I’ve read enough earnings calls to know the difference between confidence and a hostage tape, and this week the Street offered a new ransom note: five bubble-resistant tech stocks for when AI discovers gravity. Think of them as airbags for your portfolio, but with more disclaimers and fewer survival guarantees.

What makes a stock bubble-resistant? According to the press packet, it’s a mystical blend of cash flow, recurring revenue, and the ability to pronounce ‘discipline’ while lighting money on fire in a controlled lab environment. Also, a logo that looks good on a tote bag.

The five candidates represent a strategic mix: companies that sell shovels to people selling shovels to miners; firms that monetize the act of turning servers off and on again; platforms whose primary product is invoices; software that deletes the word ‘AI’ from pitch decks; and a venerable spreadsheet cult with a quarterly tithe.

Their metrics are comfortingly scientific. We get a Foam-to-Fantasy ratio, a Champagne-Adjusted Free Cash Flow, and the thrilling new EBITDA variant: Earnings Before It Deeply Breaks Anything. When the number is green, you’re safe. When the number is red, it simply means you’re learning.

On the morning these picks were unveiled, traders performed the ancient rite of ritual hedging, which involves jogging in place and whispering ‘rotation’ into a coffee cup. For stamina, they tore open market panic emergency granola bars because nothing says risk management like oats that survived 2008.

The report swears these stocks can withstand an AI crash because they do not depend on wishes, only on subscriptions that renew the way the sun rises and cable bills never die. The products are basic yet immortal: invoices, authentication, storage, and the industrial-grade shrug that powers enterprise software pricing.

A quant explained it to me using a whiteboard, three darts, and an amulet labeled “Variance.” He modeled scenarios where AI eats everyone’s job, where AI eats no one’s job, and where AI eats only PowerPoint. In every case, the bubble-resistant names survived on recurring revenue and spite.

Retail investors were advised to stop doomscrolling and start fundamentals-scrolling, a practice identical to meditation but with more footnotes. Great news for people who find serenity in depreciation schedules and the sound of amortization humming like a distant, responsible bee.

For the rest of us, security is tactile. One nervous retiree placed her passwords, share certificates, and emergency goat-shaped candlesticks into a portable fireproof document safe with handle, then whispered, “diversify me, but make it chic.” Her cat nodded in basis points.

Executives from the chosen five issued joint statements in which every sentence included the words “discipline,” “unit economics,” and “we do not have a mascot.” One CFO assured me their business model is so unsexy it could be used to lower room temperature three degrees.

Skeptics asked what “bubble-resistant” really means, and compliance responded by stapling a small umbrella to the prospectus. If markets melt, you’ll still get dividends, the lights will stay on, and someone will email you a PDF so secure you cannot read it.

Will these stocks truly guard your portfolio if AI faceplants into a curb? I’ve read the filings, the footnotes, and the footnotes’ footnotes, and the math checks out like a librarian with a taser. And if it doesn’t, don’t worry—it’ll be a one-time charge that keeps in touch.