolution thanks to the booming impacts of AI. But with any megatrend comes significant trade offs.
For AI, the most pressing challenges are not software development or infrastructure manufacturing -- it's the strain on the U.S. power grid. Hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Oracle, and OpenAI are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into data centers, each requiring massive amounts of electricity to operate at scale.
And it's not just the private sector. The U.S. government is moving aggressively with initiatives like Project Stargate, a $500 billion domestic infrastructure program designed to establish America's digital transformation.
Against this backdrop, I think Palihapitiya may be eyeing a start-up sitting at the intersection of his four pillars.
Image source: Getty Images.
What company could fit the bill for Chamath?
In my eyes, Houston-based Amperon could be a natural fit for the American Exceptionalism SPAC.
Amperon functions as an operating system for the power grid, offering AI-powered software that delivers real-time intelligence to utilities, energy traders, and large power buyers. Its platform enables decision-makers to forecast demand, renewable output, and wholesale prices with greater precision -- addressing some of the most pressing challenges in the energy economy.
In many respects, Amperon can be thought of as the Palantir of climate tech. Just as Palantir's Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) synthesizes massive volumes of unstructured data and turns them into actionable insights for government agencies and large private enterprises, Amperon applies the same methodology to the grid. It translates fragmented inputs -- from weather patterns or anomalies in demand surges -- into a unified model for energy stakeholders.
The company has also built strategic collaborations with Microsoft, National Grid, and Acario (part of Tokyo Gas). Much like Palantir's early contracts, these partnerships have the potential to deepen and expand over time -- embedding Amperon's tools more firmly into data workflows.
Both Amperon and Palantir demonstrate how AI-driven software layers can evolve into indispensable infrastructure. Where Palantir dominates defense and enterprise intelligence, Amperon is carving out a parallel role capturing energy, climate, and grid optimization.
And because energy touches every sector, Amperon's reach extends even further. Its intelligence platform could support crypto and DeFi protocols, where mining depends on reliable power sources, and strengthen defense applications, where resilient energy sources are critical to national security. This suggests that Amperon's total addressable market (TAM) is far broader than it might initially appear.
Ultimately, this vision aligns almost perfectly with the ethos of Palihapitiya's new SPAC: backing companies at the intersection of AI, defense, DeFi, and energy -- all rolled up and packaged into a compelling opportunity reshaping conscious capitalism.
Remember to be careful with SPACs
In the disclosure section of the prospectus, Palihapitiya reminds investors that they should only consider this SPAC if they can "embody the adage from President Trump that there can be 'no crying in the casino.'" Harsh as it sounds, the warning is well placed.
History hasn't been kind to SPACs. A University of Florida study found that SPACs across nearly every major industry have consistently underperformed the broader market over the past decade.
SPCE data by YCharts
Palihapitiya's own track record underscores this risk. Aside from MP Materials and SoFi Technologies, most of his SPACs have been financial catastrophes. As an investor, he has also backed other high-profile deals that flamed out -- including Desktop Metal and Berkshire Grey (both delisted) and Proterra and Sunlight Financial (both bankrupt).
My take is to approach the new SPAC with measured optimism, while keeping Palihapitiya's history of stewarding outside capital at the forefront of your thesis.
American Exceptionalism's converging focus on emerging themes across AI, defense, crypto, and energy might position it as a unique opportunity potentially poised for explosive growth. But smart investors understand that promise and hope are never true substitutes for prudent, disciplined investing.
Should you invest $1,000 in Palantir Technologies right now?
Before you buy stock in Palantir Technologies, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Palantir Technologies wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $649,657!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,090,993!*
Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,057% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 185% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.
See the 10 stocks »
*Stock Advisor returns as of August 18, 2025
Adam Spatacco has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Palantir Technologies, and SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Oracle, and Palantir Technologies. The Motley Fool recommends MP Materials and National Grid Plc and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc. |
| 24.08.25 15:00:00 |
The "Ten Titans" Stocks Now Make Up 38% of the S&P 500. Here's What It Means for Your Investment Portfolio |
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**Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!**
Key Points
The Ten Titans illustrate the top-heavy nature of the U.S. stock market. The combined market cap of the Titans far exceeds the value of the entire Chinese stock market. Concentration adds risk, but the reward has historically been worth it. 10 stocks we like better than Nvidia ›
The "Ten Titans" are the 10 largest growth-focused S&P 500(SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) components by market cap -- Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Microsoft(NASDAQ: MSFT), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Amazon(NASDAQ: AMZN), Alphabet(NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL), Meta Platforms(NASDAQ: META), Broadcom(NASDAQ: AVGO), Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), and Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX).
Combined, these 10 companies alone make up a staggering 38% of the S&P 500.
Even if you don't own any of the Ten Titans outright, the reality is they have a substantial impact on the broad market.
Here's what the dominance of the Titans in the S&P 500 means for your investment portfolio.Image source: Getty Images.
Titans of the global economy
To understand the importance of the Ten Titans, it's helpful to take a step back and quantify the sheer size of the S&P 500.
The S&P 500 has a market cap of $54.303 trillion at the time of this writing and makes up over 80% of the overall U.S. stock market. According to 2024 data from the World Bank, the market cap of the entire U.S. stock market was $62.186 trillion. China, the second-largest stock market in the world, had a market cap of $11.756 trillion in 2024. As a ratio of stock market value to gross domestic product, the U.S. has a far larger market than many other leading countries due to its capitalist structure and the international influence of top U.S. firms.
So, the S&P 500 alone is worth several times more than China's stock market. And with the Ten Titans at 38% of the S&P 500, this group of companies alone is worth roughly double China's entire stock market and over a third of the value of the entire U.S. stock market.
This concentration means that just a handful of companies are moving not only the U.S. stock market but global markets as well.
S&P 500 concentration is a double-edged sword
The S&P 500's high allocation to growth stocks has benefited long-term investors. This becomes evident when comparing the performance of the S&P 500 and S&P 500 Equal Weight indexes.Data by YCharts.
The S&P 500 Equal Weight index gives each of its components a 0.2% (or 1/500) weighting, so Nvidia makes up the same amount of the index as The Campbell's Company. But Nvidia is worth more than 400 times as much as Campbell's based on market cap, which explains why the chip giant has a 7.5% weight in the standard S&P 500 versus a 0.02% weight for the soup company.
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If the S&P 500 Equal Weight index was outperforming the S&P 500, it would mean the top companies by market cap aren't doing well. But as you can see above, investors are benefiting from the concentration in companies such as the Ten Titans.
You may also notice the gap between the two indexes narrowed during the bear markets of 2020, 2022, and earlier this year. But overall, those downturns have been more than made up for by compounding gains.
In sum, having a concentrated index can be a good thing when the largest companies keep expanding, which is precisely what has happened with the Ten Titans.
Paradigm shifts in the major indexes
When I first began investing, I was taught the Nasdaq Composite was the growth index, the S&P 500 was balanced, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average favored value and income. That's no longer the case.
Today, I would define the Nasdaq as ultra-growth, the S&P 500 as growth, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average as balanced. Even the Dow's additions of Salesforce, Amazon, and Nvidia over the last five years have made the index more growth-oriented and less geared toward legacy blue chip dividend stocks.
These changes reflect the evolving economy and the international powerhouse of U.S. technology. Twenty years ago, the 10 largest S&P 500 components in order of market cap were ExxonMobil, Microsoft, Citigroup, General Electric, Walmart, Bank of America, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Intel, and American International Group. Today, eight of the Ten Titans make up the eight largest S&P 500 components.
Balancing S&P 500 risks in your portfolio
Understanding that a handful of companies and growth-focused sectors like technology, communications, and consumer discretionary are driving the S&P 500 is essential for filtering out noise and making sense of market information.
For instance, knowing that the S&P 500 is more growth-focused, investors can expect more volatility and a higher than historical index valuation. This doesn't necessarily mean the S&P 500 is overvalued; it just means the composition of the index has changed. It's a completely different market when the most valuable U.S. company is Nvidia rather than ExxonMobil, and when a social media company like Meta Platforms is worth more than the combined value of several top banks.
As an individual investor, it's especially important to know what you own and why you own it. If you're buying an S&P 500 index fund, expect it to behave more like a growth-focused exchange-traded fund or mutual fund. That may be all good and well if you have a high risk tolerance, want more exposure to the Ten Titans, and have a long-term investing horizon. But for investors with a greater aversion to risk, it may make sense to pair the S&P 500 with value and income-oriented stocks or ETFs.
In sum, the S&P 500's concentration has been a net positive for the U.S. stock market, and I fully expect it to continue benefiting long-term investors because the Ten Titans are truly phenomenal companies. But the growth focus does require investors to reevaluate how the S&P 500 fits into their portfolio.
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Bank of America is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Citigroup is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Daniel Foelber has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Intel, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, Oracle, Pfizer, Salesforce, Tesla, and Walmart. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom, Campbell's, GE Aerospace, and Johnson & Johnson and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft, short August 2025 $24 calls on Intel, and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The "Ten Titans" Stocks Now Make Up 38% of the S&P 500. Here's What It Means for Your Investment Portfolio was originally published by The Motley Fool
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| 24.08.25 14:00:00 |
Inside Elon Musk’s Secret Memphis Warehouse: The Birthplace of the AI “Mothership” |
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**Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!**
In a newly uncovered presentation, James Altucher reveals details of Musk’s hidden warehouse in Memphis — the foundation of his AI mothership project.
Washington, D.C., Aug. 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Few would expect the epicenter of Musk’s most ambitious project to be tucked away in Memphis, Tennessee. Yet, according to Altucher’s report:
“Right here, at a remote warehouse in Memphis, TN… Elon Musk has created the AI mothership…” “It is bigger than anything else on Earth.”
What looks like an unassuming industrial facility may in fact be the staging ground for the most significant leap in artificial intelligence history.
Outpacing the Titans
The Memphis mothership is not just another data hub. The presentation makes clear it has already given Musk the upper hand in the race against Big Tech.
“An innovation of such enormous proportion… That he has already surpassed all the leading AI developers.” “Including Microsoft… Meta… OpenAI… Google… and even Nvidia.”
These aren’t minor rivals. They are the corporate giants that have dominated computing for decades. And yet Musk, operating from a warehouse in Memphis, has leapfrogged them.
Musk’s Ultimate Ambition
Why Memphis? Why this facility? The answer lies in Musk’s audacious goals. The report captures his vision in stark terms:
“Musk says this project will help him unlock the deepest secrets of the universe… And achieve things — possibly in a matter of weeks — that we can’t even fathom.”
This isn’t about building faster servers. It’s about engineering a platform capable of breakthroughs on a cosmic scale.
A New Epoch Begins
Observers describe the Memphis mothership as the spark of a new age. According to the document:
“This will lead to the rise of AI 2.0… Or what I call ‘Artificial Superintelligence.’” “We are about to enter an age of exponential innovation — and wealth.”
The mothership is not a distant idea or theory. It’s already here — humming quietly inside an overlooked warehouse.
Key Takeaways From the Report
Musk’s AI mothership is headquartered in a Memphis warehouse It is described as “bigger than anything else on Earth.” The project has already outpaced Microsoft, Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Nvidia Musk intends it to “unlock the deepest secrets of the universe.” Analysts warn it could usher in “Artificial Superintelligence.”
More Than Just a Building
To the outside world, the Memphis facility may look like nothing more than concrete walls and steel beams. But what happens inside could alter the trajectory of civilization itself.
As the report warns, “What you’re about to see could change your life — forever.”
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About James Altucher
James Altucher is a legendary tech investor, entrepreneur, and bestselling author. Known for spotting transformative trends before they go mainstream, Altucher has built his reputation by identifying seismic shifts in technology and finance. His latest research zeroes in on Musk’s Memphis mothership — the unassuming warehouse that may define the next era of Artificial Superintelligence.
CONTACT: Derek Warren Public Relations Manager Paradigm Press Group Email: dwarren@paradigmpressgroup.com
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| 24.08.25 10:00:00 |
Meta is sinking $10 billion into rural Louisiana to build the home of its wildest AI aspirations, setting the template for the nation’s grid buildout |
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**Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!**
On a quiet patch of former farmland in northeastern Louisiana, a fleet of excavators has leveled more than 2,000 acres of reddish clay earth. This is rural Richland Parish, once a floodplain tangled with meandering bayous and wild canebrake where black bears still wander and a quarter of the 20,000 residents live below the poverty line.
Enter Meta—the sixth-largest company in the world by market cap. The tech giant is keen on making Richland home to its wildest AI aspirations—courtesy of a tremendous amount of new gas-fired power. The region has ample land and sits adjacent to Louisiana’s huge Haynesville Shale gas field.
In December, construction began on Meta’s biggest-yet data center: a $10 billion complex of nine buildings, housing bank upon bank of servers that will take up over 4 million square feet, an area larger than Disneyland.
Meta chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg isn’t stopping there. He dubbed the project “Hyperion” in July—a data center “supercluster” that eventually could use the energy equivalent of 4 million homes and become the world’s biggest data center project. Zuckerberg said Hyperion would cover a “significant part of the footprint of Manhattan.”
The project entails more than 2 gigawatts of computing capacity—Zuckerberg said it could eventually expand to 5 gigawatts—programmed to train open-source large language models. Meta lagged in the AI race with previous flops and the multibillion-dollar “Metaverse” boondoggle. Now he’s framing Hyperion and his construction spree as the pursuit of “superintelligence,” while poaching AI talent using $250 million pay packages and buying a 49% stake in Scale AI.
It’s the latest in a grandiose game of Big Tech one-upmanship in AI, competing with the likes of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and OpenAI.
“We are making all these investments because we have conviction that superintelligence is going to improve every aspect of what we do,” Zuckerberg said in Meta’s July 30 earnings call. A Meta spokesperson told Fortune it’s impossible to say exactly what the complex will power since it’s unclear how AI will have evolved when it opens in 2030.
The sheer size has left locals in this quiet region stunned.
“I think, like a lot of people, my initial reaction was kind of blown away that a site [so] rural was selected for something like that,” said Justin Clark, pastor of First Baptist Church in nearby Rayville. “As we started learning more about what it was and what the scope entailed, that feeling just continued. An amazement of, ‘Good grief.’”
Clark looks forward to welcoming new workers to the area but admits it’s difficult to truly visualize the scope. At a recent chamber of commerce banquet, they were told it’s the largest construction site in North America: “That’s unbelievable,” he marveled.
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Altogether, Big Tech’s new data centers will be incredibly energy and water hungry. Keeping the Hyperion servers cool and functional will require twice the power of New Orleans—and eventually more.
As AI’s boom shifts into ever-higher gears, speculation abounds about how utilities will quench Big Tech’s deepening thirst for electricity. In the case of Meta (22 on the Fortune 500), regional utility Entergy will build three new gas-fired turbines with a combined capacity of 2.3 gigawatts—the first such buildout in decades—sparking pushback from ratepayers worried about consumer costs and from climate advocates who fear a backslide from green energy goals.
The scramble for AI dominance has positioned utilities as the gatekeepers of the hyperscaler market, weighing the benefits of massive capital investments for an emergent industry—whose future payoffs remain murky—versus potential rate hikes and the risk of stranded assets for decades to come.
State regulators gave Entergy the green light Aug. 20—two months earlier than expected—potentially setting the template for future deals between utilities and Big Tech to build new power plants, increasingly in more rural locales with affordable land. Entergy and regulators called the deal a model for the nation’s data center and power proliferation.
“This deal could signal to other states that this is how data centers should be governed and operated,” Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis told Fortune. “This would be a test across the nation. I’ve heard that from investors; I’ve heard that from credit agencies; I’ve heard that from fellow data centers—whatever comes out of the Meta deal may be the framework for them all.”Meta is leveling the massive site for its data center complex in Richland Parish, Louisiana.
Meta’s Hyperion as the template
Hyperion has plenty of local political support, but it also managed to unite some environmentalists and Big Oil in opposition, the latter of which voiced concerns about increased power costs for their refineries and petrochemical plants.
“We’re not naive to the fact that it is a complex situation,” said Clark, noting conflicting local loyalties. “Some people who’ve lived in that area for generations feel displaced because of the development. At the same time, we don’t have any real say on whether it’s going to happen.”
The Louisiana Energy Users Group—including Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and Shell—said the project increases Entergy’s Louisiana energy demand by 30%, creating unprecedented financial risks to existing utility ratepayers.
Regardless, Entergy (No. 355 on the Fortune 500) now has the official go-ahead for its gas plants from the Public Service Commission (PSC), the five-person elected body that regulates utilities in the state. Lewis was the only one to vote in opposition. The hearing raised the same questions looming over the nation: How much energy is enough? Can states risk turning down massive economic development investments? And, after the advent of China’s DeepSeek—proving AI can become cheaper and more efficient—could the stampede for power be built on a bubble?
The country already counts about 3,800 data centers—many built during the earlier cloud-computing boom—with the biggest chunk concentrated in Virginia’s so-called Data Center Alley, where 500 facilities find easy access to fiber-optic connectivity for high transfer speeds. But most of those are relatively small compared to what’s needed to power AI. This year alone, hyperscalers announced hundreds of billions of dollars to feed the growing generative AI needs.
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are investing anywhere from $75 billion to $100 billion each into building data centers in 2025—numbers that would have strained the imagination of any economist just a couple of years ago. Meta’s data center budget is about $70 billion—way up from $28 billion last year—and expected to “ramp significantly” more in 2026 as part of Meta’s “massive bet” on superintelligence, Zuckerberg said.
These projects depend on an astonishing amount of new power. A recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy estimates data centers’ grid needs could triple by 2028, consuming up to 12% of the nation’s electricity. OpenAI’s Stargate received an upfront investment of $100 billion in January for the $500 billion data center complex proposed in Texas, where more than 100 new gas plants are proposed to power it and other projects—though many will never come to fruition. Still, industry research group Enverus projects the next five years will bring roughly 46 gigawatts of gas-fired electricity online, a 20% jump in new construction.
Experts agree some surge in electric capacity nationwide is needed. It’s the exact extent that’s unknown, said Cathy Kunkel, energy analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Electricity demand in the U.S. held steady for 15 years but, last year, it increased by 3%— marking the fifth-highest rise this century. More jumps are projected for years to come.
Meta’s and Entergy’s plans to meet that demand are “precedent setting,” Kunkel said.
Buoyed by the Meta project, Entergy’s stock has hit record highs. Meta, meanwhile, has taken on a significant chunk of the upfront costs in Richland.
According to the contract, Meta will pay the power costs for the $3.2 billion gas plants for the first 15 years—more than the typical 10-year contract, but not as much as the 25 years critics sought—as well as some transmission costs. Meta also committed to help build 1.5 gigawatts of solar and battery power throughout Louisiana, eventually winning the support of the Sierra Club, but not other environmental groups.
The arrangements could signal to the market this is the “new gold standard,” Lewis said. That’s a red flag for opponents.
“The problem here is that this is going to set precedent,” Logan Burke, of the Alliance for Affordable Energy, testified Aug. 20. “This settlement puts all of us, all of your constituents and customers in the state, at the mercy of a non-public contract between two corporations.”Data centers and gas plants are booming in Virginia, Texas, California, and, increasingly, nationwide, including more rural locales.
Risks of overbuilding or fears of shortages?
The staggering scale of the project and the resource demands it entails have raised alarm bells for some in Louisiana, where the electric grid is already fragile.
In May, over 100,000 south Louisiana customers lost power after demand outstripped supply.
“The Richland data center is to be the largest in the world,” said Margie Vicknair-Pray, coordinator with the Sierra Club’s Louisiana chapter that broke with the national group’s support. “How can we ensure that blackouts won’t become more frequent? What we have yet to fully understand is the impact the data center will have on the land, our resources, and the people.”
While Meta has a non-binding promise to build more renewable energy, the Louisiana Legislature passed a new law that adds natural gas to the definition of green energy, allowing Zuckerberg and others to count Entergy’s gas turbines as “green.”
Gas-fired plants pose other hurdles. There’s a shortage of turbine manufacturing in the global supply chain. Gas turbines are essentially sold out for the next five years.
With the state bypassing the standard, lengthier review process, Lewis questions whether Entergy and Meta need extra turbines. “Why are we only focusing, quite frankly, on generation buildup?” he wondered, rather than grid efficiency and flexibility. He warned of Meta potentially walking away early, leaving ratepayers stuck with excess costs.
Entergy spokesman Brandon Scardigli told Fortune that “natural gas-fueled generation is the lowest reasonable cost option available that can support the 24/7 electrical demands of a large data center like Meta.”
The other wild card is the expectation for improvements in computing and power efficiency. Kunkel concluded an inevitability. The projects will use less energy, she said, “either because they get more efficient or because they don’t and go bankrupt.”
It could mean utilities—and Big Tech—find themselves pouring capital into new gas generation no one needs.Meta shows its blue-hued cold storage facilities within its data centers.
What and where else?
As huge data centers spread throughout rural locales nationwide, Vicknair-Pray questioned the impact of air and noise pollution on farmers and ranchers, and especially the massive water consumption that could impact their livelihoods.
“How will the water be shared?” she asked. “And what happens if the farmers are unable to water their crops?”
The nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation proposes that hyperscalers invest primarily in renewable energy and battery storage developments, with some new gas-fired power used only as needed for backup.
Mike O’Boyle, senior director of electricity policy at Energy Innovation, believes building too many new gas turbines poses unnecessary risks. “I know the environment right now, federally and in the industry, is ‘Build, build, build,’ as fast as we can.” But costs must be considered. “We’re in a limited resource environment where supply is much lower than demand, and it’s causing prices to skyrocket.”
Beyond Virginia, data centers currently are concentrated in the biggest states, such as Texas and California. But part of what makes data centers attractive to developers is they open industrial development for economically depressed areas that aren’t near ports or airports—such as Richland Parish.
Adam Robinson, an energy analyst with Enverus, looked at where the buildout may head next. He said many factors are considered by developers: Power and land prices and availability, grid and fiber-optic connectivity, and the time it takes to connect to the grid.
Robinson predicts a lot of development in the PJM Interconnection (Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland) region from New Jersey through the Rust Belt and into Illinois. The region is attracting hyperscalers thanks to competitive power markets, good connectivity, and high data-transfer speeds.
Developers looking for large plots of affordable land also are looking West, while co-location and smaller developers are more focused on cheap land and tax incentives in Texas and the Deep South, Robinson said. Louisiana, for instance, exempted the Meta deal from sales taxes.
Pastor Clark recognizes that tech progress is inevitable in Richland and everywhere else.
“It is happening,” he said, “so we want to make the best of it.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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| 24.08.25 09:45:00 |
Investing $1,000 in Each of These Growth Stocks Could Go a Long Way for Patient Investors |
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**Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!**
Key Points
ON Semiconductor is a growth stock trading at an excellent valuation. Centrus Energy occupies a unique place on the nuclear energy industry landscape. ASML is beaten down for all the wrong reasons.10 stocks we like better than ON Semiconductor ›
Many growth stocks are valued for what they could one day become rather than where they are today. So, building an investment thesis in a growth stock inherently requires patience.
There are plenty of ways to approach growth stocks, from targeting the "Ten Titans" megacap names to seeking out hidden-gem companies.
Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »
Here's why these Fool.com contributors identified ON Semiconductor(NASDAQ: ON), Centrus Energy (NYSEMKT: LEU), and ASML(NASDAQ: ASML) as three especially compelling growth stocks to put $1,000 in now.
Image source: Getty Images.
This company's best days lie ahead of it
Lee Samaha(ON Semiconductor): It hasn't been an easy year for automotive companies, with interest rates staying higher for longer than many expected. That means the cost of borrowing to buy a car remains relatively higher, and that's not good news for the automotive market, particularly the electric vehicle (EV) market, which tends to have higher-priced vehicles.
In addition, following a previous rush of investment, there are plenty of new EVs on the market and very little profit to show for it. That's bad news for ON Semiconductor, which tends to generate more than half of its revenue from the automotive market, and in particular the EV market with its silicon carbide (SiC) devices. It's a market the company continues to invest heavily in.
As such, it's no surprise the stock has struggled this year. That said, the market appears to be ignoring the fact that it's a highly profitable and cash-generative company trading at less than 15 times estimated free cash flow in 2025.
The case for buying ON Semiconductor stock doesn't just rest on value, though, as it's highly likely its automotive customers will start ramping up spending again at some point, and it also has other growth drivers, such as a partnership with Nvidia to develop technology for the next generation of data centers. It's a stock with a lot of long-term growth opportunity trading at an attractive valuation.
Centrus Energy can power long-term gains as the nuclear renaissance unfurls
Scott Levine(Centrus Energy): At this point last year, growth of the nuclear energy industry in the United States seemed a lot more speculative. Things have changed dramatically, however, with the executive orders that President Donald Trump signed in late May. Investors responded promptly to the growing interest, and Centrus Energy as well as other nuclear energy stocks have soared over the past few months. But there's certainly plenty more growth potential for those with multiyear investing horizons.
Fashioning itself as "the only company currently enriching uranium with U.S.-owned, U.S.-origin enrichment technology backed by an American supply chain and powered by American workers," Centrus Energy is in a prime position to benefit from the strong political interest in turning to U.S. companies to shore up nuclear fuel supply. And this isn't unrealistic conjecture.
In its first-quarter 2025 financial report, Centrus Energy noted that as of March 31, it had a backlog of $3.8 billion, of which its low-enriched uranium (LEU) segment represented $2.8 billion.
For perspective on how robust this backlog is, consider that the company reported total revenue and LEU segment revenue of $73.1 million and $51.3 million, respectively, for Q1 2025.
Data center operators are turning to nuclear energy as a solution for the high power demands of artificial intelligence (AI) computing. Alphabet's Google, for example, is collaborating with Kairos Power to develop about 500 megawatts of advanced nuclear power projects over the next decade. Kairos Power, and other advanced nuclear reactor developers of its sort, require high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) for fuel, and since Centrus Energy is one of the few companies capable of producing HALEU, there's even greater potential for Centrus Energy stock to soar as the industry evolves.
A long-term bet on AI-driven demand for semiconductors
Daniel Foelber (ASML): As a Dutch company, ASML won't show up in a list of S&P 500 or Nasdaq Composite components. But it's exactly the kind of exciting growth stock investors may want to take a closer look at now.
ASML plays an integral role in semiconductor manufacturing by making the machines needed in the photolithography step. This step is arguably the most important because it involves etching circuit patterns onto silicon wafers. Without ASML's extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, it would be impossible for large fabs (and ASML's largest customers) like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to fulfill growing order volumes for artificial intelligence (AI) chips.
Buying ASML is a bet on sustained demand for AI chips. If AI continues to evolve and becomes mainstream across industries, then more and more computing power will be needed to handle increased workloads. ASML would benefit because fabs would have to boost their output by increasing production at existing plants or building new facilities.
ASML stock has been beaten down because the company is coming off of intense comps from AI-fueled demand in recent years and because trade tensions are disrupting market clarity. ASML may be a Dutch company, but the Netherlands is a close U.S. ally that is heavily influenced by U.S. trade policy. China is a huge end market for ASML, and the Netherlands restricts the company from selling its most advanced tech to China in a similar vein as the U.S. restricts Nvidia from selling its most advanced chips.
In short, ASML's near-term results are under pressure, and management has already curbed investor expectations by warning of the possibility of no growth in 2026. But the long-term investment thesis is stronger than ever.
What's more, ASML commands a reasonable valuation and pays a decent dividend to boot -- making it an especially attractive tech stock for investors looking for opportunities in AI without paying a premium price.
Should you invest $1,000 in ON Semiconductor right now?
Before you buy stock in ON Semiconductor, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and ON Semiconductor wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $649,657!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,090,993!*
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*Stock Advisor returns as of August 18, 2025
Daniel Foelber has positions in ASML and Nvidia. Lee Samaha has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Scott Levine has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends ASML, Alphabet, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool recommends ON Semiconductor. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc. |
| 24.08.25 08:02:00 |
‘It’s almost tragic’: Bubble or not, the AI backlash is validating what one researcher and critic has been saying for years |
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**Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!**
First it was the release of GPT-5 that OpenAI “totally screwed up,” according to Sam Altman. Then Altman followed that up by saying the B-word at a dinner with reporters. “When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth,” The Verge reported on comments by the OpenAI CEO. Then it was the sweeping MIT survey that put a number on what so many people seem to be feeling: a whopping 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing.
A tech sell-off ensued, as rattled investors sent the value of the S&P 500 down by $1 trillion. Given the increasing dominance of that index by tech stocks that have largely transformed into AI stocks, it was a sign of nerves that the AI boom was turning into dotcom bubble 2.0. To be sure, fears about the AI trade aren’t the only factor moving markets, as evidenced by the S&P 500 snapping a five-day losing streak on Friday after Jerome Powell’s quasi-dovish comments at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as even the hint of openness from the Fed chair toward a September rate cut set markets on a tear.
Gary Marcus has been warning of the limits of large language models (LLMs) since 2019 and warning of a potential bubble and problematic economics since 2023. His words carry a particularly distinctive weight. The cognitive scientist turned longtime AI researcher has been active in the machine learning space since 2015, when he founded Geometric Intelligence. That company was acquired by Uber in 2016, and Marcus left shortly afterward, working at other AI startups while offering vocal criticism of what he sees as dead-ends in the AI space.
Still, Marcus doesn’t see himself as a “Cassandra,” and he’s not trying to be, he told Fortune in an interview. Cassandra, a figure from Greek tragedy, was a character who uttered accurate prophecies but wasn’t believed until it was too late. “I see myself as a realist and as someone who foresaw the problems and was correct about them.”
Marcus attributes the wobble in markets to GPT-5 above all. It’s not a failure, he said, but it’s “underwhelming,” a “disappointment,” and that’s “really woken a lot of people up. You know, GPT-5 was sold, basically, as AGI, and it just isn’t,” he added, referencing artificial general intelligence, a hypothetical AI with human-like reasoning abilities. “It’s not a terrible model, it’s not like it’s bad,” he said, but “it’s not the quantum leap that a lot of people were led to expect.”
Marcus said this shouldn’t be news to anyone paying attention, as he argued in 2022 that “deep learning is hitting a wall.” To be sure, Marcus has been wondering openly on his Substack on when the generative AI bubble will deflate. He told Fortune that “crowd psychology” is definitely taking place, and he thinks every day about the John Maynard Keynes quote: “The market can stay solvent longer than you can stay rational,” or Looney Tunes’s Wile E. Coyote following Road Runner off the edge of a cliff and hanging in midair, before falling down to Earth.
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“That’s what I feel like,” Marcus says. “We are off the cliff. This does not make sense. And we get some signs from the last few days that people are finally noticing.”
Building warning signs
The bubble talk began heating up in July, when Apollo Global Management’s chief economist, Torsten Slok, widely read and influential on Wall Street, issued a striking calculation while falling short of declaring a bubble. “The difference between the IT bubble in the 1990s and the AI bubble today is that the top 10 companies in the S&P 500 today are more overvalued than they were in the 1990s,” he wrote, warning that the forward P/E ratios and staggering market capitalizations of companies such as Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, and Meta had “become detached from their earnings.”
In the weeks since, the disappointment of GPT-5 was an important development, but not the only one. Another warning sign is the massive amount of spending on data centers to support all the theoretical future demand for AI use. Slok has tackled this subject as well, finding that data center investments’ contribution to GDP growth has been the same as consumer spending over the first half of 2025, which is notable since consumer spending makes up 70% of GDP. (The Wall Street Journal‘s Christopher Mims had offered the calculation weeks earlier.) Finally, on August 19, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt co-authored a widely discussed New York Times op-ed on August 19, arguing that “it is uncertain how soon artificial general intelligence can be achieved.”
This is a significant about-face, according to political scientist Henry Farrell, who argued in the Financial Times in January that Schmidt was a key voice shaping the “New Washington Consensus,” predicated in part on AGI being “right around the corner.” On his Substack, Farrell said Schmidt’s op-ed shows that his prior set of assumptions are “visibly crumbling away,” while caveating that he had been relying on informal conversations with people he knew in the intersection of D.C. foreign policy and tech policy. Farrell’s title for that post: “The twilight of tech unilateralism.” He concluded: “If the AGI bet is a bad one, then much of the rationale for this consensus falls apart. And that is the conclusion that Eric Schmidt seems to be coming to.”
Finally, the vibe is shifting in the summer of 2025 into a mounting AI backlash. Darrell West warned in Brookingsin May that the tide of both public and scientific opinion would soon turn against AI’s masters of the universe. Soon after, Fast Company predicted the summer would be full of “AI slop.” By early August, Axios had identified the slang “clunker” being applied widely to AI mishaps, particularly in customer service gone awry.
History says: short-term pain, long-term gain
John Thornhill of the Financial Times offered some perspective on the bubble question, advising readers to brace themselves for a crash, but to prepare for a future “golden age” of AI nonetheless. He highlights the data center buildout—a staggering $750 billion investment from Big Tech over 2024 and 2025, and part of a global rollout projected to hit $3 trillion by 2029. Thornhill turns to financial historians for some comfort and some perspective. Over and over, it shows that this type of frenzied investment typically triggers bubbles, dramatic crashes, and creative destruction—but that eventually durable value is realized.
He notes that Carlota Perez documented this pattern in Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages. She identified AI as the fifth technological revolution to follow the pattern begun in the late 18th century, as a result of which the modern economy now has railroad infrastructure and personal computers, among other things. Each one had a bubble and a crash at some point. Thornhill didn’t cite him in this particular column, but Edward Chancellor documented similar patterns in his classic Devil Take The Hindmost, a book notable not just for its discussions of bubbles but for predicting the dotcom bubble before it happened.
Owen Lamont of Acadian Asset Management cited Chancellor in November 2024, when he argued that a key bubble moment had been passed: an unusually large number of market participants saying that prices are too high, but insisting that they’re likely to rise further.
Wall Street is cautious, but not calling a bubble
Wall Street banks are largely not calling for a bubble. Morgan Stanley released a note recently seeing huge efficiencies ahead for companies as a result of AI: $920 billion per year for the S&P 500. UBS, for its part, concurred with the caution flagged in the news-making MIT research. It warned investors to expect a period of “capex indigestion” accompanying the data center buildout, but it also maintained that AI adoption is expanding far beyond expectations, citing growing monetization from OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Alphabet’s Gemini, and AI-powered CRM systems.
Bank of America Research wrote a note in early August, before the launch of GPT-5, seeing AI as part of a worker productivity “sea change” that will drive an ongoing “innovation premium” for S&P 500 firms. Head of U.S. Equity Strategy Savita Subramanian essentially argued that the inflation wave of the 2020s taught companies to do more with less, to turn people into processes, and that AI will turbo-charge this. “I don’t think it’s necessarily a bubble in the S&P 500,” she told Fortune in an interview, before adding, “I think there are other areas where it’s becoming a little bit bubble-like.”
Subramanian mentioned smaller companies and potentially private lending as areas “that potentially have re-rated too aggressively.” She’s also concerned about the risk of companies diving into data centers too such a great extent, noting that this represents a shift back toward an asset-heavier approach, instead of the asset-light approach that increasingly distinguishes top performance in the U.S. economy.
“I mean, this is new,” she said. “Tech used to be very asset-light and just spent money on R&D and innovation, and now they’re spending money to build out these data centers,” adding that she sees it as potentially marking the end of their asset-light, high-margin existence and basically transforming them into “very asset-intensive and more manufacturing-like than they used to be.” From her perspective, that warrants a lower multiple in the stock market. When asked if that is tantamount to a bubble, if not a correction, she said “it’s starting to happen in places,” and she agrees with the comparison to the railroad boom.
The math and the ghost in the machine
Gary Marcus also cited the fundamentals of math as a reason that he’s concerned, with nearly 500 AI unicorns being valued at $2.7 trillion. “That just doesn’t make sense relative to how much revenue is coming [in],” he said. Marcus cited OpenAI reporting $1 billion in revenue in July, but still not being profitable. Speculating, he extrapolated that to OpenAI having roughly half the AI market, and offered a rough calculation that it means about $25 billion a year of revenue for the sector, “which is not nothing, but it costs a lot of money to do this, and there’s trillions of dollars [invested].”
So if Marcus is correct, why haven’t people been listening to him for years? He said he’s been warning people about this for years, too, calling it the “gullibility gap” in his 2019 book Rebooting AI and arguing in The New Yorker in 2012 that deep learning was a ladder that wouldn’t reach the moon. For the first 25 years of his career, Marcus trained and practiced as a cognitive scientist, and learned about the “anthropomorphization people do. … [they] look at these machines and make the mistake of attributing to them an intelligence that is not really there, a humanness that is not really there, and they wind up using them as a companion, and they wind up thinking that they’re closer to solving these problems than they actually are.” He said he thinks the bubble inflating to its current extent is in large part because of the human impulse to project ourselves onto things, something a cognitive scientist is trained not to do.
These machines might seem like they’re human, but “they don’t actually work like you,” Marcus said, adding, “this entire market has been based on people not understanding that, imagining that scaling was going to solve all of this, because they don’t really understand the problem. I mean, it’s almost tragic.”
Subramanian, for her part, said she thinks “people love this AI technology because it feels like sorcery. It feels a little magical and mystical … the truth is it hasn’t really changed the world that much yet, but I don’t think it’s something to be dismissed.” She’s also become really taken with it herself. “I’m already using ChatGPT more than my kids are. I mean, it’s kind of interesting to see this. I use ChatGPT for everything now.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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| 23.08.25 22:05:00 |
Wenn ich nur eine Aktie aus jedem S&P 500 Sektor für den Rest von 2025 kaufen könnte, würde ich diese 11 Dividendenak |
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**Haftungsausschluss: Der Text wurde mit Hilfe einer KI zusammengefasst und übersetzt. Für Aussagen aus dem Originaltext wird keine Haftung übernommen!**
Okay, here's a 400-word summary of the text, followed by a German translation:
**Summary (English)**
The S&P 500 is heavily influenced by certain market sectors, while others have a minimal impact. Understanding sector diversification is crucial for investors looking to generate passive income. The Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) categorizes stocks into sectors, allowing investors to compare companies and track broader market movements. However, the system isn’t perfect, as companies can span multiple sectors.
This article highlights five key stocks selected for their dividend yield and potential for passive income generation.
**1. Technology (Texas Instruments - TXN):** Technology accounts for over a third of the S&P 500. Texas Instruments, a long-standing semiconductor manufacturer, is the recommended pick. It’s not solely focused on AI, offering a diversified business model and benefiting from the growth of “edge AI.” With 21 consecutive years of dividend increases and a 2.7% yield, it’s a stable option for tech exposure.
**2. Financials (American Express - AXP):** The financial sector, the second largest, is represented by American Express. This company’s strength lies in its dual role as a payment processor and card issuer. Its proven ability to manage risk, reflected in a low net write-off rate, makes it a reliable choice.
**3. Consumer Discretionary (Starbucks - SBUX):** This sector, representing 10.4% of the S&P 500, is highly cyclical. Starbucks is highlighted due to a successful turnaround, driven by new leadership, and a consistent dividend payout (14 years of increases with a 2.7% yield).
**4. Communications (Alphabet - GOOGL/GOOG):** Alphabet is chosen for its diversified business model and relatively cheap valuation, despite concerns about Google Search. The adoption of Google’s chatbot, Gemini, is increasing. Although a relatively low yield (0.4%), the company recently started paying a dividend.
**5. Healthcare (Eli Lilly - LLY):** Despite pressures on the healthcare sector, Eli Lilly is recommended due to its existing drugs (particularly for weight loss and diabetes) and a robust pipeline of new medications.
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**German Translation**
**Zusammenfassung (Deutsch)**
Der S&P 500 wird stark von bestimmten Marktsektoren beeinflusst, während andere nur einen geringen Einfluss haben. Das Verständnis von Sektor-Diversifizierung ist für Investoren entscheidend, die passives Einkommen generieren möchten. Der Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) kategorisiert Aktien in Sektoren, sodass Investoren Unternehmen vergleichen und breitere Marktbewegungen verfolgen können. Das System ist jedoch nicht perfekt, da Unternehmen über mehrere Sektoren verfügen können.
Dieser Artikel beleuchtet fünf Schlüsselaktien, die aufgrund ihrer Dividendenrendite und ihres Potenzials zur Generierung passiven Einkommens ausgewählt wurden.
**1. Technologie (Texas Instruments – TXN):** Der Technologiesektor macht über ein Drittel des S&P 500 aus. Texas Instruments, ein etabliertes Halbleiterhersteller, ist die empfohlene Wahl. Es konzentriert sich nicht ausschließlich auf KI und bietet ein diversifiziertes Geschäftsmodell, das vom Wachstum von „Edge AI“ profitiert. Mit 21 Jahren kontinuierlicher Dividendenausschüttungen und einer Rendite von 2,7 % ist es eine stabile Option für Technologieinvestitionen.
**2. Financials (American Express – AXP):** Der Financials-Sektor, der zweitgrößter, wird durch American Express dargestellt. Dieses Unternehmen ist aufgrund seiner Doppelrolle als Zahlungsabwickler und Kreditkartenherausgeber stark. Seine nachgewiesene Fähigkeit, Risiken zu managen, die sich in einer niedrigen Netto-Schreibabgabe widerspiegelt, macht es zu einer zuverlässigen Wahl.
**3. Consumer Discretionary (Starbucks – SBUX):** Dieser Sektor, der 10,4 % des S&P 500 ausmacht, ist sehr zyklisch. Starbucks wird hervorgehoben aufgrund eines erfolgreichen Umbruchs, der durch neue Führungskräfte angetrieben wird, und einer konsistenten Dividendenausschüttung (14 Jahre Erhöhungen mit einer Rendite von 2,7 %).
**4. Communications (Alphabet – GOOGL/GOOG):** Alphabet wird aufgrund seines diversifizierten Geschäftsmodells und seiner relativ niedrigen Bewertung ausgewählt, trotz Bedenken hinsichtlich von Google Search. Die Akzeptanz von Googles Chatbot, Gemini, nimmt zu. Auch wenn es sich um eine relativ niedrige Rendite (0,4 %) handelt, hat das Unternehmen kürzlich mit einer Dividende begonnen.
**5. Healthcare (Eli Lilly – LLY):** Obwohl der Gesundheitssektor unter Druck steht, wird Eli Lilly aufgrund seiner bestehenden Medikamente (insbesondere zur Gewichtsabnahme und Diabetes) und seiner robusten Pipeline neuer Medikamente empfohlen. |
