💥 Stocks Just Had Their Best Quarter Since 2020 (Here's What History Says Comes Next)
Record Highs, a Historic Chip Rally, and The Market’s Next Big Shift.
In 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad was finished. The country celebrated. Investors who had poured their life savings into railroad stocks cheered. They had bet on the technology that would transform America. They were right about the technology. They lost almost everything anyway.
Too much track got built too fast. Companies borrowed fortunes to lay rail ahead of demand. When the boom collapsed, the railroads kept running for a century. The early investors went broke. A technology can change the world and still lose you money if you pay the wrong price.
I’ve been thinking about that story all week.
The S&P 500 just finished its best quarter since 2020. The Nasdaq jumped 21%. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index gained 87.8%, the biggest quarterly gain since the index began in 1994. And the Bank for International Settlements (the central bank for central banks) just issued its most serious warning yet. Today’s AI buildout looks like earlier technology booms that ended in painful busts. Canals. Railroads. The internet. Each one changed everything. Each one also bankrupted the investors who arrived late and paid too much.
I predicted this rotation out of big tech weeks ago. The Mag 7 lost $2.3 trillion in June alone, the largest monthly loss ever for the group. Microsoft is down over 20% this year. Meta is off about 15%. Meanwhile, chip stocks like Sandisk gained over 850% and Micron more than tripled. Investors are changing their minds about what matters. And when that happens, the investors who notice first win. The ones who cling to yesterday’s winners get stuck with the losses.
In my 20+ years in finance, I’ve seen this pattern three times. The script is always the same. A real technology creates real excitement. Excitement attracts real money. Real money creates a bubble. The bubble pops. The technology survives. The late investors do not.
This issue is about where we are in that script, and what to do before the next act begins. Today we break down the greatest chip rally in history, the serious new warning from central banks, and why cheap oil might signal recession.
📬 Here’s everything in today’s issue:
Part I — The Big Picture
(1) Market Breakdown & Takeaways
(2) 5 Things You Need To Understand
Part II — What The Markets Are Telling Us
(3) Market Psychology & What Comes Next
(4) Interest Rates & Real Estate
Part III — Investment Research
(5) Insider Trading Alerts
(6) Stocks Beating the Market
Part IV — What To Do Now
(7) Practical Tips & Advice
(8) The Lesson Most Learn Too Late
(9) Your Questions Answered
Part I: The Big Picture
(1) Market Breakdown & Takeaways
What happened, why it happened, and what’s next.
Markets
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq closed out their best quarter since 2020, with the S&P up 15% and the Nasdaq up 21% in Q2.
The Dow gained 13% for the quarter and posted its best first half since 2021, helped by Alphabet joining the index and pushing it to a new all-time high on Monday.
Small caps were the surprise winner. The Russell 2000 is up about 22% this year, its best first half in 35 years.
The Mag 7 shed $2.3 trillion in value last month (the group’s largest monthly loss ever), with Microsoft posting its worst month since December 2000 (down about 20%).
Bank of America says 7 of its 10 market peak indicators have now been triggered.
The Economy
The June jobs report missed big. The US added 57,000 jobs, about half of what economists expected, and April and May were revised down by a combined 74,000.
Wages grew 3.5% over the past year while inflation ran 4.2%. Paychecks are buying less every month.
Traders are pricing in at least one Fed rate hike by year end under new Chair Kevin Warsh, and Bank of America now forecasts three hikes (September, October, and December).
Global Markets, Crypto & Commodities
The Japanese yen hit its weakest level against the dollar since 1986 (about 162 yen per dollar), pressured by rising US rate expectations.
Gold posted its worst quarter since 2013 as the stronger dollar pushed it down.
Bitcoin fell to a nearly two-year low near $58,500 before bouncing back above $61,000, and it lost 14% for the quarter.
Personal Finance
Trump Accounts launched Saturday, giving babies born 2025 through 2028 a $1,000 head start invested in US stock index funds. Parents have to open the account to claim it (at trumpaccounts.gov).
💡 Andrew’s Analysis:
Prices show one of the best quarters in years. Investor mood shows something different. The S&P 500 just posted a 15% quarter while the Fear & Greed Index sits at 32, deep in fear territory. That gap between price and mood is the single most important thing to understand right now.
Here’s what’s going on underneath. The rally has narrowed and rotated at the same time. Chip stocks like Micron, Sandisk, and Intel carried the market to records while the old leaders (Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Apple) fell hard. Semiconductors now make up a record 19.7% of the S&P 500. In my 20+ years in finance, I’ve learned that when one sector becomes the whole story, the market gets fragile. A crash could still be far away. The margin for error shrinks either way.
The jobs report added a second crack. Slower hiring, downward revisions, and 507,000 fewer people reporting work in a single month as the share of Americans in the labor force fell to its lowest level since March 2021. Wages are growing slower than prices, which drains spending power from every household. Meanwhile, the Fed is leaning toward raising rates into this slowdown because inflation is still running above 4%. That combination (a cooling job market plus a hawkish Fed) is where markets have gotten bumpy in past cycles.
Then look overseas. The yen at a 40-year low matters more than most American investors think. Trillions of dollars in global trades are funded with cheap borrowed yen. When the yen snaps back, those trades unwind fast. We saw a preview in the summer of 2024, when a sudden yen rally triggered a brief global market meltdown (the Nikkei fell 25% in about a month and the S&P dropped 8%). When the yen has a problem, everyone has a problem.
Here’s what to do with all this information. First, when the market keeps climbing like this, betting against it is a losing game, but chasing it after a huge run is risky too. The middle path wins. Keep buying your index funds on schedule (a simple S&P 500 fund like $VOO or $SPLG) and let the market’s direction sort itself out.
Second, check how much of your money is tied to tech. If big gains turned chip stocks into most of your portfolio, sell some winners and move the money into other areas. That way you sell high without guessing the top.
Third, hold some cash. With rates this high, cash pays you to wait, and it lets you buy quality companies at a discount if BofA’s peak indicators prove right. Owning an umbrella before it rains beats trying to predict the storm.
(2) 5 Things You Need To Understand
The biggest ideas & trends to pay attention to, and where they’re heading next.
📬 Today we analyze:
1) 🏆 6 Months Down — The Biggest Winners and Losers of 2026
2) 🤖 The AI Boom Just Got Its Most Serious Warning Yet
3) 💸 Money Is Leaving Tech — Here's Where It’s Going
4) 📈 The Greatest Chip Rally in History (And What It's Telling Us)
5) 🚩 Cheap Gas Might Be the Most Dangerous Signal in the Market
🤔 But first — Are you buying chip stocks after this huge rally?
🏆 6 Months Down — The Biggest Winners and Losers of 2026
The S&P 500 finished the first half of the year up over 9%, the Dow gained 8.9% for its best start since 2021, and the Russell 2000 soared 22% for its best first half since 1991. On the surface, that’s a market winning everywhere. Underneath, the stocks leading the market completely changed.
The companies that led for years fell behind. Microsoft dropped over 20% this year and Meta fell about 15%, dragging the once-untouchable Mag 7 to an average loss of around 3% while the broad market climbed. The new leaders are memory and storage companies. Sandisk gained 858%, Micron rose 304%, and Intel climbed 278%, with Western Digital and Seagate also among the biggest gainers. Chip and hardware stocks filled most of the S&P 500’s top ten. And the worst performers (Intuit down 60%, CoStar and Accenture both down over 50%) fell on fears that AI will eat their business.
There’s a timeless lesson here. Markets reward whatever is getting better faster than expected, even when the underlying business is ordinary. Intuit grew revenue 10% and still lost 60% of its value. Micron was a sleepy commodity chip maker and it more than tripled. The market prices change, and it prices it before most people see it coming.
Looking ahead, Wall Street expects another strong earnings quarter. FactSet’s consensus calls for 23.1% earnings growth in Q2, which would be the second straight quarter above 20%, and Goldman Sachs notes that analysts raised estimates during the quarter (they usually cut them). My take is simpler. When the leaders change this much at the halfway mark, the second half usually belongs to stocks the first half ignored. Industrials gained about 20% this year while nobody was watching, and healthcare and financials led the market in June.
My advice is to check how much of your money now sits in this year’s winners. If a stock tripled or quadrupled and grew into a huge share of your portfolio, sell some and spread the money into quality areas that got left behind (healthcare, industrials, financials) or a fund that holds all 500 S&P stocks equally, like $RSP, which just hit a record high.
🤖 The AI Boom Just Got Its Most Serious Warning Yet
The Bank for International Settlements (known as the central bank for central banks) warned this week that today’s AI buildout looks like earlier technology booms that ended in painful busts. Canals, railroads, and the internet all changed the world. They also all attracted more money than near-term profits could justify, and in the BIS’s words, those episodes “ended with an eventual reversal in investment, inducing economy-wide recessions.”
The railroad example is worth remembering. In the 1800s, railroads did transform America. They also bankrupted a huge share of the investors who funded them, because too much track got built too fast. The technology won. The early investors lost. A technology can change the world and still lose you money if you pay the wrong price. The internet repeated the pattern in 2000. Cisco was the most valuable company on earth, the internet kept growing for 25 years, and Cisco still hasn’t returned to its 2000 peak.
What makes this cycle riskier, per the BIS, is concentration and plumbing. The five biggest hyperscalers are on track to spend over $1 trillion on AI from 2025 through 2026, tied together by debt and circular financing deals (chip makers and cloud giants invest in AI labs, and those labs turn around and buy their chips and computing power with the money). US stocks make up an outsized share of global markets, so an AI-led repricing here would spread worldwide. And the global economy is unusually dependent on this single investment boom to keep growing.
The BIS itself says AI may still deliver the productivity gains markets expect. So the takeaway is to prepare for turbulence, and to position for it now. Don’t let any single stock or theme grow into a huge share of your money, and favor companies with real earnings over companies with real stories. Micron earns huge profits and its stock is cheap compared to those profits (it trades around 8x forward earnings versus 20x for the S&P 500), while plenty of AI stocks are priced on promises they haven’t kept yet. When I worked on Wall Street, the phrase we used was simple. Price is what protects you when the story breaks.
💸 Money Is Leaving Tech — Here’s Where It’s Going
Meta announced plans to launch a cloud business and sell its excess AI computing power. Meta’s own stock jumped 9% on the news (investors like the new revenue). Chip investors read it differently. If the biggest buyer of computing power has extra to sell, the industry may have built more AI capacity than it needs, and the chip sector fell 6.7% on Wednesday as the selling spread to chip stocks across Asia overnight. When the biggest buyers start acting like sellers, pay attention.
Here’s the part most people are missing. While tech wobbled, a version of the S&P 500 that counts every company equally hit a record high. Money is moving inside the market, out of chips and giant tech companies and into healthcare, industrials, and financials. That’s healthy as long as it stays gradual. It means investors still want to own stocks. They just want different ones.
The debate for the summer is whether this is a normal quarterly shuffle or a lasting change in which stocks lead. Higher interest rates argue for the lasting change. When rates rise, investors pay less for profits promised years in the future (which describes most expensive tech stocks) and more for profits arriving today (which describes banks, insurers, and industrial companies). With Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack warning that rates may need to go higher to bring inflation down, the math favors the cheaper companies earning money right now.
My advice is to aim for balance. Keep your main index funds, put some new money into the sectors catching this shift ($XLV for healthcare, $XLI for industrials, $XLF for financials), and stop adding new money to whatever has already tripled. You don’t have to sell your winners. You just have to stop feeding them.
📈 The Greatest Chip Rally in History (And What It’s Telling Us)
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index gained 87.8% last quarter, the biggest quarterly jump since the index began in 1994. That beat anything the dot-com era produced (the previous record was 67.8% in early 2000). The index has roughly doubled this year, and we’re only halfway through it.
The fuel is real. AI data centers created a shortage of memory chips, and prices exploded because new chip factories take years and billions of dollars to build. Micron earned $1.91 a share in last year’s fiscal third quarter. This year it earned $25.11. That’s a 1,215% jump in earnings, and the stock’s rally pushed its market value past $1 trillion, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world. The companies that make chip-building equipment (Applied Materials, KLA, Lam Research) all doubled or more.
But the swings are getting wild. Micron dropped 13% in a week, then jumped 16% two days later. The whole sector fell hard early in June. Harvard economists Robin Greenwood and Andrei Shleifer studied a century of market booms and found that fast price gains, bigger daily swings, and newer companies beating older ones are the classic markers of booms that later collapse. All of those markers are showing right now.
Here’s how I’d handle it. If you own these stocks, sell some shares to lock in profit, and decide today at what price you’d sell the rest (make that decision before the market makes it for you). If you don’t own them, buying after an 88% quarter means paying the highest prices in history. Sometimes the best investment is the one you don’t make yet. The chip industry has repeated the same cycle for decades. Shortages create profits, profits create factories, and factories create the next oversupply. Nothing about AI changes that cycle.
🚩 Cheap Gas Might Be the Most Dangerous Signal in the Market
OilPrice.com analyst Gail Tverberg made a case this week that runs against what most experts believe. She argues oil could fall below $40 a barrel even with the Strait of Hormuz still restricted. Everyone expected $150 oil when 20% of the world’s supply got choked off. Instead, prices keep sliding (WTI crude is now near $68, down almost 20% in two weeks). Her explanation is uncomfortable. Demand may be dying faster than supply.
The chain works like this. Oil powers everything, so when the economy slows, oil demand falls everywhere at once. Factories burn less diesel. Trucking shrinks. Airlines cut routes. People drive less. In a real recession, the drop in demand can overwhelm any supply shortage, which is why deep recessions have crushed oil prices in the past even after an early spike. Cheap gas in that world is a symptom of sickness.
There are honest reasons to doubt her. China stepped out of the world oil market and is living off its massive 1.4 billion barrel reserve. A batch of pre-war oil finally sailed out of the Strait and added temporary supply. And the US keeps draining its own emergency reserve, now below 330 million barrels. All three of those supports are temporary, and most banks expect prices to recover as they fade. Tverberg’s warning is that prices won’t recover if the economy breaks first, and the recent rise in bankruptcies supports her case.
My advice is to watch the right gauge. Gas prices tell you almost nothing by themselves. Watch trucking volumes, jobless claims, and corporate bankruptcies alongside oil. If oil keeps falling while those get worse, that’s recession behavior, and it’s time to protect your money first (keep more cash, favor steady dividend-paying companies through a fund like $SCHD, and build your emergency fund to 6+ months of expenses). If oil falls while those hold steady, enjoy the cheap fill-up. Cheap gas can mean supply is healthy or demand is dying, and the price alone won’t tell you which. The economy behind the price will.
💡 Andrew’s Analysis:
All five stories this week come down to one problem. Too much money chasing one idea. The first-half review shows a market where chip stocks filled most of the top ten. The warning from the central banks' bank explains why that pattern has ended badly for 200 years. The move out of tech shows careful investors already edging toward the exits. The chip rally shows the excitement at full volume. And the oil story reminds us that while everyone stares at AI, the real economy underneath (jobs, wages, trucking, demand) is quietly weakening.
History repeats one pattern in every boom. Booms die when too much borrowed money and too much crowding into one idea meet a slowdown. We have record crowding (chip stocks at 19.7% of the S&P 500). We have rising debt (the circular AI financing deals the central banks’ bank flagged). And a slowdown is creeping in (57K jobs, wages trailing inflation, oil demand fading). That’s a description of rising risk, and rising risk changes how you should behave even when prices keep going up.
So here’s what I’d do. Sell some of whatever has run the most and spread that money into areas that got left behind. Own more than one country (Europe’s markets hit all-time highs this year while everyone ignored them). Keep 6 to 12 months of cash earning today’s high rates. And keep investing on schedule, because the biggest mistake in every boom is putting everything in at the top, and the second biggest is pulling everything out and missing the years of gains that often come first. A boring, repeatable process beats brilliant, one-time predictions. Every time.
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Part II: What the Market Is Telling Us
3. Market Psychology & What Comes Next
4. Interest Rate Forecast & Real Estate Outlook
(3) Market Psychology & What Comes Next
The psychology, signals, and data pointing to where the market goes next.
Fear & Greed Index: Bearish (but fear this deep often comes before gains)
The Fear & Greed reading is bearish. The index sits at 32, in fear territory, up from 25 a month ago but far below the 77 reading from a year ago. The index blends seven market signals into one number from 0 to 100 that measures the market’s mood, where 0 is maximum fear and 100 is maximum greed. Right now, three of its seven inputs sit in extreme fear.
The most concerning inputs measure what investors are actually doing with their money. Across the whole market, far more shares are being sold than bought, and that measure sits in extreme fear. Investors are moving money into bonds instead of stocks, and that measure sits in extreme fear too. And demand for bonds from risky companies has dried up, meaning lenders are backing away from anything unsafe. Lenders usually spot trouble first, so that last one matters most.
Here’s the twist. Extreme fear during a rising market is often a buying opportunity. Warren Buffett built his fortune being greedy when others are fearful, and readings this low have marked better moments to buy than readings near 77 (which is exactly where we were a year ago, right before the Mag 7 lost trillions). Fear at 32 with the S&P near records tells me investors have already protected themselves, stayed skeptical, and kept cash on hand. Crashes rarely start when everyone is already braced for one.
AAII Investor Sentiment: Bearish
The AAII sentiment reading is bearish. The survey has asked individual investors the same question every week since 1987 (where do you think stocks go over the next six months). This week, bulls collapsed 13.6 points to 31.4% while bears jumped to 42.3%. Pessimism has now sat above its historical average for 21 straight weeks, which is a long stretch of gloom.
Regular readers know I read this survey backwards. The crowd tends to be most negative near market bottoms and most positive near market tops, so heavy pessimism is often good news for future returns. But 21 straight weeks of above-average pessimism during a record-setting rally is unusual. It tells me everyday investors never trusted this rally, which means there’s still cash on the sidelines that could push stocks higher. It also means the mood can’t get much darker before it starts acting as a floor under prices.
My advice is to keep your emotions out of it. When the crowd is this gloomy, most of the panic selling has already happened. Stick to your schedule, and treat any fear-driven dip as a chance to buy quality companies at a discount instead of a reason to join the panic.
Technical Analysis: Mildly Bullish
The technical picture is mildly bullish. The S&P 500 closed at 7,483, and buyers keep paying higher prices over time, which keeps the short-term trend pointing up. The next test sits at 7,570, a price ceiling where sellers have shown up before. A clean move above that level would be a fresh green light. A rejection there likely means the market moves sideways for a while. The medium and long-term trends both still point up, which is why I give the charts the benefit of the doubt.
The Nasdaq-100 shows the same picture with more strength. It rates positive across short, medium, and long timeframes, with a price floor at 28,500 and a ceiling at 30,500. Rising trends mean buyers keep stepping up, and that behavior usually only ends when a floor breaks. We haven’t broken one.
Bitcoin is the outlier. It rates negative across every timeframe, sitting near $62,600 after bouncing off its lows, with a floor at 60,800 and a ceiling at 66,000. The pace of its decline is slowing, which is the first step toward a bottom, but the trend still points down and it’s still down 44% from a year ago. My advice is to wait for proof before buying.
Economic Indicators: Bearish
The economic indicators are bearish. They show an economy that’s still growing but under real strain. Inflation (CPI) sits at 4.2%, more than double the Fed’s 2% target, and it’s the reason rate hikes are back on the table. Unemployment is low at 4.2% and GDP growth is positive at 2%, which keeps recession talk premature for now. The 10-year Treasury yield at 4.44% is normal by historical standards but heavy for a stock market priced this richly.
Consumer sentiment is the loudest warning. At 44.8, it sits at the very bottom of its entire historical range. American consumers have never felt worse in the history of this data. When wages grow 3.5% and prices grow 4.2%, people feel poorer every month even with a job, and consumer spending is about 70% of the US economy. A consumer this sour eventually spends like it.
The combination to watch is hot inflation plus a cooling job market plus a miserable consumer. That mix ties the Fed’s hands and squeezes company profits from both ends. It’s the single biggest reason I’m keeping my expectations for the second half of the year modest.
The Big Picture: Neutral (Leaning Cautious)
Putting it all together, I grade the overall picture neutral with a cautious lean. Prices are bullish (rising trends, record highs, a historic quarter). The mood is bearish (fear at 32, AAII bears at 42%). The economy breaks the tie, and it’s showing warning lights (inflation stuck above 4%, a 57K jobs month, the worst consumer sentiment ever recorded, and a Fed talking about raising rates).
Markets often keep rising while everyone worries, and that’s exactly what’s happening now. The bear case needs a trigger (a rate hike that surprises, an AI earnings miss, a sudden snap higher in Japan’s currency). The bull case needs nothing except more of the same, because skeptical investors holding cash are future buyers. That’s why fearful rallies tend to keep grinding higher until the economic data actually breaks.
My advice is to respect both sides. Stay invested, because the trend is up and betting against it has been expensive for two years. But spread your money across different sectors and keep cash on hand, because 7 of 10 peak indicators and record crowding into one sector mean the cost of being wrong is rising. Set up your money so you don’t need to be right about the next 6 months to win the next 10 years.
(4) Interest Rate Forecast & Real Estate Outlook
What’s next for mortgages, housing, and your money.
Interest Rate Predictions
I expect mortgage rates to stay flat in the mid-6% range in the weeks ahead, holding between 6.4% and 6.6%. The Freddie Mac 30-year fixed rate just ticked down to 6.43%, a 7-week low, helped by falling oil prices and progress in the Iran ceasefire talks. The weak June jobs report gives rates a little room to drift lower, but inflation above 4% and a Fed leaning toward raising rates put a hard floor under them. I don’t see a meaningful drop coming this year, and I’d plan your finances assuming rates near 6.5% are the new normal for now.
Two things could change this fast. Oil and the Middle East. Rates followed oil down as the ceasefire held. If fighting reignites and oil spikes, inflation expectations jump and mortgage rates jump with them. Watch crude oil prices if you want to know where mortgage rates go next. The link is that direct right now.
Real Estate
The housing market just did something it hasn’t done since its data began in 2017. Realtor.com reported that national asking prices fell 2.5% from a year ago (to a median of $430,000), the steepest annual drop on record, after months of steady declines. And here’s the healthy part. Sales are rising anyway. Pending sales grew for a seventh straight month, new listings keep rising, and the 26-month streak of homes taking longer to sell just ended. Sellers cut prices, buyers showed up, and deals got done. Homes are selling again instead of sitting, and a moving market beats a frozen one.
The country has split in two, though. Since the 2022 peak, asking prices fell 7.3% in the West and 3.5% in the South, but rose 10% in the Midwest and 12.6% in the Northeast. Austin asking prices are down almost 10% from a year ago while Providence and Indianapolis keep climbing. National headlines are almost useless now. Your market is the only market that matters.
My advice for each group:
Buyers, you have real bargaining power for the first time in years. Home prices are rising slower than inflation (and have for 11 straight months), which means homes are getting cheaper compared to everything else you buy. About 19% of listings carry price cuts, and homes sit 53 days on average. Negotiate hard in the South and West (Denver, Phoenix, and Austin have the most price cuts), and get quotes from 3 or more lenders, because a rate just 0.25% lower saves tens of thousands of dollars over 30 years.
Sellers, price honestly on day one. The data shows realistic pricing sells homes, while overpriced listings sit and force bigger cuts later.
Investors, falling prices plus 6.5% borrowing costs means a deal only works when the monthly rent is high compared to the purchase price. Look where inventory is still tight and prices still rise (the Midwest stands out), and be patient. This market rewards buyers who wait for sellers who need to sell.
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Part III: Investment Research & Analysis
5. Insider Trading Alerts (Follow the Smart Money)
6. Stocks Beating the Market
(5) Insider Trading Alerts (Follow the Smart Money)
The latest insider trades worth paying attention to.
Rep. Gil Cisneros Buys Eli Lilly
Rep. Gil Cisneros, a Democrat from California, disclosed a purchase of Eli Lilly $LLY in the $50K to $100K range. The purchase was made June 10 and disclosed July 2. Cisneros is an interesting buyer. He’s a Navy veteran who won a $266 million lottery jackpot before entering Congress, and he sits on the House Armed Services Committee, which gives him visibility into federal spending, though drug pricing policy is the lever that matters most for Lilly.
The stock itself is a giant. Eli Lilly makes Mounjaro and Zepbound, the blockbuster GLP-1 drugs for diabetes and weight loss, and it’s one of the largest healthcare companies on earth. The GLP-1 market is projected to reach over $100 billion within the decade, and Lilly and Novo Nordisk own most of it. A politician buying a steady, profitable drug giant while tech wobbles and rates rise fits the exact shift we covered in Section 2. Healthcare is where nervous investors hide.
I own it and rate it an 8.5/10. Lilly’s lead in weight-loss drugs is enormous and hard for competitors to copy, it has a deep pipeline of new drugs behind it, and it benefits as money moves into healthcare. The main risks are drug pricing politics and a high price tag, so I’d buy a little at a time instead of all at once.
(6) Stocks Beating the Market
Stocks gaining the most momentum and what’s driving them.
1) Bending Spoons $BNDS up +40% on Wednesday 7/1
Bending Spoons soared 40% on its first day of trading Wednesday, closing at $40.50 after pricing its IPO at $29 and reaching a market value of about $25.7 billion. The Italian tech company buys aging digital brands (it now owns AOL, yes that AOL, plus Evernote, Vimeo, and Eventbrite) and squeezes profit out of them with lean operations. A 40% first-day jump shows huge appetite for profitable, unflashy tech in a market tired of companies that lose money on big promises.
I’m out for now and rate it a 6/10. The buy-and-improve model is smart, but big first-day jumps like this often fade, and everyday investors who buy the excitement usually overpay. I want to see two quarters of public earnings before trusting the price.
2) Abivax $ABVX up +39% on Tuesday 6/30
Abivax surged 39% Tuesday after the French biotech announced strong trial data for its ulcerative colitis treatment. Positive late-stage results in a large market (millions suffer from inflammatory bowel disease worldwide) can turn a small biotech into a takeover target or a commercial success story.
I’m out for now and rate it a 6/10. Small biotech stocks jump or crash on single studies, like lottery tickets, and I don’t buy lottery tickets after they’ve already paid out 39% in a day. Great for traders, wrong for wealth builders.
3) Ouster $OUST up +29% on Monday 6/29
Ouster popped 29% Monday on a deal to supply lidar sensors to AIM Intelligent Machines. Ouster makes the laser-based eyes that let machines see, and self-driving construction and mining equipment is a real, growing use beyond the crowded self-driving car race.
I’m out for now and rate it a 6/10. Lidar has a big future (machines that drive themselves need eyes), but the industry has burned shareholders for years with losses and constant new share sales that shrink each investor’s slice. I need proof of lasting profits, and one contract isn’t that.
4) AeroVironment $AVAV up +11% on Thursday 7/2
AeroVironment jumped 11% Thursday after winning a $500 million US Army contract, stacking on top of a 17% surge Tuesday when its quarterly results crushed expectations on booming Defense Department spending. The company makes small military drones (including the Switchblade), and drones have become the defining weapon of modern war. Defense budgets worldwide are rising, and drone spending is rising faster than the budgets themselves.
The long-term setup is strong. Every conflict of the past three years has proven that cheap drones beat expensive traditional hardware, and AeroVironment is the clearest way to invest in that shift. Its market grows every time a country rewrites its military plans, which is happening on every continent, and it now holds a record amount of signed orders waiting to be delivered.
I’m buying it and rate it an 8.5/10. Record orders, a lasting change in how wars are fought, and a fresh $500 million contract prove the story. The price is high, so I’m buying gradually and adding more when the price dips.
5) Applied Materials $AMAT up +11% on Monday 6/29
Applied Materials soared 11% Monday after Cantor Fitzgerald and KeyBanc raised their price targets. The company sells the machines that make chips, which means it profits from every new chip factory built, no matter which chipmaker wins. Every new factory announced (including the $500 billion Korean hub) needs its equipment.
I’m watching it and rate it a 7.5/10. Selling the tools of the AI boom is the right place to be, but Michael Burry has been betting against chip stocks, and the sector just finished an 88% quarter. I love the business and dislike today’s price. It goes on my list of stocks to buy when prices fall.
6) Charter Communications $CHTR up +9% on Monday 6/29
Charter rose 9% Monday after Bloomberg reported talks with SpaceX to create a consumer phone product. A satellite-powered phone offering could give the cable giant a genuine growth story after years of losing internet customers to fiber and wireless competitors.
I’m out for now and rate it a 6/10. One reported conversation with SpaceX doesn’t fix a shrinking core business carrying heavy debt in a rising rate world. Show me a signed deal and customer growth, and I’ll look again.
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Part IV: What To Do Now
7. Practical Tips & Advice
8. The Lesson Most Learn Too Late
9. Subscriber Questions Answered
(7) Practical Tips & Advice
Tips to help you make smarter decisions with money, investing, and life.
