For those who follow the financial markets even a little, it is no secret that the race in the field of artificial intelligence is currently being fought out among the largest technology companies. However, AI is not a free revolution. To develop ever more efficient models, Big Tech needs hundreds of billions of dollars for data centres, servers, chips, cooling and energy. It is astonishing, but according to an analysis by the IEA (International Energy Agency), data centres are expected to consume around half of the electricity produced in the US between 2025 and 2030.

This is beginning to be reflected in the cash flow of the major companies in the AI sector. The chart below shows the growing gap between the capital expenditure (CapEx) of the Big 4 – namely Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft – and their available cash (FCF – Free Cash Flow). 

Capex of Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft (dark blue) vs. their free cash flow (red) in billions of dollars, including forecasts for the coming years.

From 2023 onwards, these companies’ expenditure will rise steadily and, according to analysts, will be six times higher by 2030 than it was eight years ago. 2026 will be the first real test of this strategy. It is predicted that surplus cash will virtually disappear and debt will rise. In a year’s time, we will find out whether it was a brilliant gamble – or the most expensive mistake in the history of technology.

Another risk for Big Tech is competition. Although tests clearly show that Chinese models still lag far behind the American market leaders, whilst the US remains the leader where scale and computing power matter, the technological advantage is not yet a market advantage – especially when the cheaper Chinese alternative is good enough for most business applications.

On our fear, of course. Visions of the end of the world have always deeply unsettled people. Priests and rulers exploited this to control the masses. Perhaps only the fear of foreign enemies was sometimes greater – be it the Germanic tribes for the Romans, the Mongols for Eastern Europeans, or Putin for the West.

The Greens capitalise on our fear of the end of the world, which they claim is imminent because of our own fault. This fear is a form of self-blame and masochism.

One of the fathers of so-called climate change, which has caused us sleepless nights and turned our lives upside down, was Prof. James Hansen, who worked for NASA. On 23 June 1988, his speech to the US Senate marked the beginning of a new era. The myth that CO2 was the sole factor responsible for global warming began. Yet the fact that humanity’s enormous progress over the last 200 years would not have been possible without the burning of fossil fuels is often glossed over.

It was the baby-boomer generation that first fell into the trap of green ideology, as they were gripped by a fear of nuclear war instilled in them by the Cold War. They said ‘no’ to nuclear power and ‘no’ to fossil fuels. The baby-boomers equated nuclear power stations with nuclear weapons and shut down the former. Now even Hansen has recognised his errors in reasoning and, during a demonstration at the Brandenburg Gate, implored the Germans not to phase out nuclear power (03/11/21).

Just as disinformation about nuclear power was hammered into the minds of the baby boomers for decades, so younger generations are being led to believe that renewable energy sources are more sustainable. It is shocking how few people died as a result of the Chernobyl accident. It is shocking that no one died as a result of the Fukushima accident. But these were dramatic events that made it easy to instil fear.

It is shocking that the efficiency of offshore wind farms is 40% lower than theoretically assumed, which means it takes 14 years for the total costs to pay off. Furthermore, as the wind does not always blow, gas or coal-fired power stations must be on standby to feed electricity into the grid, meaning that, in practice, they operate continuously. If not, it ends up like it did in Spain in April 2025, where there were massive blackouts. Energy storage systems are said to be an alternative to gas-fired power stations, but in the case of a 1GW wind farm, they increase costs by €10 billion and extend the payback period to 29 years. Economic madness.

The same applies to solar power stations – they require 300 to 800 times more land than traditional ones. The same goes for electric cars: 24 kilograms of copper are needed to manufacture an electric motor. Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek, a professor of chemistry at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate Research, has calculated that 8 tonnes of natural resources (soil, water, oxygen, etc.) must be sacrificed for 24 kilos of copper. It’s madness!

The green transition is emptying Europeans’ pockets, and electricity prices are skyrocketing. The green transition is making us dependent on China; it is making us weak. It is destroying nature. Particularly in Africa, where cobalt (indispensable for electronics and electric cars) and other raw materials are mined in ways that devastate the environment.

The Green ideologues could have cited well-known philosophers and economists. They could have referred to Martin Heidegger, who warned against treating the world (including nature) solely as ‘stock’. They could have referred to Thomas Malthus, who became famous for the theory that population growth would outstrip food production, leading to catastrophe, and extended this theory to non-renewable energy sources. But they did not, because they rely on and draw their inspiration from terrorists who glue themselves to the tarmac in the middle of the city and from screaming girls like Greta who try to scare us. They rely on parasites who receive funding from the major corporations in the eco-industry for their “activities”.

 

This short article is intended for long-term investors who allow themselves to be distracted by Trump’s speeches and wars and are tempted by the mainstream trend of investing in AI, IT and weapons.

The so-called ‘utilities’ sector is a defensive sector of the economy that provides everyday goods and services. People can tighten their belts when it comes to spending on electronics, holidays or cars, but they cannot do without electricity, water or gas. This makes demand for these companies’ services relatively stable regardless of the economic cycle. During a recession, they usually fall less than the broader market, although in times of euphoria they tend to grow more slowly than technology or industrial companies. For a long-term investor, this is not a disadvantage but an advantage. Such a sector can, in fact, act as a portfolio stabiliser.

The second key element is the regulatory model. A significant proportion of revenue for companies in the utilities sector comes from tariffs approved by regulatory authorities. Whilst this limits the potential for very dynamic growth, it offers predictability in return. Many of these companies operate as local monopolies and therefore do not have to compete for customers in the same way as companies operating in highly competitive markets.

On the other hand, there are regulatory risks, as decisions made by public officials can affect a company’s profitability.

The third argument in favour of such companies is dividends. Utility companies are among the sectors that traditionally offer shareholders an attractive share of their profits. A stable cash flow enables such companies to distribute profits regularly, and for an investor focused on passive income, this is of the utmost importance.

However, one must not overlook the weaknesses of this sector. The construction and maintenance of energy, gas or water supply infrastructure require enormous capital expenditure. As a result, utility companies generally have high levels of debt. High debt levels are not unusual in the modern world, but they make the sector sensitive to changes in interest rates. As interest rates rise, so do the costs of servicing debt. Consequently, investors tend to view shares in companies in this sector somewhat like bonds. When bond yields rise, some capital flows away from these companies, which can put pressure on their share prices. However, this should not be interpreted as a deterioration in the quality of their business, but merely a shift in investor preferences.

Why might utilities be set for an extra boost to growth right now? In recent years, the utilities sector has gained a new and very strong case for investment: the development of artificial intelligence. AI does not operate in a vacuum. Behind every model, every data centre and every AI-based service lies a vast computing infrastructure that requires huge amounts of electricity. This means that the next industrial revolution driven by AI could increase energy demand in the coming years and, above all, have a positive impact on electricity supply companies. That is why the sector, which has been viewed as dull and uninteresting over the last few years, could now be one of the biggest beneficiaries of a changing world. In 2026, many market segments are performing poorly, particularly following the very strong growth of previous years. Some of the more defensive sectors are currently performing relatively well despite the war narrative, which shows that capital is once again seeking stability and predictable cash flow.

Looking for specific investment tips? Here you go. Here are a few companies that pay dividends regularly and increase them (US market): NextEra Energy, Atmos Energy, Essential Utilities, Eversource Energy, and Consolidated Edison.

 

 

The Hormuz blockade has turned sulphur into a black swan event in the mining industry. This is because a large proportion of the global sulphur trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Sulphur is the raw material from which sulphuric acid is produced, which is indispensable in mining, amongst other things. Consequently, a disruption to the availability of sulphuric acid on the world market could mean that the conflict in the Middle East affects a number of less obvious sectors, such as the uranium sector.

Sulphuric acid is mainly produced during the processing of oil and gas. Consequently, the situation in the Middle East affects the sulphuric acid market in two ways: firstly, less sulphur is entering the global market, leading to a reduced supply of sulphuric acid; secondly, the infrastructure for hydrocarbon processing – and thus the infrastructure in which sulphur is produced – is being destroyed. This means that even if the Strait of Hormuz is reopened, the supply of sulphur will remain limited for some time.

One of the world’s largest uranium producers – the Kazakh company Kazatomprom – will be particularly affected by this problem. The recent floods in the country meant that sulphuric acid supplies for uranium mining operations did not arrive on time, which restricted production and ultimately led to a decline in the expected supply of uranium on the market. It is all the more significant that Kazatomprom extracts uranium using the ISR (In-situ Recovery) method. This is a technology in which a chemical solution is injected into the uranium minerals to dissolve them, and sulphuric acid forms the basis of this solution. Furthermore, it turns out that more than 90% of the sulphur imported into Africa comes from the Middle East… and therefore flows through the Strait of Hormuz. New uranium exploration projects are currently underway on the African continent (for example, in Namibia), where sulphuric acid is urgently needed for operations. Traders are already struggling to secure any supplies. Consequently, sulphuric acid prices in Africa are rising significantly… and if the shortages last longer than three weeks (and there are many signs that, in our view, they will last much longer), then mining projects will have to be temporarily shut down because they are running out of acid.

The problem with sulphuric acid is therefore becoming a more global issue and will affect more companies, which, paradoxically, would significantly improve the long-term outlook for the price of uranium.

As for helium: Qatar is the world’s second-largest producer of helium and is set to account for around 33% of global production in 2025 – 63 million m³.

When the Ras Laffan plant, the world’s largest LNG export facility, was shut down due to the war with Iran, helium supplies were halted, as helium is produced as a by-product of natural gas processing. As a result, the market is currently losing around 5.2 million m³ of helium per month, with virtually no global reserves of this raw material – helium evaporates during storage and should reach consumers in around 45 days. The disruption has already doubled helium prices since the start of the war with Iran. The ships transporting this gas have stopped sailing through the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. This is a serious problem, as a large proportion of the world’s helium supply is transported via this very route. Consequently, companies such as Samsung and SK Hynix, which account for 60% of global SSD production, have reported problems. Helium is, in fact, absolutely essential for the manufacture of semiconductors. It is used to cool and stabilise lithographic equipment, and there is no substitute for it. If the supply of helium is cut off for an extended period, chip factories will begin to scale back production within a matter of days. This will immediately trigger a domino effect: memory production for Nvidia will fall, Apple will be unable to assemble iPhones, Tesla will cut back on car production, and AI data centres will not receive enough GPUs. The entire semiconductor industry – worth more than $600 billion – could start to grind to a halt. Unlike the 2021 chip crisis, which was caused by the pandemic and factory downtime, the current problem is geopolitical in nature. The raw material is not reaching the factories because sea routes are blocked or too risky. And helium is just one of many critical gases whose absence could cripple global technology production.

Iran did not need to target a semiconductor factory with missiles. It was enough to jeopardise road safety to undermine the foundations of the modern digital economy and the energy supply.