Some selloffs reflect broken businesses. Others reflect broken expectations. TempusAI $TEM ( ▲ 2.66% ) currently sits in the second category. The stock has fallen over 50% from its recent highs, resetting sentiment at a time when the underlying business continues to scale.

$TEM ( ▲ 2.66% ) has given up gains over the past twelve months

That divergence is what makes the current setup interesting. The market has shifted its focus toward near-term profitability and capital intensity, while largely ignoring what Tempus is quietly building underneath — one of the most valuable datasets in healthcare. This is a data story, and in healthcare, data is the moat. Let’s take a deeper dive.

👋 ICYMI

This was the week markets have been waiting for — and it delivered a mix of hope and harsh reality.

On Tuesday evening, President Trump announced on Truth Social that the U.S. and Iran had agreed to a two-week ceasefire, mediated by Pakistan, with Iran agreeing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The announcement came hours before Trump's deadline to strike Iran's power plants. Oil prices plunged as much as 16%, and stocks surged — the Dow gained over 1,000 points on Wednesday for its best day in a year. Brent crude fell 11% on the week to $97, its biggest weekly decline in nearly 10 months.

The S&P 500 rose 3.6% for the week — its best weekly performance since November and second consecutive weekly gain — while the Nasdaq soared 4.7% and the Dow added 3%. The Dow moved back into positive territory for 2026, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq sit just under 1% below the flatline for the year.

But the ceasefire is already fraying. Israel launched massive strikes on Lebanon — killing 254 people — arguing Lebanon wasn't covered by the deal, contradicting the Pakistani mediators and Iran. Iran responded by pausing Hormuz traffic again, and by Friday the Strait remained effectively closed to most shipping. VP Vance and envoy Witkoff are in Islamabad this weekend for talks that will determine whether this fragile truce holds.

On Friday, the March CPI report showed headline inflation surged to 3.3% annually — up from 2.4% in February — driven by a record 21.2% monthly spike in gasoline prices, the largest since 1967. However, core CPI (excluding food and energy) came in at just 0.2% monthly and 2.6% annually — below expectations — indicating the war has not yet spread beyond the pump.

🔁 Market Movers

• 🕊 US-Iran Ceasefire Sparks Massive Rally — Then Tests Begin

  The Pakistan-mediated two-week ceasefire sent the Dow up over 1,000 points on Wednesday and oil down 16%. But by Thursday, Trump's primetime address warning the U.S. would "hit Iran hard" if talks fail, combined with Israeli strikes on Lebanon that Iran called a ceasefire violation, sent oil back above $97.

• 📊 March CPI: Headline Soars, Core Stays Tame

  The CPI rose 0.9% month over month — the largest increase since June 2022 — with energy costs surging 10.9% and gasoline alone jumping a record 21.2%. Annual headline inflation hit 3.3%, up sharply from 2.4% in February. The critical detail: core CPI of 0.2% monthly and 2.6% annually came in below expectations, suggesting the inflation shock remains energy-driven and hasn't yet infected broader prices. Markets initially traded higher on this distinction.

• 💻 TSMC Smashes Q1 Revenue Estimates

  Taiwan Semiconductor $TSM ( ▲ 1.97% ) reported Q1 revenue of $35.7 billion — up 35% year over year and beating analyst estimates — as AI chip demand held strong through the war's opening weeks. March revenue alone surged 45.2% year over year, the strongest March on record. TSMC shares are up 29% year to date. Full Q1 earnings and updated guidance are due April 16, which could catalyse the next leg for semiconductor stocks.

• 📉 Q4 GDP Revised Down to 0.5%

  The Commerce Department revised Q4 2025 GDP growth down to 0.5% annualized, from the previously reported 0.7%. The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tracker for Q1 2026 fell to 1.3%, the lowest since the war began. The revisions underscore how little momentum the economy carried into the conflict.

👀 Signals I’m Watching

• 🕊 The Weekend Talks Are Everything

  VP Vance and envoy Witkoff are in Islamabad negotiating what could become either a lasting peace framework or a collapse that sends oil back above $110. The market rallied this week pricing in optimism. If these talks fail, the unwind could be violent. If they produce a credible extension or framework, markets could reclaim their January highs within weeks. This is the single most binary risk/reward event of 2026.

• 🔥 Headline Hot, Core Cool — For Now

  The split between headline CPI (3.3%) and core CPI (2.6%) is the market's lifeline. It allows the Fed to characterize the inflation spike as transitory — a direct consequence of the energy shock rather than structural overheating. But analysts warn this window may close. If oil remains elevated through April and May, energy costs will begin filtering into services, logistics, and food prices, narrowing the gap and forcing the Fed's hand.

• 🤖 AI Demand Is Immune — So Far

  TSMC's 35% revenue growth, Micron's $MU ( ▼ 0.47% ) record quarter from two weeks ago, and the S&P 500's 8-day winning streak led by Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 1.68% ) , Broadcom $AVGO ( ▲ 2.03% ) , and Meta $META ( ▲ 1.73% ) all point to the same conclusion: the AI hardware buildout has not been derailed by the war. Software remains deeply out of favour, but pick-and-shovel AI names continue to outperform. The question is whether this divergence is sustainable — or whether a prolonged energy shock eventually dents even the strongest secular trends.

• 📊 Earnings Season Starts Next Week

  JPMorgan $JPM ( ▲ 0.11% ) , Goldman Sachs $GS ( ▲ 2.88% ) , and other banks kick off Q1 earnings season on Tuesday. This will be the first round of results reflecting the war's impact on corporate profitability, loan demand, and forward guidance. Bank commentary on credit quality, consumer behaviour, and capital markets activity will set the tone for the rest of the reporting season.

YSS performance since bullish write-up

💡In one of my most recent newsletters in late March, I wrote about a relatively unknown name in the space sector, York Space Systems ($YSS), analyzing the company's growth and the stock’s upside potential. YSS has rallied over 50% since then and has already become one of my top three holdings.

If you want to get full access to my research and portfolio holdings, you can join our Investment Club here. Let's grow together! 📈

George

⚠️ Red Flag to Note

Consumer Sentiment Is at Levels That Have Never Ended Well

The University of Michigan sentiment reading of 47.6 is not just low — it is the lowest in the survey's 70+ year history. Every prior trough in this index — the 2008 financial crisis, the 2011 debt ceiling standoff, the 2022 inflation shock — eventually coincided with a slowdown in consumer spending. Consumers are now anticipating 4.8% inflation over the next year while simultaneously reporting the weakest assessment of personal finances since the survey began. If sentiment translates to spending cuts, Q1 and Q2 earnings estimates — particularly for consumer discretionary and retail — will need to come down.

🔍 Insider Transactions I’m Watching

📬 Closing Note

After six weeks of war, the market got what it's been asking for — a ceasefire. And it responded the way you'd expect: the best weekly gain since November, oil plunging, and a wave of risk-on buying across every major index.

But as the dust settles, the picture is more nuanced than the headline numbers suggest. Consumer sentiment just hit an all-time low. Headline inflation has tripled in a month. And the ceasefire itself has already been tested by Israeli strikes in Lebanon that Iran calls a violation.

This is a market that wants desperately to look forward — past the war, past the oil shock, past the inflation spike — and back toward the AI-driven growth narrative that powered the last two years. TSMC's blowout quarter and the tech rally this week show that narrative hasn't broken. But it's competing with real-world constraints that can't be wished away.

The next two weeks will determine whether this ceasefire becomes a genuine inflection point — or just another false start. Earnings season begins Tuesday. Inflation data is still filtering through. And negotiations in Islamabad this weekend will shape everything.

Stay patient. Stay selective. And let the data guide the story.

Until next Sunday —

George ☕

Some stocks correct because the business breaks. Others correct because the market never fully understood what it was pricing in to begin with. Navan falls firmly into the second category.

Since going public in late 2025, Navan $NAVN ( ▲ 3.01% ) has struggled to gain traction. The stock sold off early, drifted lower, and quietly became one of the most overlooked names in the broader software and fintech landscape. What makes that setup interesting is that the underlying business has continued to move in the opposite direction.

$NAVN ( ▲ 3.01% ) shares surge following strong Q4 earnings

The disconnect might not last long as the market has started to pay attention to the strong underlying performance. Let’s take a deeper dive into this newly listed AI/tech name.

👋 ICYMI

After five brutal weeks, markets finally caught a break. The S&P 500 rose 2.7% this past week — its best week in four months and its first weekly gain since mid-February, before the U.S.-Iran war began. The Dow added over 2.2% and the Nasdaq soared 4%.

The primary catalyst came Tuesday, when an unconfirmed report indicated Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was open to ending the war with guarantees. However, optimism was tested Thursday after Trump's primetime address warned the U.S. plans to "hit Iran hard," sending oil above $110 before stocks partially recovered on a report that Iran is working with Oman on a plan to monitor transit through the Strait of Hormuz.

On the economic front, March nonfarm payrolls came in at 178,000 — nearly three times the expected 60,000 — with unemployment dipping to 4.3%. The strong report helped ease near-term stagflation fears, though markets were closed for Good Friday and won't trade on the data until Monday.

And in a rare public interview, Warren Buffett told CNBC he sold Apple $AAPL ( ▲ 2.59% ) "too soon," said Berkshire $BRK.A ( ▼ 0.16% ) has deployed $17 billion into Treasury bills recently, and dismissed the current market drawdown as "nothing" compared to the three times Berkshire's stock dropped over 50% in his career.

🔁 Market Movers

• 💼 March Jobs Report Smashes Expectations

  The U.S. economy added 178,000 jobs in March, far surpassing the 60,000 consensus, with unemployment dipping to 4.3% and wage growth slowing. The strong data may ease concerns about labour market deterioration that surfaced after February's shocking 92,000 payroll decline. The 10-year Treasury yield jumped 3 basis points to 4.35% on the release. Traders continue to price in zero Fed rate cuts for the remainder of 2026.

• 🏦 Buffett: "I Sold Apple Too Soon" — But Won't Buy Yet

  Warren Buffett, in his first interview since stepping down as Berkshire CEO at the start of 2026, told CNBC he would buy "a whole lot" of Apple if it got cheap enough — but "not in this market". He revealed Berkshire deployed $17 billion into Treasury bills in a single week, is sitting on roughly $350 billion in cash, and has made more than $100 billion in pre-tax gains from Apple to date. On the current selloff: "Three times since I took over, it's gone down more than 50%. This is nothing to get excited about."

• 🚗 Tesla Misses Q1 Delivery Estimates

  Tesla $TSLA ( ▲ 3.01% ) delivered 358,023 vehicles in Q1 2026 — up 6.3% year over year but roughly 7,600 units below the Wall Street consensus of 365,645. More concerning: production of 408,386 outpaced deliveries by over 50,000 units, suggesting softening demand. Energy storage deployments fell to 8.8 GWh, down from both the prior quarter's 14.2 GWh record and the year-ago 10.4 GWh. The stock dropped roughly 5.5% on the news. Full Q1 financial results are due April 22.

• 🤖 OpenAI Closes $122 Billion Round at $852 Billion Valuation

  OpenAI completed a massive $122 billion funding round this past week, valuing the ChatGPT maker at a staggering $852 billion post-money. The raise underscores the scale of private capital flowing into AI. Anthropic is also reportedly weighing an IPO this year, as is Databricks, last valued at $134 billion. These potential listings could provide a major tailwind for investment banking revenues at firms like Goldman Sachs $GS ( ▲ 2.88% ) and Wells Fargo $WFC ( ▲ 0.2% ) if the geopolitical environment stabilises.

👀 Signals I’m Watching

• 📊 The March Jobs Report Changes the Narrative — Slightly

  The 178,000 payroll number pushes back against the "collapsing labour market" narrative that took hold after February's surprise decline. The three-month average now sits at roughly 68,000 jobs added — modest but not recessionary. Next week's March CPI report (April 10) will be even more important — it will be the first inflation reading to capture data from after the war began. If it comes in hot, rate hike talk will intensify.

• 💰 Buffett's Cash Hoard Is Its Own Signal

  Berkshire sitting on $350 billion in cash and T-bills, with Buffett saying the market "isn't offering the right opportunity yet," is a statement in itself. The greatest investor in history sees value emerging but not yet at compelling levels. That's both a cautionary signal — this correction may have further to go — and a bullish one, because when Buffett does deploy, it tends to mark generational entry points.

• ⛽ Gas Above $4 Is a Consumer Tax

  Gasoline crossing $4 nationally — with some parts of California above $6 — acts as a direct tax on consumer spending. This is the first time above $4 since August 2022, and it comes as the OECD projects U.S. inflation at 4.2%. Rising energy costs erode disposable income, which eventually feeds into weaker retail sales and earnings downgrades. Watch the March retail sales data (due this week) and Q1 earnings guidance closely for signs of consumer fatigue.

⚠️ Red Flag to Note

The First War-Era Inflation Print Arrives Thursday

The March CPI report — due April 10 — will be the first inflation reading to include data from after the Iran war began on February 28. Core PCE already hit 3.1% year over year in January, its highest in nearly two years and well above the Fed's 2% target. With gas now above $4 nationally for the first time since 2022, the OECD projecting U.S. inflation at 4.2%, and input prices accelerating across manufacturing and services, there is a real risk that this report comes in hot enough to revive rate hike expectations and reverse the week's hard-won gains. Energy is a direct consumer cost — but it's also an indirect one, feeding into transportation, food, and the manufacturing of virtually every good. If the March CPI surprises to the upside, the relief rally could be short-lived.

🔍 Insider Transactions I’m Watching

📬 Closing Note

For the first time in six weeks, the market posted a green number on the weekly chart.

Does it mean the worst is behind us? Not necessarily. The March CPI report arrives Thursday. Q1 earnings season kicks off next week. There's no shortage of catalysts that could push us in either direction.

But what last week showed is that markets want to rally. The speed with which investors bought Tuesday's ceasefire report — sending the Dow up over 1,100 points in a single session — tells you that there is an enormous amount of sidelined capital waiting for a reason to re-enter.

Buffett captured the mood perfectly: "Three times since I took over, it's gone down more than 50%. This is nothing to get excited about."

The man sitting on $350 billion in cash isn't panicking. He's patient. He's waiting for the right pitch. And he's reminding us all that the best time to be thinking about your portfolio is precisely when the noise makes it hardest to think clearly.

Stay patient. Stay selective. And let the data guide the story.

Until next Sunday —

George ☕

AI has created a new bottleneck. It is no longer compute. It is power. Training and running large-scale models requires enormous amounts of electricity, and the infrastructure needed to deliver that power is struggling to keep up. Data centers are scaling faster than grids can expand, and traditional solutions are running into both physical and economic constraints. This is where Bloom Energy $BE ( ▼ 1.05% ) enters the picture.

Bloom is not building models or chips. It is building something more fundamental — on-site power generation systems that allow data centers to operate independently of grid limitations.

The stock has already had a significant run, rising nearly 5x over the past year as investors rushed into AI infrastructure names. That momentum pushed expectations — and valuations — higher. But after a period of consolidation, the setup is becoming more interesting again.

$BE ( ▼ 1.05% ) has faced downward pressure lately

The story has not changed. If anything, demand visibility has improved, contracts are scaling, and the underlying power constraints are becoming more obvious. That combination — stronger fundamentals with a more balanced entry point — is what makes Bloom worth revisiting today. Let’s take a deeper dive.

👋 ICYMI

Markets swung violently this past week as hope and disappointment around an Iran ceasefire whipsawed investor sentiment from one session to the next.
The week began with a sharp rally after President Trump posted on Truth Social that the U.S. and Iran have held “very good and productive conversations” and announced a five-day pause on strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure. Dow futures surged over 1,000 points on the news. But optimism faded quickly. Iran’s Foreign Ministry denied any direct negotiations with Washington, and while Trump extended his deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to April 6, the two sides remain far apart — Iran rejected the U.S.’s 15-point ceasefire proposal and put forward its own demands, including war reparations and sovereignty over the Strait.

By Friday, the rally had fully reversed. The S&P 500 closed at 6,369 — a seven-month low — marking its fifth consecutive weekly decline with a 2.1% drop for the week. The Nasdaq fell 3.2% and is now nearly 13% below its October record, firmly in correction territory. The Dow tumbled 793 points on Friday alone and entered correction territory for the first time this year.

🔁 Market Movers

• 🕊 Ceasefire Hopes Drive Monday Rally — Then Fade
  Stocks surged on Monday after Trump signalled a potential resolution to the Iran conflict, with the S&P 500 gaining 1.15% and the Dow jumping 631 points. Global markets, which had opened sharply lower — the KOSPI fell 6.5%, the Nikkei 3.5% — reversed course on the news. But Iran denied any direct talks, and by Friday the entire rally had unwound as the conflict’s fourth week brought no concrete progress toward peace.

• 📊OECD Warns of 4.2% U.S. Inflation
  The OECD raised its U.S. inflation forecast from 2.8% to 4.2% for 2026 — the highest in the G7 — citing the war’s disruption to energy shipments through the Strait of Hormuz and ongoing tariff effects. The agency also sees the Fed keeping rates flat through 2027 and warned that G20 inflation overall will reach 4.0% this year. Americans are already feeling the pinch — the average price for a gallon of regular gas has risen roughly $1 over the past month to nearly $4.

• 📉Dow Enters Correction; S&P 500 Posts Fifth Straight Weekly Loss
  The Dow fell 793 points on Friday and officially entered correction territory — a 10% decline from its recent highs. The S&P 500 closed at a seven-month low of 6,369, marking five consecutive weeks of losses for the first time since early 2025. The Nasdaq is now down more than 10% from its peak. Energy remains the only sector with meaningful gains year to date, up 33%, while financials have fallen 11% (IBKR / JPMorgan).

• 🛢️Oil Remains Volatile as Strait Stays Closed
  Brent crude traded between roughly $100 and $114 this week, whipsawing on every headline related to ceasefire negotiations. Oil fell sharply Monday on Trump’s announcement but climbed back above $108 by week’s end as Iran showed no signs of reopening the Strait. Iran is now imposing transit fees of up to $2 million on ships passing through the waterway, and roughly 500 million barrels of oil that should have flowed through the Strait have been disrupted since the conflict began.

• 📑 SoFi Battles Muddy Waters Short Report
  SoFi Technologies $SOFI ( ▲ 2.1% ) remained in focus after Muddy Waters Research published a 28-page short report on March 17, alleging “Enron-esque” off-balance-sheet structures and a material misstatement of at least $312 million in unrecorded debt (Motley Fool). SoFi called the report “factually inaccurate” and said it would explore legal action. CEO Anthony Noto responded by purchasing roughly $500,000 worth of shares at $17.32 on the day the report dropped. Short interest has since risen to 10.1%, a multi-month high.

👀 Signals I’m Watching

• 📈 Sector Dispersion Is at Extreme Levels
  Beneath the surface of the index declines, sector performance dispersion is at the second widest level since 2002. Energy is up 33% year to date while financials are down 11% — a spread driven almost entirely by the war. For index investors, this widening dispersion is actually providing a cushion — the S&P 500 is only down about 3% despite massive moves underneath. For active investors, it’s creating the kind of alpha opportunity that rarely appears in index-dominated markets.
  🕊 The April 6 Deadline Is the Next Catalyst
  Trump extended his deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to April 6. If there’s a breakthrough, expect oil to fall sharply and equities to stage a significant relief rally — the S&P 500 is deeply oversold with only a quarter of components trading above their 50-day moving average. If negotiations fail and Trump follows through on threats to strike Iran’s power plants, the market could retest 6,000 — JPMorgan’s downside target.
  ⚠️ The OECD vs. The Fed: Someone Is Wrong
  The OECD’s 4.2% inflation forecast for 2026 is a full 1.5 percentage points above the Fed’s own 2.7% estimate. That gap is enormous. If the OECD is closer to correct, the market’s current pricing of zero rate cuts in 2026 may actually be too optimistic — rate hikes could be back on the table. The March CPI report, due April 10, will offer the first real data point on how rising energy prices are feeding into broader inflation.
  🤖 AI Spend Still Holding — But Narrative Splits Widening
  The AI hardware buildout remains intact, but the application layer is under severe pressure — software stocks are down 20% year to date while semiconductors and electrical components remain up 13%. The market is aggressively separating AI “pick and shovel” winners from companies that haven’t yet proven monetization. Even among the hyperscalers, pairwise correlation has dropped from 56% to 23% — they’re no longer trading as a bloc.

⚠️ Red Flag to Note

Recession Odds Are Climbing Fast
Moody’s AI-driven recession model now puts the probability of a U.S. recession at 49%. When backtested over 80 years, every time this model crossed the 50% threshold, a recession followed within a year. That 49% reading was based on February data — before the Strait of Hormuz closure cut off 20% of global crude supply. The OECD now projects U.S. GDP growth slowing to 2.0% in 2026 and 1.7% in 2027. The combination of surging energy costs, slowing growth, and a frozen Fed creates a fragile macro backdrop heading into Q1 earnings season.

🔍 Insider Transactions I’m Watching

📬 Closing Note

Five straight weeks of declines. The Dow in correction. A global forecasting body warning of 4.2% inflation. And a geopolitical conflict with no clear path to resolution.
It would be easy to look at this backdrop and feel paralyzed.

But here’s what I keep coming back to: the market has been through worse. The S&P 500 is down about 7% from its January high — painful, but not catastrophic. Corporate balance sheets remain broadly healthy. AI infrastructure spending hasn’t slowed. And some of the most aggressive insider buying of the cycle is happening right now, with executives putting real capital to work at these very levels.

The April 6 Strait of Hormuz deadline will likely determine the next leg for markets. A credible de-escalation could trigger one of the sharpest relief rallies we’ve seen in years. A breakdown could take us lower. Either way, the investors who use this period to assess their holdings with fresh eyes — and distinguish between businesses impaired by the conflict and those merely sold alongside it — will be well positioned for what comes next.

The hardest part of investing isn’t picking the right stocks. It’s sitting still when everything around you is moving.

Stay patient. Stay selective. And let the data guide the story.

Until next Sunday —

George ☕

Investing in space has always been difficult. The most obvious opportunities tend to sit in companies building rockets or operating large-scale infrastructure. But those businesses are capital intensive, unpredictable, and often tied to a small number of high-risk programs. York Space Systems $YSS ( ▼ 6.76% ) represents a different angle. Instead of launching satellites, York focuses on manufacturing them. That distinction matters more than it initially appears.

The company is still early in its public market life, operates in a relatively opaque industry, and provides limited detail on contracts. That makes it difficult to build a fully precise model. But the broader outline is becoming clearer. Demand for satellites is rising. Governments are investing heavily in space-based communication and defense systems. Commercial customers are beginning to follow. And York is positioning itself as a scaled manufacturer in that ecosystem.

The stock has struggled since its IPO, falling roughly 40% from early trading levels despite a strong reaction following its most recent earnings report. That divergence between price action and underlying momentum is what makes the setup interesting. Let’s take a deeper look.

$YSS ( ▼ 6.76% ) stock performance despite following post earnings market reaction

👋 ICYMI

This past week may have been the most consequential for markets in 2026 so far. The U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran escalated sharply, sending Brent crude above $112 per barrel after Iraq declared force majeure on all oilfields operated by foreign companies and drones struck two refineries in Kuwait. Oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has effectively halted.

🔁 Market Movers

• 🛢 Oil Surges Past $112 as Middle East Conflict Deepens

  The Strait of Hormuz, responsible for roughly 20% of global oil flows, remains effectively closed to tanker traffic. The IEA estimates more than 3 million barrels per day of regional refining capacity has already shut due to attacks and a lack of export outlets. The U.S. is reportedly assembling a naval coalition to escort ships through the strait, but the timeline and feasibility remain uncertain.

• 🏦 Fed Holds Rates, Raises Inflation Outlook

  The Federal Reserve voted 11–1 to keep rates unchanged, with Governor Miran the lone dissenter favouring a 25 basis point cut. The updated Summary of Economic Projections raised the 2026 inflation forecast to 2.7% while modestly lifting GDP growth to 2.4%. Powell acknowledged that the implications of the Middle East conflict for the U.S. economy are uncertain and noted limited progress on inflation. Goldman Sachs $GS ( ▲ 2.88% ) still sees room for two normalisation cuts in 2026, although market pricing has shifted dramatically hawkish.

• 🥇 Gold Posts Worst Week Since 1983

  Gold crashed roughly 10% over the week — its steepest weekly decline in over four decades — as a surging dollar, rising yields, and evaporating rate-cut expectations hammered non-yielding assets. Despite active geopolitical conflict, the typical safe-haven bid for gold was overwhelmed by liquidity-driven selling and institutional portfolio rebalancing. Gold briefly fell below $4,500, and analysts described the decline as a pricing logic adjustment rather than a reversal of the long-term trend. Silver also recorded its third straight losing week with a decline of more than 12%.

• 💻 Nvidia GTC Powers Through the Noise

  Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 1.68% ) held its annual GTC developer conference this past week, with CEO Jensen Huang announcing that purchase orders for Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems could total $1 trillion through 2027 — doubling the company's prior estimate. Nvidia unveiled its Groq 3 Language Processing Unit — its first chip from the $20 billion Groq asset acquisition — alongside the NemoClaw platform for enterprise AI agents. The company also expanded autonomous driving partnerships with Uber $UBER ( ▲ 0.84% ) , Nissan, BYD, and Hyundai (CNBC). Despite the bullish announcements, Nvidia shares still declined on the week as the broader selloff overwhelmed sentiment.

• 📊 Micron Smashes Estimates but Market Shrugs

  Micron $MU ( ▼ 0.47% ) reported fiscal Q2 results that crushed expectations — revenue nearly tripled year over year to $23.86 billion, with adjusted EPS of $12.20 versus the $9.31 consensus. The company guided for roughly $33.5 billion in Q3 revenue, far above estimates. Management cited AI-driven memory demand as a structural, multi-year tailwind and noted that volume production of HBM4 for Nvidia's Vera Rubin started in the fiscal first quarter. Despite the blowout results, the stock fell nearly 4% on Thursday as broader market weakness weighed on sentiment and investors focused on forward guidance.

👀 Signals I’m Watching

• ⚖️ The Fed Is Boxed In — And Knows It

  The Fed's latest projections reveal the policy dilemma in full: inflation running hotter than hoped, growth still uncertain, and an oil shock that risks fueling both problems simultaneously. Powell's comment that the central bank hasn't made as much progress on inflation as it would like was the most hawkish signal of the week. CME FedWatch data shows market participants now expect no rate cuts at all in 2026, with some traders even pricing in a potential hike.

•  📉Fourth Straight Weekly Decline Signals Regime Change

  The S&P 500 has now fallen for four consecutive weeks — its longest losing streak since March 2025 — and is down 6.77% from its all-time high set on January 27. The index has broken below its 200-day moving average, dip-buying has evaporated, and the Russell 2000 has officially entered correction territory. JPMorgan $JPM ( ▲ 0.11% ) slashed its 2026 S&P 500 year-end target from 7,500 to 7,200 and warned the index could fall to 6,000 in a downside scenario.

• 🤖AI Demand Remains Strong Underneath the Noise

  Despite the broader market selloff, the AI investment cycle continues to accelerate. Nvidia's $1 trillion order visibility through 2027, Micron's record revenue and guidance above $33 billion, and continued hyperscaler spending all point to structural demand that has not been derailed by geopolitical risks. Micron is the only stock among the ten most valuable U.S. tech companies that is up year to date. The market is simply unwilling to pay for growth stories while macro uncertainty dominates.

Personal portfolio performance vs. the market over the past month

While my portfolio experienced some weakness earlier this year, I never lost confidence in my holdings. Instead of panicking or making knee-jerk decisions, I took a step back and carefully reviewed the fundamental performance of the companies in my portfolio, ignoring short-term market noise.

Ultimately, my decision to double down on my highest-conviction names during that period of weakness paid off. Over the past month, my portfolio has rebounded strongly even as the broader market has faced significant losses amid ongoing geopolitical uncertainty.

I share all updates on my personal portfolio holdings and favourite stocks with members of our Investment Club. If you’d like to follow along, you’re welcome to join us below.

👉 Join Us Here 👈

— George

⚠️ Red Flag to Note

Stagflation Risk Has Moved From Theory to Price

With oil above $100, inflation expectations climbing, rate cuts off the table, and GDP forecasts being revised lower, the stagflationary backdrop that markets began worrying about in early March has now been partially priced in. The Atlanta Fed's GDP estimate for Q1 2026 fell to 2.3% from the prior 2.7%, and Moody's chief economist has put recession odds near 49%. The danger is that the market has only partially priced this in. If the Strait of Hormuz remains closed through the summer and oil stays above $100, the Fed may face the politically agonizing choice of hiking rates into economic weakness — a scenario that historically produces the sharpest equity drawdowns.

🔍 Insider Transactions I’m Watching

📬 Closing Note

This past week tested investor resolve in a way that most of 2025 never did.

Not long ago, the dominant conversation was AI spending, tech valuations, and when the Fed would cut next. Now the headlines are about oil shocks, military escalation, a hawkish Fed, and gold in freefall.

But this is what markets do — they shift between narratives with speed and force. The investors who navigate these transitions successfully are usually the ones who resist anchoring to the last story and instead focus on what the data is actually saying.

The data right now says: inflation is sticky, oil is a problem, and the Fed is unlikely to help anytime soon. But it also says that AI infrastructure demand is accelerating, corporate balance sheets remain broadly healthy, and some of the sharpest insider buying of the year is happening at these exact levels.

Volatility doesn't mean the market is broken. It means the market is repricing — and that's usually where opportunity begins.

Stay patient. Stay selective. And let the data guide the story.

Until next Sunday —

George ☕

Beauty and wellness companies rarely become controversial investment stories. Oddity Tech $ODD ( ▲ 2.34% ) has managed to do exactly that. The company built one of the most interesting digital-first beauty platforms of the past decade, combining direct-to-consumer sales with heavy data science, personalization tools, and algorithm-driven product matching. For years that strategy worked extremely well. But recently, something changed.

Oddity’s user acquisition costs spiked unexpectedly following changes in Meta Platforms $META ( ▲ 1.73% ) ad delivery algorithms. Because the company relies heavily on paid digital advertising to acquire customers, that disruption raised an uncomfortable question: how resilient is a business model that depends on a single advertising platform? As you can see below, the market’s response has been severe.

$ODD ( ▲ 2.34% ) shares plunge following Q1 revenue guidance

Shares are now down roughly 85% from their 2025 highs, pushing the company’s valuation close to the level of its balance sheet. That type of collapse forces investors to ask a different question. Is the business breaking, or is the market overreacting to a temporary disruption? Let’s see what’s going on.

👋 ICYMI

Markets navigated one of the most volatile macro weeks of the year as surging oil prices and geopolitical escalation in the Middle East rattled investor sentiment.

Crude oil initially surged above $100 per barrel, reaching levels not seen since 2022 after the escalation of conflict involving Iran and disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz — a critical energy shipping route responsible for roughly 20% of global oil supply. 

At the same time, economic data showed the U.S. economy slowed more sharply than previously reported at the end of 2025, reinforcing concerns that growth momentum may be fading.

The Commerce Department revised fourth-quarter U.S. GDP growth down to just 0.7% annualized, a significant drop from the earlier 1.4% estimate and far below the 4.4% growth recorded in Q3 2025. 

The combination of weak GDP growth and rising energy costs created renewed concern among investors about a potential stagflationary backdrop — a scenario where growth slows while inflation pressures rise. Equities struggled as a result, with the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq all declining during the week.

🔁 Market Movers

• 🛢 Oil Shock Dominates Global Markets

  Crude oil remained the dominant macro driver this past week as prices surged above $100 per barrel, the highest level since 2022, following escalating tensions involving Iran and renewed threats to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz — a route responsible for roughly 20% of global oil flows. The spike triggered sharp volatility across equities and currencies.

• ⚡ Energy Stocks and Defensives Outperform

  While broader markets struggled, energy companies and defensive sectors were among the few pockets of resilience as higher oil prices boosted profit expectations for producers and commodity-linked businesses. 

• 📈 Oil-Driven Inflation Fears Reprice Markets

  Analysts warn that sustained oil prices above $90–$100 could delay expected Federal Reserve rate cuts and place renewed pressure on equities by raising inflation expectations and corporate costs. 

👀 Signals I’m Watching

• 🌍 Geopolitics Has Returned as a Major Market Driver

  Escalating tensions involving Iran and concerns about disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz — through which roughly one-fifth of global oil flows — have reminded investors that geopolitical shocks can rapidly reshape global market dynamics.

• 📉 Growth Momentum Is Fading

  The U.S. economy entered 2026 with less momentum than previously thought after the Commerce Department revised Q4 GDP growth down to 0.7% annualized, significantly below earlier estimates and far weaker than the 4.4% growth recorded in Q3 2025. Slower consumer spending and weaker business investment drove the downgrade.

• 🛢 Oil Prices Are Becoming the Key Macro Variable

  Energy markets are once again driving financial conditions. Brent crude surged above $100 per barrel amid escalating Middle East tensions before partially retracing, highlighting how quickly geopolitical risks can spill into inflation expectations and equity markets.

• ⚖️ Central Banks Face a New Policy Dilemma

  The combination of slower economic growth and rising energy costs complicates the Federal Reserve’s policy outlook. Slower growth supports the case for rate cuts, but higher oil prices risk reigniting inflation pressures.

Personal portfolio performance vs. the market over the past month

While my portfolio experienced some weakness earlier this year, I never lost confidence in my holdings. Instead of panicking or making knee-jerk decisions, I took a step back and carefully reviewed the fundamental performance of the companies in my portfolio, ignoring short-term market noise.

Ultimately, my decision to double down on my highest-conviction names during that period of weakness paid off. Over the past month, my portfolio has rebounded strongly even as the broader market has faced significant losses amid ongoing geopolitical uncertainty.

I share all updates on my personal portfolio holdings and favourite stocks with members of our Investment Club. If you’d like to follow along, you’re welcome to join us below and take advantage of my current spring offer.

👉 Join Us Here 👈

— George

⚠️ Red Flag to Note

Oil Shock Meets Slowing Growth

If energy prices stay elevated while growth slows, the Federal Reserve could face a difficult choice between supporting the economy and containing inflation — a backdrop that historically increases market volatility.

🔍 Insider Transactions I’m Watching

📬 Closing Note

This past week was a reminder that markets rarely move based on a single narrative.

Just a few weeks ago, the dominant story was AI spending and tech valuations. Now the focus has shifted toward oil shocks, labor market weakness, and geopolitical tensions.

But volatility often serves a useful purpose: it forces investors to separate short-term noise from long-term structural trends.

The macro environment may be shifting — but the most durable investment opportunities still tend to emerge during periods when the narrative becomes uncertain.

Stay patient. Stay selective. And let the data guide the story.

Until next Sunday —

George ☕

P.S. I also work selectively with a few investors on bespoke research and idea generation.

If the way I think about investments is helpful for your own decision-making, feel free to reply to this email.

I’ve been staring at the 2026 capital expenditure reports for a few weeks now, and one number keeps jumping off the page: $690 billion.

That is the staggering amount Big Tech: the "Hyperscalers" like Microsoft $MSFT ( ▲ 0.6% ) , Meta $META ( ▲ 1.73% ) , and Google: $GOOG ( ▲ 1.99% )  is expected to dump into AI infrastructure this year alone. We’ve spent the last two years obsessing over GPU supply chains and whether or not there’s enough electricity in the grid to keep the lights on. But as we move deeper into 2026, I’m seeing a new, much quieter crisis brewing.

The "pipes" are getting clogged.

We have the chips. We’re starting to secure the power. But we’ve reached a point where connecting a hundred thousand GPUs together is becoming a bigger challenge than buying the GPUs themselves. This is the data center networking bottleneck, and for those of us looking at picks and shovels AI stocks, it’s the most important story of the year.

The $690 Billion Armored Car 💰

To understand why networking is the next big play, we have to look at where the money is going. In early 2024, the narrative was all about Nvidia and H100s. In 2025, the focus shifted to the "power play": investing in utilities and nuclear energy to feed the beast.

Now, in March 2026, the spending has reached a fever pitch. This $690 billion isn’t just buying silicon; it’s building massive, city-sized clusters of compute. When you try to make 100,000 Blackwell GPUs (or whatever the latest Vera Rubin iteration is) work together on a single model, they have to talk to each other constantly.

If that communication isn't instantaneous, those $40,000 chips sit idle. They wait. And in the world of high-stakes AI, an idle GPU is a massive hole in the balance sheet. I’m watching the "networking tax" on these clusters climb higher every month, and it’s creating a massive tailwind for AI infrastructure stocks.

Why the "Pipes" Are Breaking 🛠️

Traditional data centers were built for the "old" internet. Think about a standard server rack from five years ago: it mostly handled "North-South" traffic. A user (North) asks for a video, and the server (South) sends it back.

AI is different. It relies on "East-West" traffic. During training or heavy inference, thousands of GPUs are talking to each other in a constant, frantic loop. This requires ultra-low latency and massive bandwidth that traditional Ethernet just wasn't designed to handle.

I’m seeing three specific areas where the bottleneck is hitting hardest:

1. Optical Transceivers: These are the little gadgets that convert electrical signals into light to travel over fiber optic cables. As we scale, the demand for 800G and 1.6T transceivers is exploding.

2. AI Switches: Think of these as the traffic cops of the data center. Without specialized switches (like Nvidia’s Spectrum-X or Broadcom’s Tomahawk series), the data gets jammed, and training times double.

3. The Physical Layer: We are literally running out of ways to physically plug these things in. The density of cables required to connect a modern AI cluster is a geometric nightmare.

If you want to dive deeper into how physical infrastructure is changing, check out our piece on how nuclear stocks are winning the power boom. It's the same logic: the "software" is only as good as the physical world allows it to be.

The Rise of "Inference" Networking 📈

Something else I’m keeping a close eye on is the shift from training to inference.

For the last three years, everyone was focused on building the models. That happened in massive, centralized hubs. But now, in 2026, we’re actually using the models. This requires a different kind of networking.

We need "Data Center Interconnects" (DCI): the technology that links different data centers together so they can act as one giant virtual brain. As land and power become harder to find in one single spot, companies are spreading their AI clusters across multiple states.

This is where companies like Cloudflare and other edge providers come into play. They are the ones making sure the "last mile" of AI reaches the user without a five-second delay.

The Picks and Shovels Strategy for 2026 🔍

So, how do we actually play this? When I look at the market, I’m not just looking for the big names; I’m looking for the companies that own the "connectors."

In the gold rush, the guys selling the picks and shovels made the most consistent money. In the AI rush, the guys selling the optical cables and high-speed switches are starting to look like the real winners.

I'm particularly interested in how companies like Samsara or even MongoDB are positioning themselves to handle the sheer volume of data being moved across these networks. If the data can't move, their software can't perform.

The Latency War ⏱️

In the world of 2026 AI, latency is the new interest rate. If your network is slow, your "cost of capital" (the time it takes to train a model) goes up.

Hyperscalers are currently over-ordering networking gear just to make sure they don't get stuck in a multi-year lead time. I’ve heard whispers of 52-week lead times for certain high-end optical switches. That kind of scarcity usually leads to massive pricing power for the manufacturers.

While everyone else is arguing over whether the S&P 500 is overextended or if we're heading for a 30% crash, the infrastructure is quietly being bolted together. The demand isn't speculative; it's structural.

Final Thoughts: Watch the Plumbers 🔧

It’s easy to get distracted by the flashy AI apps or the latest humanoid robot demo. But those things are just the "faucets." If you want to know where the real wealth is being generated, you have to look at the plumbing.

The $690 billion Big Tech spend isn't a suggestion: it's a committed reality. And as those companies realize that their shiny new GPUs are being throttled by old-school cables and slow switches, the flow of capital toward networking is going to turn into a flood.

I’m staying focused on the "boring" stuff. The switches, the transceivers, and the fiber. Because in 2026, the bottleneck isn't the brain: it's the nervous system.

Keep your eyes on the tape and your risk controls tight.

George

If you want to stay ahead of the next infrastructure shift, make sure you're subscribed to our updates. We’re digging into the niche players in the AI supply chain every week.

For decades, utility stocks were the "nap time" of the investing world.

They were the reliable, slow-moving companies your grandfather bought for the dividends. You didn't buy them for growth; you bought them because people always need to turn on the lights. They were defensive, boring, and stayed out of the headlines.

That just changed.

The AI revolution has a massive, hungry problem: it eats electricity like nothing we’ve ever seen. While everyone was busy bidding up Nvidia and chasing the latest LLM, the physical world hit a wall. You can build all the chips you want, but if you can't plug them into a wall, they’re just expensive paperweights.

I’ve been watching this shift closely, and it’s clear that data center power has become the ultimate bottleneck: and the ultimate opportunity.

The 5x Surge: Why AI is a Power Hog 🔋

To understand why utilities are suddenly best growth stocks contenders, you have to look at the math.

A standard Google search uses a tiny amount of electricity. An AI-powered search? It uses about ten times that. When you scale that across millions of users and thousands of massive GPU clusters, the numbers get staggering.

Current projections suggest that data center power demand is set to increase fivefold by 2035. We aren't just talking about a little extra strain on the grid; we are talking about a fundamental re-engineering of how we produce and distribute energy.

Tech giants like Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are no longer just software companies: they are now some of the world’s largest energy consumers. They are frantically scouring the globe for "plug-ready" land. In the world of ai infrastructure stocks, the company that owns the transmission lines is suddenly as valuable as the company that owns the code.

From Dividends to Growth: The Great Revaluation 📈

I’m seeing a fundamental shift in how Wall Street values these companies. Usually, when interest rates are high, utilities suffer because their dividends look less attractive compared to "risk-free" bonds.

But in 2026, that playbook has been tossed out the window.

Utilities are being re-rated as growth stock opportunities. Investors are realizing that these companies have a "captive audience" of the wealthiest companies on earth (Big Tech) who are willing to pay a premium for guaranteed, 24/7 power.

We saw this play out clearly in early 2026. While the broader market was digesting macro volatility, the Utilities ETF (XLU) surged. Why? Because the market realized that electricity is the "new infrastructure" for the digital age. If you’re doing stock market research right now, you can’t ignore the companies providing the literal juice for the AI boom.

The Nuclear Renaissance ⚛️

One of the most exciting corners of this "unsexy" trade is nuclear energy.

AI data centers need "baseload" power: electricity that stays on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. This has led to a massive resurgence in nuclear stocks.

I’ve touched on this before when comparing the major players in the nuclear space. Companies like Constellation Energy $CEG ( ▼ 0.98% )  and Vistra Corp $VST ( ▼ 1.25% )  have moved from utility laggards to high-flyers.

• Constellation Energy: Recently signed a 20-year deal with Microsoft to restart a reactor at Three Mile Island. Think about that: a tech company is literally bringing a nuclear plant back to life just to power its AI models.

• Vistra Corp: They’ve been raising billions to expand their nuclear fleet, positioning themselves as the primary supplier for the "AI inference hubs" popping up across the country.

This isn't just a trend; it's a structural shift in long term investing. We are moving toward a world where carbon-free, reliable nuclear power is the ultimate luxury good for Big Tech.

The Regional Powerhouses: Who Owns the Grid? 🏗️

It’s not just about who generates the power; it’s about who can deliver it. This is where regional utilities come into play.

In areas like the Southeast and the Carolinas: often called "Data Center Alley": companies like Southern Company and Duke Energy are seeing "unprecedented" demand.

• Southern Company: They’ve raised their five-year capital plan to over $80 billion. They aren't just maintaining old wires; they are building a high-tech grid designed to handle the massive surges required by AI cooling systems and server racks.

• NextEra Energy $NEE ( ▲ 0.16% ): The king of renewables. They recently secured a massive 2.5-gigawatt contract with Meta. For context, that’s enough to power a medium-sized city, all going to one company’s data centers.

If you’re looking for ai infrastructure stocks, these are the companies building the physical foundation. It’s a "picks and shovels" play, but instead of selling shovels, they’re selling the oxygen the miners need to breathe.

Why This Isn't Just a "Bubble" 🫧

Whenever I see a sector run this hard, I ask myself: is this a bubble?

With utilities, the answer feels different. Unlike the dot-com era where companies were valued on "eyeballs," utilities are valued on physical assets, regulated rates, and long-term contracts.

In early 2026, we entered what I call the "Price Certainty Phase." Tech hyperscalers are no longer just buying power at market rates. They are signing 20-year Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) at fixed, high-margin prices.

For a utility company, this is the Holy Grail. It provides a level of earnings visibility that most tech companies would kill for. It’s why I believe these are some of the best growth stocks for those who want exposure to AI without the 50% volatility of a mid-cap software name.

Keeping a Balanced View: The Risks ⚠️

Now, I’m not saying it’s all clear skies. There are risks we need to monitor:

1. Regulatory Caps: Utilities are regulated. If they try to raise prices too much for regular consumers to subsidize Big Tech, they’ll face a political backlash.

2. Grid Capacity: We are reaching a point where the physical grid simply can’t handle more load. This "gridlock" could slow down data center construction, which would eventually cool off the utility rally.

3. Interest Rate Sensitivity: While the AI narrative is strong, these companies still carry a lot of debt. If rates stay "higher for longer," their expansion plans get much more expensive.

We’ve seen how macro shifts can test even the strongest rallies, like we discussed in our Autumn Test analysis. It’s always worth keeping your risk controls tight.

The Bottom Line

The AI race isn't just happening in Silicon Valley. It’s happening in the transformer stations of Georgia, the nuclear plants of Pennsylvania, and the solar farms of Florida.

I’m shifting my perspective on what it means to be a "growth investor." Sometimes, the most exciting opportunities are hidden in the most boring sectors. Utilities have gone from the "safe" part of the portfolio to the engine room of the new economy.

If you’re building a portfolio for the next decade, you have to ask yourself: who is powering the machine?

Stay curious, stay patient, and keep an eye on the grid.

George

Want more deep dives into the infrastructure of the future? Check out our breakdown of The Memory Supercycle.

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AI has created a new investment problem. Everyone wants exposure to the companies building the most advanced models. Yet the model developers themselves remain difficult to invest in. Firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic operate privately, rely heavily on external funding, and compete in an environment where capital intensity and technological uncertainty remain extremely high. For public market investors, the more interesting opportunity may not be the companies building the models but the infrastructure required to run them.

Training and deploying large language models requires enormous computing power. That demand has created a new class of companies with a powerful role: acquire large volumes of GPUs and rent them to the companies building AI systems. Nebius $NBIS ( ▼ 4.96% ) sits directly at that intersection.

The company has become one of the most visible infrastructure providers for AI workloads, offering GPU capacity to model developers and enterprises that need computing power but prefer not to build their own data centers.

I have covered Nebius before and remain constructive on the stock. Despite some volatility following its most recent earnings report, the company’s revenue growth, contracted capacity, and long-term demand outlook continue to support the investment thesis. Let’s take a deeper look at the most recent earnings results.

$NBIS ( ▼ 4.96% ) has been volatile this year, but outperformed the Nasdaq Index.

Everyone is staring at the same glowing rectangle.

Whether it’s the price action on Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 1.68% )  or the latest LLM benchmark from OpenAI, the investing world is collectively obsessed with the "brain" of Artificial Intelligence. We’ve spent the last two years talking about H100s, Blackwell chips, and CUDA kernels. But while everyone is looking at the screen, I’ve been looking at the basement.

Specifically, I’m looking at the massive, 2,000-horsepower diesel engines sitting in the belly of every major data center on the planet.

If AI is the new gold rush, we’ve already identified the picks (the chips) and the shovels (the servers). But we’ve ignored the most important part of the operation: the life support system. Without constant, unwavering electricity, an AI data center is just a very expensive, very quiet warehouse.

This is the "Diesel Moat." It’s unsexy, it’s loud, and it smells like industrial exhaust. It is also one of the best growth stock opportunities hiding in plain sight.

The Brutal Physics of the "Five Nines" ⚡

In the world of standard enterprise computing, a brief power flicker is an annoyance. In the world of AI, a power flicker is a catastrophe.

AI data centers operate under a standard known as "Tier 4" reliability. In plain English, that means "Five Nines" (99.999%) uptime. To hit that number, a facility can only be offline for about five minutes per year.

Why are the stakes so high? Because training a massive language model isn't like saving a Word document. It involves thousands of GPUs working in a perfectly synchronized dance. If the power dips for even a fraction of a second, the entire training state can crash. We’re talking about weeks of computational progress: and millions of dollars in electricity and compute time: vanishing instantly.

This is why data center power infrastructure is the ultimate bottleneck. As we move toward 2026, the demand for "uninterruptible" power has turned backup generators from a boring insurance policy into a mission-critical asset.

The Backlog is the Signal 📈

If you want to know where the smart money is moving in stock market research, don't just look at earnings; look at backlogs.

Right now, the lead times for high-capacity data center generators are stretching into 2027 and 2028. We aren't just talking about a slight uptick in demand. We are seeing a fundamental structural shift in how the electrical grid is built.

Hyperscalers like Meta $META ( ▲ 1.73% ) , Google $GOOG ( ▲ 1.99% ) , and AWS are no longer building 20-megawatt data centers. They are building 100-megawatt campuses. Some are even eyeing "gigawatt-scale" facilities. To keep those running during a grid failure, you need a literal forest of diesel generators.

According to recent market data, the global generator market is expected to surge toward a $20 billion valuation by 2030. But the real "alpha" is in the high-horsepower segment: the massive units above 2 megawatts: where only a few companies have the engineering chops to compete.

Ticker Focus: The Kings of the Basement 🏗️

When we talk about picks and shovels ai stocks, we’re looking for companies with deep moats, pricing power, and a direct line to the big tech spend. Two names currently dominate the landscape.

1. Cummins $CMI ( ▲ 3.0% ) : The AI Campus's Best Friend

Cummins isn't just a truck engine company anymore. In their most recent reports, the "Power Systems" segment has been the star of the show. I’m watching $CMI closely because they’ve seen a 23% year-over-year surge in orders for their massive 2MW+ generators.

These aren't the generators you buy at Home Depot for your backyard. These are engineering marvels the size of a shipping container. Cummins has spent decades perfecting the reliability of these units, and for a hyperscaler, that reputation is worth its weight in gold. When you’re spending $5 billion on a data center, you don't cheap out on the backup power.

$CMI is a classic long term investing play. It pays a solid dividend, trades at a reasonable multiple compared to the tech high-flyers, and is a direct beneficiary of the "physical AI" boom.

2. Caterpillar $CAT ( ▲ 2.85% ) : The Industrial Titan

You probably associate Caterpillar with yellow excavators on construction sites. But $CAT is quietly becoming one of the most important ai infrastructure stocks in the market.

Their "Energy & Transportation" segment is seeing record demand driven almost entirely by data center expansion. Caterpillar’s advantage is their global service network. If a generator in a Singapore data center needs a part, CAT can get it there in hours. For a facility that requires 99.999% uptime, that logistics chain is the ultimate moat.

We’ve seen similar trends in other infrastructure plays, like Vistra and Constellation Energy, which provide the "base load" power. Caterpillar provides the "emergency load." Both are essential.

Why Investors are Missing the Boat

The reason these growth stock opportunities are being ignored is simple: they’re boring.

Investors want to talk about "Sovereign AI" and "Neural Processing Units." They don't want to talk about diesel fuel filtration and cold-start reliability. But that’s exactly where the inefficiency lies. While the market bids up software names to 50x earnings, the companies building the physical foundation of the internet are often trading at a fraction of that.

We saw this same story play out with SaaS names like EverCommerce or AppFolio: companies that provide "boring" but essential services. The physical infrastructure of AI is no different.

Risk Factors: The Green Elephant in the Room 🐘

No investment is without risk, and for the diesel moat, the risk is regulation. There is a massive push for "Green Data Centers," which means companies are looking at hydrogen fuel cells and long-duration battery storage to replace diesel.

However, here’s the reality: those technologies aren't ready for prime time at the scale AI requires.

• Batteries can cover a few minutes of downtime, but not a 48-hour grid failure.

• Hydrogen lacks the distribution infrastructure to fuel a 100MW campus today.

For the next decade, diesel remains the only viable "insurance policy" for the AI revolution. Even as we move toward cleaner energy for the daily power (like the nuclear renaissance we’re seeing), the emergency power will still rely on the internal combustion engine.

How to Play the Physical AI Boom

If you’re looking to diversify your AI exposure beyond the Mag 7, the "Diesel Moat" is a great place to start. Here is how I’m thinking about it:

1. Don't chase the spikes: These are industrial stocks. They move slower than tech. Look for entries during broader market pullbacks when the "AI is dead" narrative starts to circulate.

2. Watch the hyperscale CapEx: As long as Microsoft, Google, and Meta are increasing their capital expenditure, the backlog for $CMI and $CAT will remain robust.

3. Think in years, not weeks: This is a long term investing thesis. The grid is aging, and AI demand is accelerating. That gap is where the profit is made.

The AI revolution is often described as a cloud-based phenomenon. But the cloud is made of steel, silicon, and: increasingly: diesel. While the rest of the world is betting on the "what" of AI, I’m betting on the "how."

The data centers are coming. The power is struggling to keep up. And the companies that keep the lights on when everything else goes dark are sitting on a gold mine.

Stay grounded,

George

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If you wanted to cripple the global economy in 1926, you blocked a canal or seized a coal mine. In 2026, the game has changed: and the stakes are much higher.

As I write this on a Monday in March, the headlines out of the Middle East are looking increasingly grim. But while the traditional media is obsessing over oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, the real "black gold" is flowing thousands of feet below the surface. We’re talking about the fiber-optic "nervous system" that powers every AI model, every high-frequency trade, and every single video call you’ve ever had.

The Middle East is no longer just a gas station for the world; it has become the ultimate digital chokepoint. Welcome to the era of the Strait of Data.

The 99% Reality Check 🌊

There is a common misconception that the "Cloud" is actually in the sky. It isn't. Unless you’re using a satellite phone in the middle of the Sahara, 99% of all international data is carried by subsea cables. These are literal garden-hose-sized threads of glass stretched across the ocean floor.

These cables are the backbone of the AI boom. When you ask a LLM to write code or generate an image, that request is likely hopping across three continents and two oceans in milliseconds. If those cables go dark, the "intelligence" stops.

Right now, the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz are seeing a level of kinetic military activity we haven't seen in decades. We’re not just talking about accidental anchor drags anymore. We’re seeing targeted drone strikes on shore-side landing stations and data centers in the UAE and Bahrain. This is a massive wake-up call for ai infrastructure stocks.

From Oil-Dependency to Data-Dependency 🛢️➡️💾

For the last century, geopolitics was built on the "Petrodollar." If you controlled the oil, you controlled the world. Today, we are witnessing a pivot toward "Compute Sovereignty."

The sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to turn the desert into the world’s AI hub. They’ve bought up thousands of H100s and built massive, water-cooled cathedrals of silicon. But as the conflict escalates this March, those assets are looking increasingly vulnerable.

When a drone hits a data center in Bahrain, it doesn't just disrupt local traffic. It sends a shockwave through the global supply chain of intelligence. This is forcing Big Tech to rethink everything. If you can't guarantee that your data can physically get out of a region, it doesn't matter how many GPUs you have sitting there.

The "Cloud Retreat": A Flight to Safety 🏰

I’m keeping a close eye on what I call the "Cloud Retreat." Investors are starting to get spooked by the physical risks of having infrastructure in volatile regions. This is creating a "flight to safety" for data.

Where is that data going? Back to "safe haven" geographies: places with stable borders, predictable regulations, and, most importantly, hardened energy grids. This is why we are seeing such a massive run-up in domestic US infrastructure.

If you’ve been following our deep dives, you know we’ve been looking at how energy is the new limiting factor for AI. Check out our take on Vistra vs. Constellation vs. Oklo to see how Big Tech is securing the power side of the equation. But power is useless without a path to the user.

As compute moves back to more stable ground, stocks like Cloudflare become even more critical as the "digital shield" that protects these moving parts from the cyber-side of the conflict.

The "Picks and Shovels" of the Ocean Floor 🛠️

In any gold rush: or any war: you want to own the people selling the tools. In the world of subsea cables, the "picks and shovels" aren't chips; they are specialized cable-laying ships and maintenance fleets.

There are only about 60 of these ships in the entire world. When a cable gets cut in the Red Sea during a conflict, you can’t just send a diver with some duct tape. You need high-tech vessels that can operate in hostile waters.

If you’re looking for best growth stocks within this niche but vital sector, here is who I’m watching:

• NEC (6701.T): This Japanese giant is one of the "Big Three" in cable manufacturing and installation. They have a massive backlog and the technical moat to stay ahead of the curve.

• Nokia (NOK): Most people think of Nokia as a failed phone company. Wrong. They own ASN (Alcatel Submarine Networks), which is arguably the most important player in the subsea space. As the world scrambles to build "bypass" routes around the Middle East, Nokia’s order book is going to look very healthy.

• Orange (ORAN): This isn't just a French telco. Orange Marine is one of the few entities with a dedicated repair fleet that can actually handle the current level of cable-cutting risk we’re seeing. They are a defensive play with a massive infrastructure moat.

Why This Matters for Your Portfolio 📈

We’ve seen the ai boom move from chips (Nvidia) to software (Microsoft/Google) to power (Vistra/Constellation). The next logical step in the "AI Stack" is the connectivity.

If you are hunting for picks and shovels ai stocks, you have to look at the physical layer. The "Strait of Data" crisis is proving that the internet isn't an ethereal cloud: it’s a physical asset that needs to be built, protected, and repaired.

The recent drone strikes on Middle Eastern data centers are forcing companies like Amazon and Microsoft to accelerate their "Ratepayer Protection Pledge" and move toward total energy and infrastructure independence. They are becoming their own utility companies and their own cable operators.

Final Thoughts: Monitoring the Chokepoints 🔍

The Red Sea carries roughly 17% of the world's interregional internet capacity. A single "unfortunate" anchor drag or a targeted strike could degrade connectivity for half the planet.

As an investor, I’m not panicking: I’m looking for the bottlenecks. The companies that own the "bypass" routes (like cables through the Arctic or across the Atlantic) and the companies that fix the broken ones are the ones that will thrive in a deglobalizing digital world.

Keep an eye on the data center stocks that are domestic-focused and the "Picks and Shovels" players mentioned above. The geopolitical map is being redrawn, and this time, the lines are made of glass.

Stay sharp, stay diversified, and maybe keep an eye on the weather in the Red Sea. It’s going to be a bumpy ride for the global nervous system.

George

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👋 ICYMI

U.S. markets ended the week sharply lower as a combination of surging oil prices, geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, and a surprise contraction in U.S. employment rattled investor confidence. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell while energy stocks rallied, reflecting rising inflation risks tied to the spike in crude prices.

A shock February jobs report showed U.S. payrolls unexpectedly falling by roughly 92,000, pushing unemployment to around 4.4% — a major miss versus expectations for job growth. At the same time, oil surged toward $90 per barrel, driven by escalating tensions involving Iran and concerns about supply disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. 

The combination of weak labor data and rising energy prices raised concerns that the U.S. economy could face a stagflation-like environment, complicating the Federal Reserve’s policy path. 

🔁 Market Movers

• 🛢 Oil Surges as Geopolitical Risks Escalate

  Crude oil prices jumped above $90 per barrel, the highest level in nearly two years, amid escalating Middle East tensions and concerns about supply disruptions through key shipping routes. The surge lifted energy stocks but increased fears of inflation returning. 

• 📉 Wall Street Logs Its Worst Week Since Late 2025

  Major U.S. indices fell meaningfully during the week, with the flagship S&P 500 index tumbling about 2%. It marked the weakest weekly performance since October 2025, reflecting growing macro uncertainty. 

• 💻 AI Infrastructure Stocks Remain Volatile

  Despite the broader selloff, AI infrastructure demand remains strong, with semiconductor earnings continuing to show strong data-center and AI-related spending. Companies like Marvell $MRVL ( ▲ 4.74% ) , Broadcom $AVGO ( ▲ 2.03% ) , and Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 1.68% ) highlighted continued demand from hyperscalers building AI capacity.  However, investor sentiment remains fragile as markets increasingly question whether massive AI capex will translate into sustainable profits.

• 🛡 Defense Stocks Rally on Geopolitical Tensions

  Defense contractors gained as geopolitical tensions intensified. Companies such as Lockheed Martin $LMT ( ▼ 2.52% ) , RTX $RTX ( ▲ 0.29% ) , and Northrop Grumman $NOC ( ▼ 1.12% ) moved higher as investors rotated toward sectors tied to defense spending and geopolitical risk. 

• ⚙️ AI Supply Chain Gains Index Recognition

  S&P Dow Jones announced that Vertiv $VRT ( ▲ 4.49% ) , Lumentum, $LITE ( ▲ 0.32% ) and Coherent $COHR ( ▲ 5.19% ) — all companies tied to the AI infrastructure ecosystem — will join the S&P 500 index later this month. The move reflects the growing importance of companies building the hardware backbone for artificial intelligence. 

👀 Signals I’m Watching

• 📊 Labor Market Shock Changes Fed Calculus

  The unexpected 92,000 drop in payrolls signals the U.S. labor market may be weakening faster than previously thought. If confirmed in future reports, this could strengthen arguments for earlier rate cuts, though inflation risks complicate the outlook. 

• ⚖️ Stagflation Risk Creeping Back Into Conversations

  Markets are now confronting a difficult combination: weak job growth and rising energy prices. Some analysts warn this could create a stagflation-like environment, a scenario central banks historically struggle to manage. 

• 🤖 AI Investment Is Entering Its “Proof Phase”

  Corporate spending on AI infrastructure remains strong, but markets increasingly want to see returns and margin expansion, not just capex announcements. The AI narrative is evolving from growth expectations toward monetisation timelines. 

• 🌍 Geopolitics Is Back in the Macro Equation

  The escalating conflict involving Iran and disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz have become a major driver of commodity prices and market volatility. If tensions escalate further, energy markets could become a primary driver of inflation expectations again. 

Personal portfolio performance as of Saturday March 7

My entire portfolio zoomed significantly higher on Friday after one of my highest conviction names made an important announcement. I discuss all the updates on my personal portfolio holdings and favorite stocks with members of our Investment Club.

👉 Join Us Here.

— George

⚠️ Red Flag to Note

Energy-Driven Inflation Shock

If oil prices remain elevated while economic growth slows, the Federal Reserve could face a difficult policy dilemma. Rising energy costs tend to push inflation higher just as weaker labor data increases pressure to cut rates — a policy conflict that historically leads to market volatility.

🔍 Insider Transactions I’m Watching

📬 Closing Note

This past week reminded investors how quickly macro shocks can reshape the narrative. Only a few weeks ago, markets were debating AI valuations and earnings momentum. Now the conversation has shifted to oil shocks, labor weakness, and geopolitical risk.

But markets rarely move in straight lines. Periods of volatility often force investors to separate durable long-term themes from short-term noise — and that’s usually where the best opportunities emerge.

Stay patient. Stay selective. And let the data guide the narrative.

Until next Sunday,

George ☕

P.S. I also work selectively with a few investors on bespoke research and idea generation.

If the way I think about investments is helpful for your own decision-making, feel free to reply.

It’s hard to wrap your head around a number like $650 billion.

To give you some perspective, that is roughly 1% of the entire U.S. GDP. It’s more than the market cap of most blue-chip companies. And yet, this is the combined amount that Big Tech: Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Microsoft: is projected to dump into capital expenditures in 2026 alone.

If you’ve been following the markets with me here at The Latte, you know we’ve spent years talking about software, margins, and "the cloud." But something has shifted. This isn't just about code anymore. This is about concrete, copper, and cooling systems.

Big Tech isn't just buying chips; they are building the physical backbone of a new industrial revolution.

The Scale of the Bet 📈

We are witnessing a near-doubling of spending from just a year ago. In 2025, the spend was already an eye-watering $380 billion. Now, in March 2026, the guidance is clear: the spigot is wide open.

Here is how the 2026 leaderboard looks:

• Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 0.34% ): Projecting $200 billion.

• Alphabet (Google) $GOOG ( ▲ 1.99% ): Between $175–$185 billion.

• Microsoft $MSFT ( ▲ 0.6% ): Tracking toward $120 billion or more.

• Meta $META ( ▲ 1.73% ): Planning $115–$135 billion.

Why are they doing this? It’s not just for "innovation" or to keep the stock price pretty. It’s because they are supply-constrained. Microsoft recently reported an $80 billion backlog of Azure orders they simply cannot fulfill because they don’t have enough power.

When the world’s biggest companies are turning away customers because they can't plug in enough computers, you know we’ve moved past the "hype" phase. We are now in the "build-or-die" phase.

From Training to Inference: Why the Thirst Never Ends

Early on in the AI boom, the focus was on training. Companies needed massive clusters of GPUs to teach models how to speak, code, and "think."

But the game has changed. We are now moving into the inference phase. Training is like going to university; inference is like going to work. Once these models are deployed into every app, every search bar, and every customer service bot, they need to run 24/7.

Inference requires a different kind of infrastructure. It needs to be closer to the user, it needs to be fast, and it needs to be incredibly reliable. This shift is why AI infrastructure stocks have become the cornerstone of long term investing strategies. You don't just build a data center once for training; you build a global network to handle the trillions of queries coming in every second.

The "Physical Backbone" is the New Moat 🏗️

For a long time, the "moat" for a tech company was its user base or its proprietary algorithm. Today, the moat is physical.

If you have the land, the permits, and: most importantly: the power connection, you win. This is why we are seeing deals that look more like 19th-century industrialism than 21st-century tech. Meta’s "Hyperion" data center in Louisiana is drawing 5 gigawatts of power. To put that in context, that’s enough to power millions of homes. They even had to strike a deal with a local nuclear power plant just to keep the lights on.

I’ve written before about how nuclear stocks are winning the AI power boom, and that trend has only accelerated. If you can’t get the power, your $40,000 Nvidia chips are just very expensive paperweights.

The Hidden Gems: The "Boring" Companies Winning Big 🔍

While everyone is staring at Nvidia and Microsoft, the real "hidden gems" of the ai infrastructure stocks world are the companies making the components most people never think about.

I’m talking about the "pick and shovel" plays that have become massive bottlenecks in the supply chain. These are companies with "long lead times": meaning if you want their products, you might have to wait two or three years. In the investing world, a three-year waiting list is a beautiful thing.

1. Power Transformers (Eaton & Schneider Electric)

You can’t just plug a data center into a standard wall outlet. You need massive industrial transformers to step down high-voltage power from the grid. Companies like Eaton $ETN ( ▲ 3.43% )  and Schneider Electric $SNDR ( ▲ 2.4% )  are seeing record backlogs. These aren't just "growth stocks"; they are the literal gatekeepers of the AI era.

2. Backup Generators (Cummins)

Data centers cannot go dark. Ever. If the grid flinches, massive diesel or natural gas generators have to kick in within seconds. Cummins $CMI ( ▲ 3.0% )  has become a staple for anyone looking at best growth stocks in the industrial sector. They provide the "insurance policy" for the world’s data.

3. Liquid Cooling Systems

Air conditioning isn't enough anymore. These new AI chips run so hot they would melt standard servers. We are moving toward liquid-to-chip cooling, an engineering feat that requires specialized plumbing and chemicals.

Is This a Bubble? (The 2000 vs. 2026 Debate) ⚠️

I get asked this a lot: "George, is this just the Dot Com bubble all over again?"

It’s a fair question. But there’s a fundamental difference. In 2000, companies were spending money they didn't have on "eyeballs" and "clicks" that didn't pay the bills. In 2026, the companies spending this $650 billion are the most profitable entities in human history.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are using their massive cash flows to build tangible assets. These are data centers that will last 20–30 years. Even if the AI "hype" cools down, the demand for cloud computing and data storage is a one-way street.

We’ve seen similar cycles before, like when Cloudflare $NET ( ▲ 1.83% )  surged or when MongoDB $MDB ( ▲ 4.87% )  benefited from the AI boom. The infrastructure is the foundation that allows these software companies to exist.

How to Play the $650 Billion Check

If you’re looking at long term investing, you have to follow the money. And right now, the money is screaming "infrastructure."

While the "Magnificent Seven" get the headlines, I’m keeping a close eye on the secondary layers:

• The Grid Makers: Companies upgrading the aging U.S. electrical grid.

• The Land Owners: REITS that specialize in data center real estate.

• The Specialist Software: Companies like AppFolio $APPF ( ▲ 0.81% )  that provide the niche SaaS needed to manage these complex environments.

The $650 billion check isn't a one-time payment. It’s the starting gun for a decade-long buildout. We are essentially rebuilding the world’s computer from the ground up, and this time, it’s made of steel and silicon.

Final Thoughts

The sheer scale of this investment tells us one thing: Big Tech has moved past the "testing" phase. They are betting their entire balance sheets that AI will be the primary way humans interact with technology for the next fifty years.

It’s easy to get lost in the noise of daily market swings: like the autumn tests we’ve seen in the past: but the macro picture remains incredibly clear. The physical backbone is being built, and the companies providing the copper, the power, and the cooling are sitting in the catbird seat.

I’m staying focused on the builders. The people digging the trenches and pouring the concrete for the AI era are often the ones who offer the most stability in a volatile market.

Stay caffeinated,

George

Want more deep dives into the stocks shaping the future? Subscribe to The Latte for daily market insights or upgrade your membership for exclusive deep-dives into our top picks.

For the last two years, we’ve been obsessed with the "Mag Seven." We’ve watched Microsoft $MSFT ( ▲ 0.6% ) , Alphabet $GOOG ( ▲ 1.99% ) , and Meta $META ( ▲ 1.73% )  engage in a multi-billion dollar arms race that feels like a high-stakes poker game where the minimum buy-in is a few thousand H100 GPUs. But while we were tracking Mark Zuckerberg’s CapEx spending, a new group of whales entered the room: and they have much deeper pockets than even the biggest Silicon Valley titans.

I’m talking about nation-states.

Welcome to the era of Sovereign AI. It’s the shift from AI as a corporate luxury to AI as a pillar of national security. Governments in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Paris, and Singapore have realized that letting a company in Menlo Park control their country’s "intelligence" is about as safe as letting a foreign power control their water supply.

For those of us looking for the best growth stocks, this shift changes everything. It moves AI from a cyclical tech trend to a permanent infrastructure requirement. Here’s why I’m watching this space so closely.

The Death of "Borrowing" Intelligence 🌍

In the early days of the AI boom (way back in 2023), most countries were content to just use ChatGPT. It was easy. It was cool. It worked. But then the reality of "data sovereignty" set in.

Imagine you’re the government of Saudi Arabia or France. Do you really want your sensitive civil service data, your legal frameworks, and your national security strategies being processed through a black-box model hosted in a data center in Northern Virginia? Probably not.

Sovereign AI is the idea that a nation should have its own AI infrastructure: built on its own soil, trained on its own data, and reflecting its own cultural values. This isn't just about pride; it's about autonomy. If a foreign power can "turn off" your access to the latest LLM, your entire economy could grind to a halt.

I see this as the "digital version" of the 1970s oil crisis. Just as nations scrambled to secure energy independence then, they are scrambling for "intelligence independence" now.

Why the "Whale" Buyers Change the Game 🐋

When Meta or Amazon buys chips, they have to answer to Wall Street. If ad revenue dips or interest rates spike, they might trim their CapEx. They are, at the end of the day, cyclical buyers: even if those cycles are currently very long.

Nations are different. When a country like the UAE decides it wants to be a global AI hub, it doesn't care about next quarter's earnings per share. They are playing a 50-year game. This creates a massive, non-cyclical floor for ai infrastructure stocks.

We are seeing "sovereign funds" that make Venture Capital look like pocket change:

• Saudi Arabia: Through "Alat" and their PIF, they are looking to invest $40 billion specifically into AI.

• The UAE: Their G42 group (backed by Microsoft, ironically) is building massive clusters to run their own "Falcon" models.

• France: President Macron is effectively the Chief Cheerleader for Mistral AI, pushing for "AI Versailles" to ensure Europe doesn't become a digital colony of the US.

For anyone focused on long term investing, this is the "holy grail." It’s a buyer that doesn't stop buying when the market gets shaky.

The Non-Cyclical Infrastructure Play 🏗️

The real winners here aren't just the people making the software; it’s the ones building the physical layer. If a nation wants Sovereign AI, they need three things: chips, power, and high-tech real estate.

I’ve been tracking how this affects the supply chain. If you’re building a national data center, you aren't looking for the cheapest option: you're looking for the most resilient one. This is why infrastructure remains the most attractive part of the trade.

We recently did a deep dive on how nuclear power stocks are the secret engine of this boom. Nations have an advantage here because they can actually authorize and build the power grids required to run these massive clusters, something that a private company often struggles to do alone.

Cultural Sovereignty: More Than Just Code 🗣️

One thing I find fascinating: and a bit witty when you think about it: is the "linguistic" war. Most current AI models are heavily biased toward Western, English-speaking values. If you ask a standard US-based AI a question about social norms, it’ll give you a very "California" answer.

Sovereign AI allows nations to train models on their own literature, their own history, and their own religious texts. It’s a way to preserve culture in the digital age. This means we are moving away from "one model to rule them all" and toward a fragmented, multi-polar AI world.

From an investment perspective, this fragmentation is great. It means more demand for localized data centers, more demand for specialized software like MongoDB which helps manage these diverse data sets, and more demand for security layers provided by companies like Cloudflare.

Identifying the Best Growth Stocks in the Sovereign Wave 📈

If you're wondering how to play this, you have to look at the companies that governments trust. Sovereign AI deals usually involve high-level diplomatic "handshakes."

I’m looking at three specific buckets:

1. The "National" Hardware Providers: Companies that have specific "Sovereign Cloud" offerings. NVIDIA is the leader here, but others are catching up by offering turnkey solutions that let a country literally "unbox" a national AI system.

2. The Grid Builders: You can’t have AI without power. The companies building the transformers, the liquid cooling systems, and the micro-grids are the quiet winners of the sovereign era.

3. The Cyber-Guardians: Since Sovereign AI is a national security asset, it will be the #1 target for state-sponsored hacking. The security requirements for these national clusters are going to be astronomical.

Is it a Bubble or a New Reality? 🫧

I get asked this a lot: "Is the AI infrastructure trade getting too crowded?"

My take? If it were just Big Tech buying, I’d be more nervous. But when nations enter the fray, the rules change. A government doesn't "sell the top" of a national security asset. They don't stop building a power grid because the S&P 500 had a bad month.

While we might see market volatility and tests, the underlying demand for sovereignty is a structural shift. It’s a multi-decade trend, not a multi-month fad.

Why You Should Care ☕

As investors, it’s easy to get distracted by the latest "cool" consumer app. But the real money is usually in the "boring" stuff that nations need to survive. Sovereign AI is the ultimate "boring but essential" trade. It’s the digital version of building highways or high-speed rail.

I'm keeping my eyes on the diplomatic cables just as much as the earnings reports these days. When a country signs a $5 billion deal for a new data center cluster, that’s a signal that’s much louder than any TikTok trend.

If you want to stay ahead of these shifts and see which specific names I’m adding to my watchlist, make sure you’re subscribed to our updates. We’re going to be tracking the "Sovereign Shift" all through 2026.

Final Thoughts 🔍

The move toward Sovereign AI is proof that the "world is flat" era of the internet is officially over. We are moving into a world of digital borders, national clouds, and sovereign intelligence.

For the long term investing crowd, this is actually good news. It provides a level of stability and "forced" demand that the tech sector has rarely seen. The "New Tech Giants" might not have CEOs: they might have Prime Ministers and Kings.

Stay alert, watch the infrastructure, and as always, keep your risk controls tight.

George

Enjoyed this deep dive? Upgrade to our premium tier for exclusive access to our "Sovereign AI" stock shortlist and technical analysis of the key players.

Fintech cycles tend to swing from euphoria to skepticism quickly. In 2021, buy-now-pay-later was treated as the future of consumer finance. In 2022 and 2023, the same space was written off as fragile, rate-sensitive, and structurally flawed. Some companies deserved that reset. Others quietly adapted.

Sezzle $SEZL ( ▲ 8.81% ) just delivered a quarter that suggests it belongs in the second category. As you can see below, shares surged as much as 40% post-earnings before giving up some gains due to the market selloff.$SEZL

$SEZL ( ▲ 8.81% ) post-earnings price spike

Q4 wasn’t just strong on paper — it reinforced something more important: this is no longer a growth-at-any-cost experiment. It’s a disciplined, profitable platform that is scaling. The recent drop gives invesotrs a second chance to buy this high-growth fimtech name at a reasonable valuation. Let’s take a deeper look.

👋 ICYMI

U.S. markets ended the week lower as renewed volatility hit technology and growth stocks. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both pulled back after a fresh round of selling in semiconductor and AI infrastructure names. While industrials and energy showed relative stability, risk appetite softened as Treasury yields ticked higher and investors reassessed the pace of rate cuts.

🔁 Market Movers

• 📉 Early Week Tariff & AI-Driven Selloff

  Markets opened sharply lower as renewed tariff uncertainty and persistent AI disruption fears hit risk assets. Major U.S. indices slid on Monday as investors fled high-beta tech and growth names in favor of safe havens like gold — which rallied sharply — while broad equity sentiment weakened on policy tectonics.

• 💻 Nvidia & AI Names Under Pressure

  Even after beating earnings, Nvidia’s initial post-earnings uplift faded as investors weighed rising competition and valuation questions. The broader tech complex, especially semiconductor and software names, lagged as markets paused to reassess AI’s near-term earnings impact.

• 🛒 Hedge Funds Return to Tech

  Despite recent selling, hedge funds have started buying large tech stocks again — signalling that some investors are positioning for a comeback amid lower prices and belief in long-term growth potential.

• 🪙 Safe-Haven Rotation & Macro Angst

  AI fears, tariff risk, and inflation concerns combined to lift gold and other safe-haven assets this past week, even as equities traded lower — suggesting that risk premia remain elevated despite constructive pockets elsewhere.

• 📊 Broad Index Moves Confirm Risk Shift

  As the week closed, the major U.S. stock benchmarks — the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq — all finished lower, confirming that the market’s recent risk-off phase isn’t isolated to one or two names but reflects broader sentiment adjustments.

👀 Signals I’m Watching

• 📉 AI Valuation Sensitivity Isn’t Fading

  Markets continued reacting sharply to AI-related guidance and capex commentary, reinforcing that investors now want ROI clarity — not just spending growth.

• ⚖️ Tariff & Policy Risk Still Driving Volatility

  Trade headlines triggered broad risk-off moves early in the week, reminding markets that political decisions remain a core volatility driver in 2026.

• 🔄 Sector Rotation Is Deepening

  Investors are shifting capital within equities rather than exiting markets — with energy, financials, and industrials outperforming relative to tech and growth names, reflecting a more breadth-driven advance when risk appetite returns.

$PWR steady and strong performance

Most investors are focused on the same AI megacaps.

📈 Meanwhile, one of my strongest performers recently has been a name most people rarely discuss.

Quanta Services ($PWR) is up nearly 17% over the past month — and I’m fairly certain many investors have never looked into it.

And that’s precisely why it’s interesting.

While headlines revolve around trillion-dollar tech platforms, companies quietly building the real-world infrastructure behind electrification, grid modernization, and AI data centers continue compounding in the background.

This isn’t a hype-driven narrative. It’s a story of execution supported by structural tailwinds.

I recently published a full breakdown explaining:

• Why Quanta sits at the centre of the energy transition

• How AI-driven power demand acts as an underappreciated catalyst

• And why the market may still be underestimating its long-term positioning

If you’d like to read the full analysis, it’s available inside the newsletter. You can join us here.

Sometimes, the strongest performers are the ones few people are paying attention to.

— George

⚠️ Red Flag to Note

Higher Yields + Slower Growth = Margin Pressure Risk

If yields remain elevated while GDP growth cools, corporate margins could face compression later this year. Markets are pricing resilience — but not yet pricing margin contraction.

🔍 Insider Transactions I’m Watching

📬 Closing Note

Last week wasn’t about fear — it was about recalibration.

Growth is being repriced. AI is being segmented. And capital is flowing toward earnings durability rather than stories. That’s not bearish. That’s maturation.

Markets don’t move in straight lines — but they do reward patience and positioning over time.

Stay selective. Stay long-term.

And let the data guide the narrative — not the other way around.

Until next Sunday,

George ☕️

P.S. I also work selectively with a few investors on bespoke research and idea generation.

If the way I think about investments is helpful for your own decision-making, feel free to reply.