So, my inbox is blowing up again. This time, the magic word is "quantum," and the ticker is QBTS. "Nate, is QBTS the next big thing?" "Nate, should I put my savings into this?"
Let's get one thing straight. Asking me if a pre-revenue, deep-tech stock is a "good buy" is like asking a bartender for marital advice. I can give you my opinion, but you probably won't like it, and you're still going to do whatever you were going to do anyway.
The hype around quantum computing has reached a fever pitch. It’s the new blockchain, the new AI, the new 5G—a shiny, incomprehensible buzzword that promises to change everything. And offcourse, Wall Street is there to package that promise into a neat little ticker symbol you can gamble on. Companies with "quantum" in their name are popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm, each one claiming to be on the cusp of a revolution.
It’s like the early days of the internet. Everyone knew something big was happening, so they threw money at anything with a ".com" at the end of its name. We all know how that ended for most people. Is this different? Maybe. But hope ain't a financial strategy.
The Quantum Mirage
Here’s the dirty little secret: nobody, and I mean nobody, can tell you with any certainty which of these companies will survive, let alone thrive. Buying a "quantum computing" stock today is like placing a bet on a horse race where all the horses are invisible, the jockeys are theoretical physicists, and the racetrack hasn't actually been built yet. But hey, the idea of a super-fast horse is exciting, right?
The marketing is brilliant, I'll give them that. They use words like "paradigm shift" and "exponential power" and show slick animations of glowing cubes and interconnected nodes. It’s designed to make you feel two things: first, that you're on the ground floor of the next technological leap for humanity, and second, that you're too dumb to understand the details, so you should just trust them and buy in.
This is a bad idea. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm dumpster fire of a financial decision for the average person. You're not investing in a business with profits and a proven market. You're investing in a science experiment, and most experiments fail. What, exactly, is QBTS selling right now that generates real, recurring revenue? Is there a clear path from their current R&D to a product that people will pay for in the next year? Or five years?
Don't send me a link to their investor deck. I've seen it. It's the same template every tech startup uses, complete with the same stock photos of a diverse team smiling at a whiteboard. It’s just meaningless corporate art.
So, Who's Actually Buying This Stuff?
The question I keep getting is, "Who is invested in QBTS stock?" This is, without a doubt, the laziest form of due diligence I've ever seen. It’s the financial equivalent of looking over someone’s shoulder during a test. You’re not trying to understand the problem; you’re just hoping the person you’re copying is smarter than you.
Maybe some big-name VC fund is in on it. So what? VCs place a hundred bets knowing 99 of them will probably go to zero. Their entire model is built on one massive success paying for all the failures. You, on the other hand, are probably not a diversified venture capital fund. When your one bet goes to zero, it's just... zero.
These companies throw around terms like "post-quantum cryptography" and "quantum sensing" and they expect everyone to just nod along, and honestly... it works. Because admitting you don't know what it means makes you feel stupid. So people stay quiet, buy the stock, and cross their fingers.
But are we really supposed to believe that this handful of startups has solved problems that have stumped the greatest minds at Google, IBM, and entire nation-states for years? Is it possible? I guess. It's also possible that I'll be scouted for the NBA tomorrow. Both seem equally likely.
Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one. People scoffed at Amazon selling books online and Netflix mailing out DVDs. Sometimes the world really does change. But for every Amazon, there are a thousand Pets.coms, and I don't like those odds.
It's a Lottery Ticket, Not a Strategy
Let's call QBTS and its quantum cousins what they are: lottery tickets. If you want to throw a few bucks at it for the thrill of it—money you are fully prepared to watch vanish into thin air—then go for it. Have fun. But don't you dare call it an "investment." Don't bet your kid's college fund or your retirement on a buzzword wrapped in a press release. The house always wins in the long run, and right now, the house is the hype machine.
