Making Cents Sense

Let’s get one thing straight right away: Alphabet didn’t “win.” Alphabet finished the race before anyone else knew the race even started. You know what it’s like? It’s like showing up to a casual neighborhood jog and realizing one of the runners secretly owns the track, designed the shoes, controls the timer, and sponsors the medals. And oh, by the way, they also took your biometric data while you weren’t looking. Alphabet has been playing 4D chess while the rest of the tech world was still trying to figure out how to put the pieces back in the box. Alphabet didn’t just beat its competitors — it domesticated them. People keep trying to frame this as some underdog tale, like Alphabet clawed its way to the top. No. That’s not what happened. Alphabet isn’t Rocky. Alphabet is the referee, the promoter, the stadium owner, the concessions vendor, and the guy adjusting the lights while everyone else tapes their wrists. Alphabet is the casino. And everyone else is the poor sucker slidi...

An unfiltered rant about Silicon Valley’s golden child finally showing some cracks There’s a funny thing about this world—humans love a hero until they don’t. They love a winner until the winner stumbles. And they REALLY love a company as long as its stock chart looks like a ski slope flipped upside down. That’s why people worship Nvidia. They look at that stock price and whisper like it’s the burning bush, “This thing can never go down.” But everything goes down. Everything cracks eventually—your back, your sanity, your faith in humanity after reading internet comments—and yes, even the almighty GPU overlord known as Nvidia. Now before anyone starts foaming at the mouth, let’s be clear: Nvidia is a phenomenal company. They make graphics cards powerful enough to simulate the end of civilization in real time. They’re the puppet-masters of AI. They’re printing money like there’s no fiscal tomorrow. But that’s exactly the problem. When everyone believes nothing can go wrong, that’s ...

For the last few years, everyone with a Wi-Fi signal and a half-charged laptop has been screaming about an AI bubble. “It’s a bubble!” “No, it’s a revolution!” “Well my cousin made $40,000 on an AI crypto token shaped like a frog so clearly it’s the future!” Relax. We’ve heard this song before: tech gets hyped, investors foam at the mouth, influencers make YouTube thumbnails with their mouths open, and doomsday prophets warn that this time the machines really will replace everything—including your emotional support therapist. But here’s the twist: The real shock isn’t whether AI rises or crashes. The real shock is what comes after the hype—when the dust settles, the money shifts, and the technology actually embeds itself into the world in ways no chart, meme, or panic attack can predict. AI isn’t a bubble. AI is the bubble maker . And the real explosion comes after the first pop. Let’s break down what’s actually coming. 1. The First Bubble Doesn’t End AI — It Clarifies It Ev...

Because nothing says “I love financial freedom” like getting paid for doing absolutely nothing. You ever notice how everybody wants “passive income,” but nobody wants to do the boring, repetitive homework that actually builds it? They want the money dripping in like a leaky faucet, but they don’t want to read a prospectus, learn a payout ratio, or understand why a stock yielding 11% probably has the same life expectancy as a gas station hot dog. But here’s the thing: if you actually want a six-figure dividend portfolio — a real one, not the fantasy version TikTok kids brag about after owning two shares of AT&T — you’ve got to understand how this game works. And if you’re using SCHD as your anchor, congratulations. You’re already smarter than 70% of people who think “dividend ETF” means “bond fund for old people.” SCHD is the nice, reliable adult in the dividend world. The one who shows up on time, pays their bills, and doesn’t get drunk on the weekends and buy a meme stock at ...

In an era where AI giants dominate headlines, mega-cap tech eats the financial world one trillion-dollar increment at a time, and passive investors pour into the S&P 500 like it’s the only asset class left on Earth, it’s easy to overlook the quieter corners of the market. Those corners look dusty, dull, and uninspiring—especially to anyone who believes innovation lives only in Silicon Valley or inside a data center full of GPUs. But market cycles have a way of humbling consensus. They have a way of elevating the assets that investors ignored, dismissed, or treated like an afterthought. And as we stand on the threshold of a major monetary shift—an interest-rate peak that could give way to the most significant rate-cut cycle since the 2000s—one asset class is positioned for a resurgence: Small-Cap Value. More specifically: Vanguard Small-Cap Value ETF (VBR). With its disciplined factor exposure, broad diversification, modest valuation, and structural positioning for a rate-driv...