While firms won’t always get their calls right, price upgrades are still worth paying attention to. 

Perhaps they’re seeing favorable industry trends that are impacting a covered stock. Maybe the financial health of a stock based on earnings or guidance is improving. Or, perhaps, they liked what they heard in a meeting with management. Whatever the case, it’s a good idea to look into the reasoning for a price upgrade.

However, never use new stock price targets as your sole reason for buying. 

For one, there’s no such thing as a perfect analyst. Two, do your due diligence with technical and fundamental analysis. After all, the last thing you want to do is buy into a stock that’s become excessively overbought. Third, look at how other firms rate the same stock. 

That being said, here’s what some of the top firms are most bullish on at the moment.

Wall Street Thinks Albemarle Is Mispriced

Analysts at Citi just upgraded lithium giant Albemarle (NYSE: ALB) to a buy, noting that the stock is undervalued. In fact, according to the firm, “We believe current valuation levels underappreciate ALB’s next leg of growth and upgrade to Buy with no change to our $225 TP,” as quoted by CNBC. 

We also have to consider that ALB should continue to benefit from the lithium supply-demand issue. Unfortunately, supply growth is struggling to keep up, with analysts at Canaccord Genuity noting that the lithium market could face supply deficits for much of the next decade. 

In addition, as Allan Pedersen, research director at Wood Mackenzie, explains: “The lithium market is heading into a supply crunch much sooner than many industry players expect. Under ambitious climate scenarios, we see deficits emerging from 2028. The industry needs to act now, as governments progress policies toward Net Zero. The question isn’t whether we need more lithium—it’s whether the industry can mobilize capital fast enough to meet demand while navigating an increasingly fragmented global trade environment.”

Micron’s AI-Driven Growth Story Remains Intact

Analysts at Rosenblatt reiterated a buy rating on Micron (NASDAQ: MU), with a price target of $1,200 ahead of MU earnings next week. “We expect Micron to report a beat-and-raise as continued pricing increases, broadening AI demand, and constrained supply extend the memory upcycle,” added the firm, as quoted by CNBC.

Even better, most analysts are bullish. TD Cowen, for example, just raised its price target on Micron to $1,500 from $660, with a buy rating. The firm cited strong demand for dynamic random-access memory (DRAM), which continues to outpace supply by a wide margin. 

Why Marvell Is Still on Wall Street’s Radar

Analysts at KeyBanc reiterated an overweight rating on Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL), with a price target of $385. “We introduce FY29E and, given our more constructive view, raise our estimates and increase PT to $385,” said the firm, as also quoted by CNBC.

Fueling recent upside, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Marvell may be the next potential trillion-dollar company. In addition, according to Goldman Sachs, optical networking is quickly becoming the next hot trend for the AI boom, as demand drives the need for faster data exchange and lower latency. In fact, “Networking is the next frontier in AI infrastructure, poised to enhance computing capability through seamless data exchange and low latency,” as quoted by Economic Times. The firm added that the total addressable market could increase from about $15 billion in 2026 to nearly $154 billion by 2028. 

Reading Between the Lines of Wall Street Upgrades

In short, Wall Street price targets should never be viewed as guarantees, but they can offer valuable insight into where analysts see the greatest opportunities. In the cases of Albemarle, Micron, and Marvell, analysts are pointing to powerful long-term trends, including rising lithium demand, the continued AI-driven memory boom, and expanding investments in next-generation networking infrastructure.

CrowdStrike: Investors Are Selling The Future, Not The Business

CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) dropped sharply after reporting revenue growth of 26%, EPS growth of 51%, record operating cash flow of $384 million, record free cash flow of $279 million, and raised full-year guidance — a combination that reads like exactly what investors claim to want, which makes the reaction worth understanding rather than simply accepting at face value.

The frustration has less to do with endpoint security and more to do with what comes next. Management keeps talking about a second act built around autonomous systems and AI-driven security operations, and investors who had already priced in early confirmation of that transition sold when the quarter delivered strong current-period results without material evidence that autonomous security is generating meaningful revenue yet. 

After rallying from roughly $350 in March to nearly $780 before earnings, the stock had become one of the market’s biggest winners. Expectations were stretched. When the company delivered another strong quarter rather than a transformative one, investors took profits.

Yet the longer term picture remains constructive. Shares remain well above the 50-day moving average near $521 and the 200-day near $479, which is not where a stock trades when the money that matters has decided to leave. The market is questioning how valuable CrowdStrike’s next growth engine becomes. It is not questioning the quality of what’s already built — and that distinction is where the opportunity lives.

Cadence Design Systems: The Toll Booth Nobody Talks About

Most investors debating the AI race spend their time arguing over which chip company wins. Cadence Design Systems (NASDAQ: CDNS) gets paid before that race even begins.

Every advanced semiconductor requires sophisticated design software before it can be manufactured, tested, or deployed at scale. And as AI models grow larger and more computationally demanding, the chips required to run them grow more complex in direct proportion, making Cadence’s electronic design automation tools more critical to players like Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD), Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ: AVGO), Marvell Technology (NASDAQ: MRVL) and others in the ecosystem.

The stock surged from roughly $270 in April to more than $410 before pulling back toward $380. A correction after a move like that should surprise nobody. What matters is where the stock corrected to. Shares remain comfortably above the 50-day moving average near $336 and the 200-day near $325, and volume during the decline never suggested the kind of institutional distribution that precedes a genuine breakdown. The chart looks like a stock digesting a powerful breakout, not beginning a downtrend.

AI companies compete with each other. Chipmakers fight over market share. Cloud providers battle for dominance. Every single one of them still needs increasingly sophisticated chip designs to pursue any of those ambitions. The market sees a software company. I see a toll booth collecting from every lane of the AI highway simultaneously — and toll booths don’t lose relevance when traffic increases.

Arista Networks: The Infrastructure Play Everyone Keeps Overlooking

Investors love talking about GPUs. They spend far less time discussing what happens after the GPUs arrive. What happens is that data has to move, constantly, at enormous scale, between servers that need to communicate faster than the chips themselves can process. That is where Arista Networks (NYSE: ANET) sits, providing the networking infrastructure that allows massive AI clusters and data centers to function at the performance levels the workloads actually demand. As AI models grow larger and clusters scale wider, networking becomes more important rather than less, because moving data efficiently between compute nodes increasingly determines overall system performance. 

The recent selloff dragged Arista lower alongside names facing entirely different structural risks, as investors conflated AI infrastructure spending concerns with businesses that sit in fundamentally different positions within that spending chain. Shares pulled back from approximately $180 toward the $150 area, but remain above both the 50-day moving average near $153 and the 200-day near $141, with the longer-term uptrend structurally intact and the recent weakness resembling consolidation rather than conviction selling.

The market is treating Arista as another AI stock exposed to the same risks as the names driving the narrative. The business is considerably more durable than that framing suggests, because as long as data centers keep expanding, networking is not discretionary spending that gets deferred when budgets tighten. It is the infrastructure that makes everything else function.

The Setup Across All Three

CrowdStrike’s business remains strong while the market debates its second act. Cadence keeps collecting from every company building the next generation of chips regardless of who wins the competition between them. Arista sits inside one of the most critical bottlenecks in modern computing infrastructure with a position that strengthens as the workloads it supports grow more demanding.

The selloff created uncertainty. But for investors willing to look past the short-term narrative and focus on what the businesses are actually doing, it may also have created the entry that the run-up never offered.

Historically, newly added S&P 500 stocks see stronger trading volumes and short-term price spikes as funds adjust their holdings. This year, several companies tied to the artificial intelligence boom are benefiting from that trend, including Marvell Technology, Flex Ltd., and Lumentum Holdings. After all, as demand for AI infrastructure, networking chips, and optical connectivity solutions accelerates, these stocks are attracting attention from both Wall Street and retail investors looking for the next major growth opportunity.

Marvell Gets an Immediate Boost

On the morning of June 8, the company announced it would join the S&P 500 on June 22. As a result, the stock soared about 9% in premarket. 

Fueling even more momentum for the stock, 

Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, recently described Marvell Technology (NASDAQ: MRVL) as a potential future trillion-dollar company. He highlighted the company’s networking and connectivity chips, which play a critical role in modern AI data centers where thousands of processors must rapidly exchange data to perform complex computing tasks.

Marvell currently has a market cap of $230.4 billion and just posted strong earnings.

“Marvell delivered record first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $2.418 billion, up 28% year-over-year, and guided second-quarter revenue to $2.7 billion at the mid-point, representing 35% year-over-year growth. We expect revenue growth to continue accelerating each quarter throughout fiscal 2027, driven by continued strength in our data center business,” said Marvell CEO and Chairman Matt Murphy, as quoted in a company press release.

Flex Earns a Spot in the S&P 500

On June 22, Flex (NASDAQ: FLEX), the provider of electronic manufacturing services, will also join the index. With a market cap of $55.66 billion, the stock soared from an April low of about $70 to a recent high of $151.92 thanks to its strong position in the AI infrastructure market.  

The company just posted EPS of 93 cents, which beat by five cents. Revenue of $7.48 billion, up 16.9% year over year, beat by $500 million. Plus. Barclays’ analysts just raised their price target on Flex to $203 from $174 on June 4, keeping a Buy rating.

Lumentum Offers a Preview of the S&P 500 Effect

Lumentum (NASDAQ: LITE) was added to the S&P 500 on March 23, running from about $710 to $800 a share shortly after. 

Investors are rushing to buy optical networking companies, like LITE, because they’ve become an essential part of the artificial intelligence boom. 

That’s because optical networking, which transmits data as pulses of light, can deliver far more bandwidth and higher speeds than traditional copper wiring. In addition, Nvidia announced a $2 billion multi-year agreement with LITE in March to help accelerate the adoption of advanced optical technologies. 

Also, according to Goldman Sachs, optical networking is quickly becoming the next hot trend for the AI boom, as demand drives the need for faster data exchange and lower latency. 

The Opportunity Ahead

S&P 500 inclusion remains one of the strongest catalysts a stock can receive, often triggering immediate institutional buying and increased investor interest. 

For companies, such as those mentioned above, operating at the center of the AI revolution, the impact can be even greater. As artificial intelligence spending continues to expand, investors may want to keep a close eye on newly added S&P 500 companies that are positioned to capitalize on one of the market’s most powerful long-term growth trends.

One reason is the growing excitement around Marvell. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), just said Marvell could be the next potential trillion-dollar company. He highlighted the importance of Marvell’s networking and connectivity chips, which help data centers move information quickly between thousands of connected processors. His comments helped drive a rally in Marvell and other optical networking stocks.

Another reason is that optical networking has become a critical technology for artificial intelligence. Unlike traditional copper cables, optical networks transmit data using pulses of light, allowing for much higher speeds, greater bandwidth, and lower delays. As AI systems grow larger and more complex, the need for faster data transfer continues to increase.

AI Networking Boom Continues

According to Goldman Sachs, networking is becoming the next major area of investment in AI infrastructure. Faster, low-latency data exchange is essential for improving AI computing performance and supporting increasingly powerful models.

The firm estimates that the optical networking market could grow from roughly $15 billion in 2026 to nearly $154 billion by 2028.

In addition, we have to consider that the industry is facing a significant supply-demand imbalance. As artificial intelligence companies build larger computing clusters, they need tens of thousands of GPUs connected through ultra-fast optical links. At that scale, traditional copper cables can no longer deliver the required performance.

To help, Nvidia has reportedly asked suppliers to increase production capacity for indium phosphide lasers by as much as 20 times by 2030. The company has also committed approximately $2 billion to help secure future supply.

As artificial intelligence adoption accelerates, companies that provide the optical networking technology needed to connect massive systems could be positioned for substantial growth.

Early Days for Artificial Intelligence

For one, consider this. There are about 4,000 operational data centers in the U.S. right now. An additional 1,500 to 3,000 are being planned or under construction. According to Pew Research, the South has 754 planned data centers. The Midwest has 419 planned. The West has 277 planned, and the Northeast has about 106 planned. 

Two, the artificial intelligence boom is still accelerating.

Forecasts now place the value of artificial intelligence between $1.7 and $3.5 trillion by the early 2030s, with the most aggressive estimates topping $7 trillion by 2035. And judging by the surge in corporate investment, the market is moving toward the high end of those projections.

Three, warnings of an “AI bubble” are increasingly being dismissed by top analysts.

Goldman Sachs says, “it believes the AI story is just getting started – and the investments that seem huge today will be dwarfed by the benefits AI will deliver,” as noted by Quartz.com. 

Long term, the investment bank says that artificial intelligence adoption could add $20 trillion to the U.S. economy. AI, according to Goldman Sachs, is already delivering those gains in productivity when deployed right.”

JPMorgan’s Mary Callahan Erdoes added, “AI is presenting opportunities not fully appreciated or understood yet,” as noted by CNBC. “AI itself is not a bubble. That’s a crazy concept… We are on the precipice of a major, major revolution in a way that companies operate.”

“So, if you say to yourself, is AI in a bubble, I feel you have to get very granular on how you’re going to answer that, because in the U.S., we’re starting to gain traction, but we’re nowhere near the ability to have the stuff all to the bottom line.” 

For investors, that means the upside potential is still there.

Dell Has Been One of the Most Explosive Ahead of AI Earnings

Over the last few weeks, shares of Dell exploded from about $230 to a high of $295 as it heads into earnings on May 28. Wall Street analysts remain overwhelmingly bullish. JPMorgan Chase recently reiterated its Buy rating on DELL stock and maintained a $280 price target.

“We are expecting Dell to raise its earnings guidance for FY27 (Jan-end) again from the already raised outlook of 25% growth, although more modest in this case, on account of flow-through of the beat in F1Q27 but constrained by supply visibility, which still needs to catch up to the higher demand outlook for AI servers in particular,” the firm said, according to CNBC.

Meanwhile, analysts at Citigroup raised their price target on DELL to $290 from $235, citing “strong neo cloud/sovereign AI demand and improving enterprise mix” as key growth drivers, according to Seeking Alpha. Analysts at Mizuho Financial Group also raised their Dell price target to $300 from $260. The firm pointed to agentic AI workloads as a durable catalyst for sustained server demand and recurring revenue growth.

Investors will be paying close attention to Dell’s AI server backlog and commentary surrounding enterprise demand trends. With hyperscale cloud providers continuing to expand AI infrastructure spending, Dell remains one of the key beneficiaries of data center growth. 

Marvell: A Critical AI Infrastructure Player

Just as explosive regarding AI earnings, shares of Marvell ran from about $160 to $196 as it heads into earnings on May 27. A crucial semiconductor and infrastructure partner for hyperscalers building AI data centers, it’ll also give us an idea of what’s happening in the AI space.

Ahead of those earnings, analysts at HSBC upgraded the stock to a buy rating with a price target of $300 from $85. The firm cited undervalued revenue growth from optical interconnect and compute express link opportunities. It also cited potential upside from compute express link demand driven by memory shortages related to agentic AI CPU requirements. 

Susquehanna Financial raised its price target on Marvell to $230 from $100, with a positive rating. Stifel raised its price target to $210 from $140 with a Buy rating.

Salesforce: There is Hope for a Turnaround

While Salesforce hasn’t been as explosive, analysts are watching it closely to gauge the health of enterprise software spending and the pace of the company’s AI adoption. 

Salesforce met analysts’ revenue expectations last quarter, reporting revenues of $11.2 billion, up 12.1% year on year. It was a strong quarter for the company, with a solid beat of analysts’ billings estimates and full-year guidance of accelerating revenue growth. This quarter, the market is expecting Salesforce’s revenue to grow 12.4% year on year.

Unfortunately, ahead of those earnings, analysts at Bank of America downgraded CRM stock with an underperform rating and a price target of $180. The firm calls the company’s AI transition an “AI-driven structural reset.”

Still, bulls argue that Salesforce could surprise investors if adoption of its AI-powered Einstein platform continues to accelerate. 

The company has been aggressively integrating generative AI tools across its product ecosystem, including customer service, sales automation, and workflow management. Investors will likely focus on management’s forward guidance and commentary surrounding enterprise demand trends in the second half of the year. Strong subscription growth or improving operating margins could help offset concerns tied to slowing macroeconomic conditions and rising competition in enterprise software.

AI Earnings This Week Could Move the Entire Tech Sector

Ultimately, this week’s AI earnings reports may matter far beyond Dell, Marvell, and Salesforce themselves. Together, these companies touch nearly every layer of the artificial intelligence ecosystem, from servers and semiconductors to enterprise software adoption.

If management teams continue highlighting strong demand trends, expanding AI infrastructure spending, and accelerating customer adoption, it could strengthen the broader bullish case for AI stocks heading into the second half of 2026. But if these AI earnings reveal slowing enterprise budgets or signs that demand is cooling, investors may begin reassessing whether the market’s massive AI rally has moved too far ahead of fundamentals.

Based purely on narrative, you would expect MRVL stock to perform well — and it occasionally demonstrates patches of robust upswing. However, on a broader level, MRVL hasn’t exactly been the paragon of consistency. Since the start of the year, the security is down 24%. Over the past five years, it’s up 77%, albeit with severe peaks and valleys.

While tech names tend to be non-ergodic, MRVL stock seems to relish taking the description to new heights. Still, for options-focused speculators, Marvell’s volatility isn’t a bug — it’s a feature.

In other words, any effort to trade MRVL stock on valuation metrics is incredibly problematic as this approach leads to what I term “ought-to” logic. For example, many investors are tempted to cite Marvell’s financial strengths and present a case of undervaluation, ultimately leading to a rerating.

Unfortunately, such thinking — while no doubt carried out with good intentions — begs the question as it smuggles the conclusion (that MRVL will rerate higher) into the premise (that Marvell is undervalued). What should actually take place is that the speculator allows the data to speak for itself.

When you do that, you can build an empirical case — and ultimately have more confidence in your trading decisions.

Using Data Science to Reveal the Structure of Risk

One of the first mistakes that traders make is to rely on time-based chronological frameworks. It’s easy to do because, as humans, viewing narratives chronologically comes organically and naturally. There’s a reason why most movies feature a linear progression. While non-linear films like “Memento” add intriguing flavor, they’re also difficult for the average audience to follow.

To be sure, there’s a simple elegance to a methodology like technical analysis. An expert identifies a credible behavioral pattern on the chart, plots a reasonable forecast and allows you, the reader, to decide whether to place the wager or not.

Here’s a harsh reality check: the financial market is one of the most complex environments known to man. It is reflexive, reactive and heteroskedastic, among many other characteristics. What’s worse, exogenous factors can enter the system at any moment and wreak absolute havoc. Therefore, it beggars disbelief that mathematically untrained pundits drawing lines on charts can consistently deliver useful insights.

Rather than thinking chronologically, it’s vital that we think hierarchically.

Imagine that you took a single 10-week strand of pricing data of MRVL stock. Obviously, the return during this period won’t tell you much about the probabilistic performance of the other weeks in the dataset. But let’s say you took hundreds of rolling 10-week sequences of MRVL and stacked them together in a fixed-time distribution. Suddenly, the chart that you plot would reveal the underlying probabilistic structure.

Essentially, one-off events — whether unusually strong or weak — will not be weighted enough to affect the overall distribution due to a lack of frequency volume. However, events that happen consistently and recurringly will feature the greatest representation. These data points will create bulges in probability mass.

Stated differently, the bulges symbolize risk geometry. Essentially, under multiple trials, a public security will reveal its inherent tendencies. As such, calculating risk geometry doesn’t just tell us where a security may go — it also tells us where it stops going.

For options traders, this transitional probability is the more useful insight.

Identifying a Potentially Lucrative Trade for MRVL Stock

Using the price history of MRVL stock going back to January 2019, its forward 10-week distribution would likely see outcomes range between $82 and $91 (assuming an anchor price of $84.09, Friday’s close). Further, price clustering would likely be predominant at around $89, thus indicating a bullish bias.

However, we’re interested in the typical response to the current quantitative signal, which is the 3-7-D sequence; that is, in the past 10 weeks, MRVL stock printed only three up weeks, leading to an overall downward slope.

Under this setup, the forward 10-week returns would likely range between $80.50 and $92, with price clustering likely to occur near $88. To be fair, that doesn’t give us much variance relative to price clustering dynamics under aggregate or baseline conditions. As such, you might be tempted to consider a more conservative options strategy, such as the 80/85 bull call spread expiring Feb. 20, 2026.

Here’s the problem with that trade in particular. If MRVL stock rises through the second-leg strike ($85) at expiration, the maximum payout is only about 59%. I believe we may be at risk of leaving money on the table with this spread, considering that it’s a capped-risk, capped-reward transaction.

A better idea (in my humble opinion) is the 85/90 bull spread, also expiring Feb. 20. To be sure, it’s a much more aggressive wager as MRVL stock must rise through the $90 strike to trigger the maximum reward. However, the capped payout stands at roughly 133%, which is a much more palatable proposition.

Plus, with a breakeven price of $87.15, this threshold is sitting atop the peak of probability density for the 3-7-D sequence. In other words, there’s a solid chance of breaking even — while the width of the second leg allows you to stretch for potentially robust rewards.

Finally, the big selling point is probability decay. Between $88 and $90, probability density drops by 68.11%, which is steep. However, from $86 to $88, probability density actually rises by 35.34%. You don’t want to cap your reward when the underlying probability mass is rising as that would mean you would have a greater chance of absorbing an opportunity cost.

Instead, the 85/90 spread arguably gives you an ideal balance between profit maximization and opportunity cost limitation.