Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The problem with the future is that it hasn\u2019t happened yet. Betting on companies whose value largely resides in educated guesswork is therefore not for the weak of stomach. Nvidia, Palantir, AppLovin and MicroStrategy \u2014 the four best-performing US technology stocks of 2024 \u2014 are all putting investors through their paces.Nvidia, through its sheer size, inspires more cortisol than most. The $3tn chipmaker, whose silicon powers the artificial intelligence boom, almost tripled in market capitalisation in 2024, but is down about 6 per cent this year. Its fourth-quarter earnings comfortably beat analysts\u2019 expectations, but investors are more focused on what comes next.For now, all is going to plan. Boss Jensen Huang says demand for the company\u2019s new high-powered Blackwell chips is \u201camazing\u201d. Profitability is being squeezed a little by the new ranges, but revenue for the current three-month period should be higher than previously thought. The trouble is that beyond that, detail is elusive. Every quarter is a new nail-biter.Buying a company\u2019s stock is always a bet on distant income streams; the lion\u2019s share of value comes from \u201cterminal value\u201d. For example, take the next five years\u2019 worth of analysts\u2019 estimates of Nvidia\u2019s cash flows, according to Visible Alpha, discount them back at 10 per cent a year, and they\u2019re worth just over $500bn today. That means 80 per cent of Nvidia\u2019s $3tn market value consists of money due after 2030. Much can happen in those short windows of time. Just ask the millions of investors who had never heard of Nvidia five years ago. And tech stocks are unusually sensitive to sudden shifts. Nvidia, for example, gets about one-third of its revenue from just three customers, who in turn sell on its goods to others. Its sales to China are subject to tariff policy which, as the Trump administration has shown multiple times already, can turn on a dime.The other members of this fantastic four are having a tougher time. Software company Palantir has slumped on reports that the Pentagon wants to slash budgets, potentially unhelpful to a company that gets more than half of its revenue from governments. It still, though, trades at around 50 times forward revenue, making Nvidia\u2019s 16 times feel positively staid. MicroStrategy, meanwhile, has its own unique quirks: it\u2019s mostly a piggy bank filled with bitcoin, the price of which \u2014 always mercurial \u2014 has sagged.AppLovin\u2019s reversal is particularly sudden. The company, which brokers ad space within gaming apps, tanked after two short seller reports suggested its rapid growth might be less sustainable than it looked. Slower-moving, more predictable companies are much less vulnerable to that kind of attack on investors\u2019 future cash flow confidence.For Nvidia, some things, at least, are certain. Its biggest customers \u2014 companies such as Microsoft and Amazon \u2014 have buckets of cash and are determined to spend it on chips. At present, they have few, if any, other options when it comes to AI processors. And investors, for now, are relaxed. The stress test has been passed; another will be along soon enough.john.foley@ft.com <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The problem with the future is that it hasn\u2019t happened yet. Betting on companies whose value largely resides in educated guesswork is therefore not for the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-222970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}