Welcome back to Beyond the Magnificent 7.

In Part 1, we covered Saudi Aramco, TSMC, and Broadcom. In Part 2, we broke down Berkshire Hathaway, Walmart, and Eli Lilly.

The idea behind this series is simple: seven companies get 90% of the attention. But the world's 20 most valuable companies include some absolute monsters that most retail investors either overlook or don't fully understand. These are businesses worth hundreds of billions of dollars, sitting right below the Mag 7, quietly compounding.

This week: the memory chip giant powering the AI boom, the most profitable bank in American history, and the oil major that just rode a war to massive gains.

Let's get into it.

Samsung is one of those companies that Americans think they know. You've probably got a Samsung TV or phone in your house right now. But the consumer electronics business is almost a side hustle at this point.

The real story is memory chips. Samsung is one of only three companies on the planet that can manufacture advanced memory (alongside SK Hynix and Micron), and right now, memory is the fuel that powers the AI boom. Those Nvidia GPUs everyone is obsessed with? They need high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to function. Samsung makes it!

The AI tailwind is enormous:

The catch for US investors: Samsung doesn't trade on the NYSE or Nasdaq. There's no official US-listed ADR. You can buy it over-the-counter under the ticker SSNLF, but the liquidity is thin, bid-ask spreads are wide, and it's not a smooth trading experience. It's a bit of extra work, but for a $916 billion company at the center of the AI memory boom, it's worth knowing about.

Sponsored by GuyStocks

JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States. It's also, by most measures, the most profitable bank in the history of banking.

CEO Jamie Dimon has run the bank for nearly two decades, and his track record is hard to argue with. JPMorgan came out of 2008 stronger than it went in. It navigated COVID without breaking a sweat.

Why it matters right now:

The bear case: If the Fed were to cut rates aggressively, net interest income shrinks. Credit losses could spike if the economy weakens (consumer credit card delinquencies have been ticking up). And there's always regulatory risk. But most people are predicting rate hikes through the rest of the year.

If you've been reading S&I the past few months, you already know all about the energy trade. The Iran war sent oil above $130 a barrel. Defense stocks ripped. And Exxon was one of the beneficiaries.

But here's the thing: Exxon was already a monster before the war started.

Exxon is the largest publicly traded oil company in the world (Saudi Aramco is bigger, but it's mostly government-owned). They produce about 4.7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day across upstream (drilling), downstream (refining), and chemicals.

The war and the aftermath:

Exxon is up roughly 24% YTD. But the ceasefire news hit energy stocks hard, with oil crashing 16% in a single day to $94 and Exxon giving back 11%+ since that time.

That volatility is the story of owning energy. You ride the geopolitical waves, for better or worse.

What makes Exxon interesting beyond the war:

The bear case: If you believe the world is transitioning away from fossil fuels over the next 10-20 years, Exxon is on the wrong side of that trend. ESG-conscious investors have been selling. And oil prices are inherently unpredictable. The ceasefire just proved that the trade can reverse in hours.

The bull case: Global energy demand isn't peaking anytime soon. Developing nations need more energy, not less.

Samsung is the memory engine behind a lot of the earth’s AI systems. JPMorgan is one of the most dominant banks in the world. And exxon is the oil giant that prints cash when energy prices are high and survives when they're not.

None of these get the hype that Nvidia or Tesla do. But they're all worth hundreds of billions for a reason!

That’s all for today’s special edition. We hope you got value from it. Reply and let us know if you did. 

Until next week,

— Brandon & Blake