Every time Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing reports another remarkable quarter, I ask myself the same question: How can one company be simultaneously one of the strongest businesses in the world and one of the most uncomfortable stocks to own? The answer is simple. TSMC manufactures the most important chips on Earth from an island that sits at the center of one of the most dangerous geopolitical rivalries on Earth. That creates an investment capable of inspiring admiration and indigestion at the same time. TSMC is the manufacturing engine behind much of modern computing. It produces advanced semiconductors for artificial intelligence systems, smartphones, data centers, automobiles, communications equipment, and countless devices most of us use without thinking about the microscopic engineering inside them. When a technology company announces a revolutionary processor, investors usually celebrate the company whose name appears on the presentation. TSMC is often the business actually r...
Market data and valuation figures are as of July 21, 2026. For years, Alphabet was the Big Tech stock investors described as “cheap.” Not cheap in the traditional sense, of course. Nobody looked at a trillion-dollar technology company and confused it with a clearance-bin toaster. Alphabet was cheap only by the peculiar standards of Big Tech, where a company could dominate global advertising, generate tens of billions of dollars in free cash flow, own several of the internet’s most valuable properties, and still trade at a lower valuation than another company selling phones, software, or artificial intelligence dreams. I understood the argument. Alphabet owned Google Search, YouTube, Android, Chrome, Gmail, Maps, Google Cloud, and a collection of other products that billions of people used while occasionally claiming they wanted less Google in their lives. The company produced enormous profits, maintained a fortress-like balance sheet, repurchased stock, and eventually began paying a di...