Sample answers

Real questions, full answers.

These are examples of what Noesis answers look like — tables and charts built from primary sources, dated, with the most useful follow-up questions. The live answer engine is in early access.

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Markets · ETF holdings

As of Q4 2024

What are the top 10 stocks in QQQ — and what's their weight?

The Invesco QQQ Trust tracks the Nasdaq-100. Its top holdings are dominated by mega-cap tech, and the concentration is striking: the top ten names alone are over 54% of the entire fund.

#	Ticker	Company	Weight
1	AAPL	Apple	9.0%
2	MSFT	Microsoft	8.0%
3	NVDA	NVIDIA	7.5%
4	AMZN	Amazon	5.7%
5	AVGO	Broadcom	5.0%
6	META	Meta Platforms	4.9%
7	GOOG	Alphabet (A + C)	5.6%
8	TSLA	Tesla	3.0%
9	COST	Costco	2.8%
10	NFLX	Netflix	2.5%
Top 10 cumulative			54.0%

Noesis read

QQQ's top-10 concentration is its biggest factor — and its biggest risk. A single decade-long shift in semiconductors, cloud, or consumer tech can move the whole fund. If you hold QQQ, you mostly own these ten names.

Source: Invesco QQQ Trust public fund disclosures, late 2024. Weights shift daily as prices and the Nasdaq-100 rebalance.

Energy · Geopolitics

As of 2023 (EIA / IEA)

Which countries consume the most crude oil — and how much do they make themselves?

The world burns about 102 million barrels of crude oil per day. The top consumers and producers are rarely the same set, which is why oil is the single biggest geopolitical lever in modern economics.

Country	Consumption (mbd)	Production (mbd)	Net import (mbd)	Self-sufficient?
United States	19.4	13.2	+6.2	Net importer
China	15.5	4.1	+11.4	Net importer
India	5.4	0.7	+4.7	Net importer
Russia	3.5	10.7	-7.2	Yes
Saudi Arabia	3.7	10.4	-6.7	Yes
Japan	3.3	0.0	+3.3	Net importer
Brazil	2.6	3.6	-1.0	Yes
South Korea	2.6	0.0	+2.6	Net importer
Canada	2.5	5.5	-3.0	Yes
Germany	2.0	0.1	+1.9	Net importer

Noesis read

The US is the world's largest oil consumer and the largest producer — and still a net importer of crude. China imports the most by volume (over 11 mbd). Only Russia, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and Brazil among the top consumers run a surplus. Energy self-sufficiency is not a binary — it's a balance sheet.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) International Energy Statistics and the International Energy Agency (IEA) Oil Market Report, 2023 averages. Figures cover crude oil and condensates; values rounded.

Energy · Electricity mix

As of 2023 (IEA)

How is the world's largest economies' electricity made?

Coal still dominates Asia, gas anchors the United States, France runs on nuclear, and Germany is in the middle of the transition. One chart, ten countries, eight sources.

China

United States

India

Japan

Germany

France

Brazil

United Kingdom

Russia

South Korea

Coal Gas Nuclear Hydro Wind Solar Oil Other

Noesis read

China and India are still over half coal. France's grid is the cleanest of any G7, almost entirely nuclear + hydro. Germany and the UK lead the gas-to-wind pivot. The US is in the middle — cleaner than it looks because it swapped coal for gas, but still burning a lot of fossil fuels for power.

Source: International Energy Agency (IEA) Electricity Information 2024 release, covering 2023 generation by source. "Other" includes biomass, waste, and minor categories. Values rounded to whole percentages.

AI · Energy

As of 2024 (IEA, industry)

How much energy does an AI query use — small picture and big picture?

A single LLM query is tiny. A planet's worth of LLM queries is huge. Both are true.

Per query

~0.3 Wh

A typical chat answer is roughly one Google search.

Light-bulb equivalent

~2 min

A 10W LED bulb running for two minutes equals one query.

ChatGPT, per day

~300 MWh

Powers ~25,000 US homes for a day.

Average US home

~30 kWh/day

≈ 100,000 LLM queries equal one home for one day.

Training one big model

~50 GWh

One frontier training run ≈ a small US city for a week.

AI share of US grid by 2030

8–12%

Projected — all data centers today are ~4%.

Noesis read

The per-query cost is genuinely small — running a model is cheap compared to making one. The aggregate is where the story lives: billions of queries per day plus an ongoing arms race to train bigger models means AI is on track to be a single-digit-percent chunk of US electricity demand within five years. Whether that "breaks the grid" depends almost entirely on where the new data centers get built.

Source: IEA Electricity 2024 report (data-center forecasts), Schneider Electric and industry estimates for per-query energy, and public training-energy disclosures from leading AI labs. Per-query figures are inherently rough — they depend on the model, the prompt, and the data-center efficiency (PUE).

Money · Retirement

Bengen 1994; Trinity 1998; updated

What is the 4% rule for retirement — and does it still hold?

The 4% rule says you can withdraw 4% of your initial portfolio in year one, adjust the dollar amount for inflation each year after, and have a high probability of your money lasting 30 years. Here's how the math sits at different withdrawal rates.

Withdrawal rate (yr 1)	30-yr success rate	Visual
3.0%	99%
3.5%	96%
4.0%	89%
4.5%	75%
5.0%	56%
5.5%	38%

Noesis read

4% is still a defensible starting point for a 30-year horizon with a 50/50 stock/bond mix. Several updated studies (Morningstar, among others) argue the safer number today is closer to 3.3–3.7%, because expected returns are lower than the late-20th- century data the original rule was built on. The honest answer: 4% is a good rule of thumb; treat it as the upper end of comfortable, not a guarantee. Stress-test your own plan in the Retirement Planner →.

Source: Bengen, W. (1994) Determining Withdrawal Rates Using Historical Data; Cooley, Hubbard, Walz (Trinity Study, 1998); Morningstar 2024 State of Retirement Income. Success rates are illustrative — actual outcomes depend on allocation, fees, and the specific historical (or Monte-Carlo) regime modeled.

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