If there were ever an “I told you so!” moment for a generation of kids whose parents said they were “wasting their money” on “Pokemon” cards, that moment is here: not only are the trading cards outperforming the S&P 500, but also tech stocks like Meta, and by a huge margin. The cards are also charging up GameStop’s shares, as the meme stock powered up its collectible business by leaning into “Pokemon” nostalgia. 

The S&P 500 notched another record close yesterday. Eighty-three basis points of yesterday’s return in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, more than 2x its daily gain, were attributable to Oracle and the two leading US chip designers, Nvidia and Broadcom. Tech, utilities, and energy were the top-performing S&P 500 sector ETFs, while consumer staples and healthcare were laggards.

Oracle finished Wednesday up 36% after the company forecast that it expects its cloud infrastructure business to see revenues climb to $144 billion by 2030. As hockey-stick revenue projections go, that’s about as bold as they come in terms of sheer scale. 

Not a household name like Google, Apple, or Amazon, Oracle has a swath of different specialties, providing software, servers, and cloud services to global businesses.

Most of Oracle’s RPO won’t turn into real revenue for quite a bit. In its annual report in June, the company said two-thirds of its then $137.8 billion RPO wouldn’t be recognized as revenue for at least 12 months.

The entire AI trade was uplifted on Oracle’s good fortune, and that makes sense. In a way, this is just the first of many times we’ll be seeing these dollars in the years to come. First they’ll go from OpenAI to Oracle, and then into the rest of the AI business. Oracle also has to build out its infrastructure to meet that contracted demand, and that race is reflected in the hefty $35 billion in capital spending it’s allocated for this fiscal year. Oracle’s CEO said she expects RPO to grow to more than $500 billion in the fiscal year as the company signs more multibillion-dollar cloud deals.

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Though more public companies than ever are talking about AI — a whopping 58% of S&P 500 Index members mentioned the technology in the most recent earnings season, per a report from Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research — how many large firms are actually using it is slightly different.

There could be some seasonal effects at play, but given how much is riding on the AI boom, that feels like a significant data point that runs contradictory to the continued AI enthusiasm, and wouldn’t yet show up in the earnings of major AI enablers like Nvidia and Broadcom. 

There is no doubt of the enthusiasm for AI on both the supply and demand sides, as we can see by the ample talk about it among the companies that want to buy it and the ample spending on the infrastructure for it from the companies that want to sell it to them. If this data is any indication, though, actually translating that interest and enthusiasm into legitimate revenue-generating goods and services might be less of a direct path than everyone is saying. 

Since 1936, Gallup has asked US adults what they think is the “ideal number of children” for a family. Back then, the average response was 3.6 children. This year, when Gallup asked the same question, the number had dropped, but not as much as the American fertility rate.