3 Quantum Computing Stocks Retail Can’t Stop Watching

Few corners of the market generate as much everyday-investor chatter as quantum computing. On any given week, IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum rank among the most discussed tickers in retail investing forums, and their stock prices swing like few others: 50%-plus moves in both directions are part of the routine.

The excitement is understandable. Quantum computing could be an extremely important technology story of the next two decades. But before you buy the story, it helps to understand exactly what these companies are, and what they are not. This is a guide to evaluating them the way a careful investor should: not on hype, but on cash, burn, and dilution.

What quantum computing actually is

A quantum computer is an experimental kind of computer that processes information in a fundamentally different way from the phone or laptop you are reading this on. Regular computers store everything as bits, ones and zeros. Quantum computers use qubits, which can hold many states at once. That difference could one day let them solve certain problems that regular computers effectively cannot, things like simulating molecules for drug discovery or optimizing enormously complex logistics networks.