Sure, I’m coming late to the game. On Wednesday, AMD stock dropped 5.51%. In the trailing five sessions, the ticker has sank more than 21%. If you look at the situation from the perspective of technical analysis, you can’t help but notice that the security has fallen off a sideways consolidation channel. With sellers apparently panicking, the fallout could get ugly.

I would also venture to say that the consensus among retail traders is to let the selloff fully die out before engaging. I’m not going to put too much faith in my chart-interpreting abilities but Advanced Micro Devices stock does look like a falling-knife scenario. But what’s fascinating is that the market may have already provided a clue as to our current juncture.

Back in early July, I discussed the trading narrative for AMD rival NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA). Specifically, I mentioned that I was intrigued by the 205/210 bull call spread expiring Aug. 7. Now, unless a miracle happens, this trade will almost certainly get blown up (in a bad way). But keep in mind that up until the close of July 22, this trade was very much in the money.

Just as importantly, take a look at the Markov simulator that I provided in that article. Because NVDA stock was projected to decline in performance in the fifth week following the flashing of the underlying quantitative signal, I chose the Aug. 7 expiration date to cut off my exposure. Unfortunately, reality pushed up projected events to week 3 — but the key takeaway is that the downturn did eventually come.

For AMD Stock, It’s Not About Storytelling but Data

Generally, it’s understood that you can’t precisely predict future market behaviors. For decades, if not centuries, analysts have attempted to scour financial prints, technical charts and more recently, quantitative models to predict where a target security may head next. In arguably most cases, these efforts are nothing more than marketing BS.

However, that doesn’t mean we should give up on the idea of probabilistic forecasting. Just like in the NVIDIA case above, I can’t tell you exactly where AMD stock is going to land with absolute certainty. If I did, I certainly wouldn’t share it with anyone. Instead, I would simply trade this proprietary intelligence and basically print my own money.

I don’t know where exactly Advanced Micro Devices stock will end up. No one does. But I can tell you — thanks to my Markov simulator — where AMD has historically ended up given specific quantitative conditions.

With NVIDIA, the ticker printed four up weeks over the past 10 weeks, leading to a downward slope. Under this 4-6-D sequence, the next five weeks typically resulted in upside, with the next five weeks usually seeing choppy pessimism. Of course, the laws of nature are not guaranteed to repeat, but the above scenario has been the median response.

Let’s consider AMD stock. In the past 10 weeks, the ticker has witnessed a 50/50 split between positive and negative sessions; however, the overall slope has been negative. Under this 5-5-D sequence, the statistical expectation is for the median share price to gradually decline to the end of week 7. Then, over the next three weeks, shares tend to pop higher.

Still, the lift would be considered modest relative to how AMD stock usually performs as an aggregate expectation. In other words, if you were bullish on Advanced Micro, you’d be better off waiting as the expected performance under the signal is likely going to be worse than the performance under a random hold.

Don’t Believe Me? Check Out the Volatility Skew

It’s not just the historical data that is clouding the case for Advanced Micro Devices stock; rather, it’s the current hedging behavior among smart money traders.

Take a look at the volatility skew for Sep. 18 options chain. Here, the implied volatility (IV) — or the expectation of market movement — for far out-the-money (OTM) puts stands at an astronomical 1,000%. On the other end of the scale, the IV for far OTM calls is only 88.48%. In laymen’s terms, options traders are heavily prioritizing downside protection over upside convexity.

Granted, no one who studies options-based transactions is surprised by the stark picture in the volatility surface. As I mentioned at the top of this article, AMD stock has suffered heavy losses in recent sessions. If the smart money felt that this was a discounted opportunity, you’d likely see call IV elevated. After all, if most folks are selling, this would be a cheap time to buy in volatility terms.

However, the smart money doesn’t view AMD stock as a discount — they view it as a falling knife that is liable to lacerate unsuspecting bulls who do not look at the data. And that’s the overarching point here. I don’t know jack about the markets, seriously. But what I do know are numbers.

Look, I’m not saying be near-term bearish on Advanced Micro Devices stock because that’s how I interpret the charts. I personally don’t know where AMD is going to go. I’m just saying the data, under the specific condition that I outlined, tends to demonstrate negative performance before a turnaround occurs.

If you want to heed the warning, great. If you have an alternative model that suggests differently, use that instead. I’m just showing you the cards that I’m working with and why I believe what I believe.

How Should We Approach Advanced Micro Devices Stock?

From a conservative standpoint, the takeaway from the above data and inductive analysis is to wait until a little after mid-September to reengage AMD stock. Of course, nobody knows exactly how circumstances will pan out. But based on prior trends, that would be the forecasted time period when AMD may start looking interesting for the bulls again.

For those who actively want to speculate, you may consider the 430/420 bear put spread expiring Sep. 18. No, it’s not the most exciting trade because the maximum payout for AMD stock falling through the $420 strike at expiration is only around 53%. Plus, the net debit per spread is a pricey $655. That’s a direct consequence of the hedging activity that has made put options very expensive.

However, what’s enticing here is the breakeven price of $423.45. Right now, Wall Street assigns a probability of profit of 48%. However, the actual odds could be a little bit higher.

Since January 2019, the 5-5-D sequence has flashed 56 times on a rolling basis. Of this count, there have been 26 instances where AMD stock has ended up above the $423.45 breakeven price at week 7 (Sep. 18), meaning that there have been 30 cases where AMD slipped below this threshold. As such, the conditional probability of profit could be 53.6%, not 48%.

Granted, that’s not much of a difference relative to Wall Street’s odds. But you also have to consider that being bearish on Advanced Micro Devices stock is no longer the contrarian wager — it’s the expected outcome. So, the bottom line is, if you’re going to be bearish, be prepared to pay. Otherwise, if you’re looking for a discount, you statistically stand a better chance of waiting.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang doesn’t see it that way.

Instead, he believes the recent weakness is a buying opportunity because the AI revolution is still in its early innings. “The buildout of artificial intelligence has just begun,” Huang said.

His confidence isn’t just based on optimism.

AI Infrastructure Spending Remains Strong

NVIDIA remains the dominant supplier of the chips powering today’s AI infrastructure, and demand for its newest products continues to be strong. The company’s GB300 systems, built on its Blackwell architecture, are now shipping in large volumes.

Demand is coming from several directions. Hyperscale cloud providers are spending billions to expand their AI capabilities, governments are investing in sovereign AI projects to strengthen domestic computing power, and businesses across multiple industries are deploying increasingly complex AI applications that require more powerful hardware.

That demand is showing up in NVIDIA’s financial results. Its data center business grew about 66% year over year, a sign that spending on AI infrastructure remains healthy. Looking ahead, Nvidia expects its fiscal 2026 data center revenue to reach roughly $190 billion, representing growth of about 65%.

Why Investors Are Divided on AI Stocks

Some investors believe AI stocks have become too expensive after several years of massive gains. Heavy spending by large technology companies and uncertainty about future returns have made some investors more cautious.

Others see today’s spending much differently.

They compare it to the early days of the internet, when companies poured billions into building infrastructure that initially seemed excessive. Over time, demand caught up, and those investments became the foundation of the modern digital economy. From that perspective, today’s AI data centers, advanced chips, and networking equipment could become the backbone of tomorrow’s economy.

Huang Believes AI Will Become Essential Infrastructure

He has repeatedly argued that artificial intelligence will become essential infrastructure, much like electricity or the internet. If that’s true, today’s massive investments are simply laying the foundation for decades of future growth. Under that view, market pullbacks are a normal part of a long-term trend—not a sign that the AI boom is over.

Of course, investors have heard bold predictions from technology leaders before.

History shows that even revolutionary technologies can go through painful corrections before delivering on their long-term potential.

NVIDIA also isn’t without challenges.

Competition is increasing as rival chipmakers develop their own AI accelerators. At the same time, major cloud providers are investing heavily in custom chips to reduce their reliance on NVIDIA’s GPUs. And eventually, companies spending billions on AI infrastructure will need to show those investments are producing meaningful returns.

Still, NVIDIA has important advantages.

Its combination of industry-leading hardware, a mature software platform, and one of the largest AI developer ecosystems creates high switching costs for customers. That ecosystem remains one of NVIDIA’s biggest competitive strengths.

Is the AI Selloff a Buying Opportunity?

Whether Jensen Huang is right will ultimately depend on how quickly AI adoption continues to grow. If businesses, governments, and consumers keep embracing AI at the current pace, today’s market volatility could end up looking like a temporary pause in a much bigger growth story. If spending slows or companies struggle to generate returns on their AI investments, recent concerns about inflated expectations may prove justified.

For now, Huang is sticking with a simple view: artificial intelligence is still in its infancy, and the massive infrastructure buildout needed to support the next generation of AI applications is only getting started.

For the past two years, NVIDIA Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) has become almost synonymous with artificial intelligence after reporting fiscal first-quarter 2027 revenue of $81.6 billion, data center revenue of $75.2 billion, and a GAAP gross margin of 74.9%. Those numbers comfortably surpassed Wall Street’s expectations, but they also point to a much bigger question. 

If AI continues expanding at today’s pace, can one company realistically capture all of the value being created, or has the semiconductor industry quietly entered an entirely new phase?

The AI Semiconductor Boom Is Expanding Beyond Nvidia

History rarely allows one company to dominate an entire technological revolution forever.

Henry Ford transformed automobile manufacturing, but the industry’s long-term wealth eventually spread across tire manufacturers, oil producers, insurance companies, steelmakers, highway construction firms, and dealerships. The internet initially rewarded networking companies before cloud computing, cybersecurity, and enterprise software emerged as equally important investment themes.

Artificial intelligence is now following that same script. Nvidia still occupies the center of AI computing. Its GPUs remain the preferred choice for training many of the world’s largest language models, and demand continues exceeding supply in several product categories. But the infrastructure required to support AI has become far larger than graphics processors alone.

Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) illustrates that shift perfectly in the fiscal second quarter report. “Q2 semiconductor revenue from AI of $10.8 billion grew 143% year-over-year, above forecast, driven by increasing demand for custom AI accelerators and AI networking,” said Hock Tan, President and CEO of Broadcom Inc. “The momentum continues and in Q3 we expect semiconductor revenue from AI to grow over 200 percent year-over-year to $16.0 billion.”  Those numbers tell me hyperscalers are increasingly investing in custom AI accelerators designed specifically for their own workloads.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ: AMD) is benefiting from the same diversification. The company’s data center segment produced $5.8 billion in first-quarter revenue, rising 57% from a year earlier as cloud providers expanded deployments of its Instinct accelerators alongside Nvidia’s hardware.

Notice what’s happening underneath these earnings? Wall Street is no longer debating whether AI spending exists. It’s debating where that spending flows after leaving Nvidia’s doorstep.

The Next AI Bottleneck Isn’t Computing

Once you look beyond processors, the investment story becomes even more interesting.

Every AI system depends on enormous quantities of high-bandwidth memory, advanced packaging, custom networking, interconnect technologies, and cutting-edge manufacturing capacity. Each of those layers is becoming a competitive bottleneck in its own right.

Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MU) may offer one of the clearest examples. The company recently disclosed more than $22 billion in multi-year customer agreements tied largely to AI memory demand, while CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said High Bandwidth Memory supply is expected to remain constrained through at least 2027. That’s a remarkable statement because it tells investors the shortage surrounding AI has already expanded beyond processors into memory infrastructure itself.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (NYSE: TSM) reinforces the same conclusion from a different angle. High Performance Computing accounted for 59% of the company’s wafer revenue during the latest quarter, making it TSMC’s largest end market by a considerable margin. Even more revealing, 3-nanometer and 5-nanometer technologies together represented 58% of wafer revenue, demonstrating that customers continue migrating aggressively toward the world’s most advanced manufacturing processes.

Put differently, AI isn’t creating one winner anymore. It’s creating an ecosystem where every constraint becomes an investment opportunity. That’s exactly how industrial revolutions mature.

Wall Street Is Broadening Its AI Bets

The price action across the semiconductor sector reinforces that broader thesis.

The charts reinforce the same conclusion emerging from the earnings. NVIDIA Corp. continues holding above its 200-day moving average near $191.26 despite remaining below its 20-day and 50-day averages, with 124.15 million shares traded as investors digest one of the strongest rallies in AI history rather than abandoning it.

Broadcom Inc. paints a different picture. Shares have consolidated sharply from the June highs, yet continue trading above the 200-day moving average near $361.64 as 24.11 million shares changed hands. That looks less like distribution and more like institutions cooling excessive optimism after an extraordinary run.

Beneath the surface, three enduring forces have driven American economic leadership across every era: the capacity to innovate faster than anyone else, the spending power of its consumers, and the industrial strength to protect the global system that lets both of those forces operate freely. Three stocks capture those pillars more cleanly than any index ever could – NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA), Walmart (NYSE: WMT), and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT). And understanding why each one belongs in that framework tells you more about the American economy than tracking 500 tickers ever will.

Every Generation Gets One Company Like NVIDIA

IBM defined the mainframe era. Intel powered the personal computer. Apple reinvented the relationship between hardware and human behavior. Each one sat at the center of a technological shift that reshaped how the American economy functioned, and each one was dismissed as overvalued by investors who missed the full arc of what they were actually watching.

NVIDIA is writing that same chapter for artificial intelligence, and the numbers make it increasingly difficult to argue otherwise. The company reported $81.6 billion in revenue last quarter, up 85% year-over-year, with Data Center revenue climbing 92% to $75.2 billion as Blackwell AI systems ramped at a pace the company itself described as record speed. Even with export restrictions cutting into China exposure, gross margins held above 60%… a level most hardware businesses never approach at any point in their lifecycle, let alone during a product ramp of this magnitude.

What keeps this story credible beyond the revenue print is the ecosystem NVIDIA sits inside, and that ecosystem is distinctly American. Cloud providers, software developers, university research labs, venture-backed startups, and the deepest capital markets in the world all reinforce each other in ways that no other country has managed to replicate at scale. That’s not a valuation argument. It’s a structural one, and it’s the reason breakthrough AI research keeps converting into commercial revenue faster in the United States than anywhere else.

The chart shows a market taking profits rather than abandoning the thesis. After an extraordinary run, NVIDIA has spent recent weeks consolidating near its rising 200-day moving average while attracting buyers consistently around the $190 level. Momentum has cooled. Institutional demand has not.

Nobody Spends Like The American Consumer

The United States doesn’t lead the global economy because it manufactures everything cheaply, it dominates because nobody on earth spends the way American consumers do, and that spending sustains retailers, logistics networks, advertisers, payment processors, software vendors, and thousands of suppliers across every continent simultaneously. Walmart sits at the center of that network, and the business being built inside its revenue lines looks nothing like the discount chain most investors still picture when they hear the name.

Last quarter, Walmart reported revenue of $177.8 billion, up 7.3% year-over-year, while global e-commerce surged 26%, advertising revenue grew 37%, and membership income climbed 17.4%. U.S. comparable sales advanced 4.1%.

The composition of that growth matters as much as the size of it. Advertising and membership are higher-margin businesses than grocery sales, and their acceleration signals that Walmart is successfully transforming from a retail operator into a technology platform wrapped around the world’s largest consumer base. Automation, marketplace services, digital advertising, and Walmart+ are steadily reshaping the company’s earnings profile in ways that make the next decade look structurally different from the last one.

Its stock has corrected sharply from recent highs, slipping below shorter-term moving averages after a powerful multi-year advance. Even so, the longer-term uptrend remains intact, suggesting investors are resetting expectations rather than questioning the business itself. Corrections inside secular winners often feel uncomfortable while they’re happening, yet history shows they frequently become opportunities when the underlying business keeps improving.

National Power Makes The Other Two Possible.

Every assumption built into an NVIDIA investment and every dollar of consumer spending captured by Walmart depends on something most investors never stop to price: the stability of the global system that allows innovation and commerce to function in the first place. Stable trade routes, secure alliances, functioning supply chains, and the long-term confidence businesses need to invest decades ahead don’t emerge naturally. They get built and defended, and Lockheed Martin represents the industrial backbone doing exactly that.

The company reported $18.0 billion in quarterly sales and $6.44 in earnings per share, backed by an $186.4 billion backlog that gives investors a level of forward revenue visibility almost no other business can offer. Management reaffirmed full-year guidance and announced framework agreements to expand production of critical missile systems by three to four times current output as global demand keeps rising.

The Ultra Maritime acquisition deepens Lockheed’s position in undersea warfare at precisely the moment geopolitical competition is shifting toward protecting critical shipping lanes and naval infrastructure — a strategic move that extends well beyond any single contract. Technically, after months of sideways action, the stock has quietly reclaimed both its 20-day and 50-day moving averages while finding consistent support near $500, suggesting institutional accumulation rather than indifference.

Three Stocks. One American Story.

The S&P 500 will continue evolving. Companies will enter the index, others will disappear, and market leadership will inevitably change. Names change, but the pillars rarely do. That’s why I keep looking beyond quarterly earnings into businesses tied to America’s enduring strengths because they will continue shaping markets long after today’s headlines have faded.

Invariably, the financial publication space will attempt to answer this question through fundamental analysis. However, I believe this methodology has significant constraints. Rather than attempting to extract the long-term investment value of NVDA stock, I prefer to focus on short-term exposure via the options market. To provide a quantitative roadmap, I’ll be using a process known as non-parametric conditional sequence simulation or path-dependent conditioning.

Why Not Discuss the Fundamentals for NVDA Stock?

Before getting into the good stuff, I’ll quickly explain why I’m not particularly keen on fundamental analysis — at least the way that it’s commonly practiced in the finpub space.

Primarily, the bullish case for NVIDIA stock centers on the multi-token inference economy and platform lock-in. While it’s true that skeptics have focused on the leveling off in initial large-language-model (LLM) training clusters, those with a glass-half-full perspective are pointing to NVIDIA’s transition toward the emerging agentic AI segment.

Notably, NVIDIA is leveraging its software moat to help enterprises deploy real-time autonomous agents. Moreover, the semiconductor giant is rigorously expanding its architecture to address memory bandwidth bottlenecks. Here, its deployment of ultra-high-speed inference platforms targets real-time, low-latency token throughput. Subsequently, this move ensures that even if training demand moderates, the sheer volume of computing required to run millions of active agentic systems globally sustains hardware demand.

There are many other positive catalysts for NVDA stock, such as hardware efficiency improvements and a massive revenue pipeline for its key products. Further, nation-states are building out domestic data centers to ensure data-localized independence, bolstering the company’s long-standing relevance.

I could go on and on but none of this information above provides any edge. That’s because — unless there’s evidence to suggest otherwise — all these catalysts have been fully reflected in the NVDA stock price.

And that’s honestly the core reason why I don’t want to waste too much time on NVIDIA’s fundamentals. NVDA stock is one of the most heavily traded securities in the world. I highly doubt that major banks, institutional investors and algorithmically enhanced hedge funds forgot to incorporate the good news into NVDA — but somehow Bob from Arkansas saw something that nobody else did.

What About Unusual Options Activity for NVIDIA Stock?

Some of the more advanced finpubs will often discuss unusual options activity as a basis for exposure to NVDA stock. The premise goes that because the smart money is buying up large blocks of NVIDIA call options, the open market will eventually follow suit with a positive rerating of shares.

That’s not how options work. For one thing, every transaction in the derivatives market has a counterparty; in other words, if someone is buying calls, there’s another person selling them. Options can’t be transacted in the ether. It’s misleading to label derivatives trading as a net bullish or net bearish because the options market is a zero-sum game.

What’s more, trading unusual options activity for NVDA stock could be a detrimental way to go about your business. By the time that big block of orders has hit the options screener, the underlying market maker has hedged the order to remain delta-neutral. This hedging creates a spike in implied volatility for the affected strike price.

Basically, if you buy the exact same option that is flashing as unusual, you are buying it at a heightened volatility premium. What finpubs don’t tell you — because it would obviously hurt their retention — is that you need to trade options before they become unusual.

Other than pure speculation, there’s no telling when an order will become unusual. So, we need to rethink the whole game.

Asking the Right Question

Everything begins by asking the right question. For those seeking a quick profit from Nvidia stock, the question is as follows: what is the expected performance of NVDA if I were to buy shares randomly (i.e. without timing the market)?

Using a dataset going back to January 2019, we can calculate that if you bought NVDA stock today (at $197.58) and held it for 10 weeks, your median forward distribution would land roughly between $190 and $230. Probability density will peak at around $215, implying an upward bias. As this is our random baseline, any trading signal that we’re interested in must consistently beat this performance; otherwise, there’s no incentive to trade.

As mentioned earlier, NVDA stock is suffering from a bearish cycle. From a weekly candlestick perspective, in the last 10 weeks, NVDA printed only four up weeks, leading to an overall downward slope. Conditioned for this 4-6-D sequence, the expected forward distribution over the next 10 weeks comes out to between $190 and $230. Probability density also peaks at around $215, which doesn’t give much variance from the baseline.

From these stats, it’s easy to dismiss NVDA stock. However, on a week-by-week basis, the median pathway of NVDA following the 4-6-D signal tends to lift higher than the baseline pathway over the next five to six weeks. Therefore, if this inference rings true, a near-expiry options trade could be lucrative.

Identifying a Tempting Trade

For aggressive speculators, I’d take a look at the 205/210 bull call spread expiring Aug. 7. If the aforementioned signal’s observed median pathway holds true, the $210 strike would represent a realistic target at expiration. Should the trade pan out, the maximum payout would be over 156%.

Of course, the caveat with pattern recognition is that there’s no necessary reason for the trend to materialize as expected. Stated differently, just because you see something happen a hundred times does not mean the 101^st time will yield a similar result. That’s the black swan risk of inductive methodologies.

At the same time, without induction, we’re left with just guessing where NVDA stock will head next. I find that to be an intellectually unsatisfying process, which is why I’ll continue to focus on path-dependent conditioning.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) remains the linchpin of the artificial intelligence trade, even after a choppy few months. Cameco (NYSE: CCJ) sits at the center of a uranium and nuclear energy renaissance that shows no signs of slowing. Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) just landed a regulatory win that expands its footprint in cardiac care. Each of these stocks has analyst price targets implying upside of at least 50% over the next 12 months, according to consensus estimates.

Investors chasing the same crowded trades often miss what’s building underneath. These three names offer differentiated exposure: AI infrastructure, energy transition, and medical device innovation. None of them requires betting on a single earnings report to work. Each has a multi-year catalyst path.

Below, we break down the setup for these three stocks, including where the charts stand today. This isn’t a call to buy blindly. It’s a case for putting these names on the watchlist as the second half gets underway.

Three Stocks to Watch: A Pause In NVDA Could Set Up the Next Leg Higher

Have NVIDIA investors simply gotten bored? Shares closed at $197.58 on July 1, down 1.25% on the session and roughly 18% off the May peak near $240. The stock has spent June grinding lower in an orderly pullback rather than a panic decline.

The daily chart shows RSI at 43.26, just below its 14-day moving average of 44.52. That’s neutral-to-soft momentum, not oversold. The MACD line sits at -1.06, below its signal line, confirming the recent downtrend in momentum since the May-June rollover. Price is testing the $195-$200 zone, a level that acted as resistance back in October and November before the stock broke out.

A reclaim of that zone on rising volume would signal the pullback is over. A break below the June low near $193 opens the door to a deeper retest. Either way, consensus analyst targets still imply roughly 60% upside from current levels, underscoring how far sentiment has diverged from Wall Street’s underlying growth assumptions for AI compute demand.

Three Stocks to Watch: CCJ’s Uranium Bull Case Gets a Gut Check

Cameco remains the tip of the spear for the uranium and nuclear energy buildout, but Tuesday’s session was a reminder that the trade isn’t a straight line. Shares dropped 4.39% to $97.39, extending a slide from the February high near $137.

Technicals have turned decisively bearish in the short term. RSI sits at 37.64, below its moving average of 45.54 and approaching oversold territory below 30. The MACD line has fallen to -0.35, with the signal line further negative at -2.25, showing accelerating downside momentum. Volume on the selloff came in above average, a sign of real distribution rather than a thin-market move.

The longer-term structure still matters more than one red day. CCJ remains well above its 2025 base, and the nuclear demand story tied to AI data center power needs hasn’t changed. A stabilization near the $95-$100 support shelf, last tested in June, would be the first sign buyers are stepping back in.

Three Stocks to Watch: BSX Has a Regulatory Win and an Oversold Chart

Boston Scientific just received FDA approval to expand the labeling for its FARAPULSE Pulsed Field Ablation System, widening the eligible patient population for one of its fastest-growing product lines. The news lands at an unusual moment technically: shares have been in a steady downtrend for nearly a year, falling from above $100 to the low $40s.

That decline has pushed RSI down to 28.01, solidly in oversold territory below the 30 threshold, with its moving average close behind at 28.30. More interesting is the MACD, where the MACD line has just crossed above zero to 0.058 while the signal line remains negative at -2.58. That crossover is an early signal that downside momentum may be exhausting itself.

Shares closed at $43.06, up 0.89% on the session, with overnight trading near $43.26. Combined with the FARAPULSE label expansion, the technical setup gives BSX a case as a mean-reversion candidate heading into the second half, assuming the broader downtrend confirms a bottom.

Watching for the Bounce

None of these three stocks is a guaranteed winner. NVDA needs to prove the AI trade still has legs beyond the mega-cap names. CCJ needs uranium prices and utility demand to cooperate through a volatile stretch. BSX needs its oversold bounce to hold up against a year-long downtrend.

What ties them together is a gap between price action and underlying fundamentals. Analysts see substantial upside in all three, and each has a catalyst that doesn’t depend on the broader market cooperating. For investors tired of chasing the same handful of names, these three stocks are worth watching as the second half gets underway.

I’d argue the market hasn’t lost anything. And value investing hasn’t stopped working, but the problem is that we’ve spent so long hunting for cheap stocks that we forgot what value actually means in the first place.

Intel, Nvidia, And Why Investors Should Think Differently

Three years ago, value investors thought they’d found an obvious mispricing. NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA) traded at a multiple they considered absurd. Intel Inc (NASDAQ: INTC) traded at a fraction of it, threw off billions in profit, paid a healthy dividend, and showed up on every screener built to find bargains. Buy Intel, avoid NVIDIA, the trade wrote itself.

Then the AI boom hit, and the math completely inverted. Hyperscalers poured hundreds of billions into infrastructure, demand for accelerated computing exploded, and NVIDIA kept selling every chip it could physically manufacture. The valuation everyone feared got easier to justify with each passing quarter, because the business underneath it refused to stop compounding. Intel lived the opposite story in real time – AMD chipped away at the share it once considered untouchable, the manufacturing lead disappeared, the AI cycle arrived, and Intel showed up late to it, and investors kept finding fewer reasons to believe tomorrow would beat today.

One company looked expensive because the market believed its best years were still ahead. The other looked cheap because the market had quietly started pricing in the opposite. That’s not a coincidence or a temporary mispricing correcting itself. In fact, that’s exactly how markets are supposed to work, and Intel versus NVIDIA is the cleanest demonstration of it in a generation.

The Cheapest Stock On Your Screener Might Be The Most Dangerous One

Every investor loves finding a bargain. The mistake is assuming a bargain always arrives wearing a low P/E. Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (NASDAQ: WBA) spent years proving exactly how wrong that assumption can get. Investors pointed at its single-digit earnings multiple and fat dividend as evidence the market had mispriced a stable business. Meanwhile, reimbursement pressure kept compressing margins, store traffic kept eroding, Amazon kept pushing deeper into healthcare, and management eventually announced plans to close hundreds of locations.

The low multiple was never the opportunity. It was the warning, the market pricing in deterioration that most retail investors hadn’t noticed yet, because they were too busy admiring the dividend yield to look at why it was being offered in the first place.

That’s the blind spot a P/E ratio creates on its own. I’ve spent tons of hours studying 30+ earnings reports in the past 2 months and what I’ve discovered is that two companies can report identical earnings in one quarter and deserve completely different valuations, because one is compounding into a stronger competitive position and the other is quietly losing relevance underneath a number that still looks fine.

Wall Street was never pricing last quarter’s results. It’s always pricing what the next several years are likely to look like, whether the multiple agrees with that or not.

Follow The Money, Not Where The Headline Points

While flipping through the pages of most reports, scouring opportunities in the AI ecosystem, one line I never forgot for a second was: “Don’t forget construction and infrastructure.” 

Because the truth is, most investors hear AI and think NVIDIA. But the market is pricing something considerably bigger than that. Every data center has to be designed before a single GPU goes in it. It needs power before it needs compute. It needs transformers, cooling systems, switchgear, fiber, and mechanical infrastructure built out long before a chatbot answers its first query – and that buildout is exactly why names like Vertiv have quietly become some of the largest beneficiaries of this entire cycle without building a single model themselves. 

My point is, the money behind a transformative technology never stops at the headline company. It spreads through every business that makes the headline company’s existence physically possible. It happened during the railroad expansion, the smartphone buildout, and it’s happening again right now while investors keep arguing over whether NVIDIA’s or even SpaceX’s multiples are too rich. Time is better spent finding where the next layer of value is actually accumulating instead of doubting if “value investing” is getting phased out.

Value Investing Was Never The Problem

Blaming the market for irrationality is the easy move. Questioning whether our own definition of value has gone stale is the harder one, and it’s the one that actually pays. Markets have always rewarded businesses capable of expanding earnings power faster than consensus expects. Sometimes that business trades at 8X earnings, sometimes at 35, and the multiple was never the variable doing the deciding. The business was.

Intel and NVIDIA made that lesson impossible to ignore any longer. One looked like the disciplined, defensible choice. The other looked reckless to anyone still anchored to a spreadsheet. Years later, the investors who bought the cheaper stock weren’t rewarded for their discipline. Those who correctly identified which business was becoming more valuable were. So no, value investing isn’t dead. The definition most investors have been using for it expired a while ago, and the market has been waiting patiently for everyone else to catch up.

From warehouse automation and manufacturing to healthcare, logistics, and space exploration, humanoid robots are expected to transform the global economy.

Why Wall Street Is Bullish on Humanoid Robots

According to Morgan Stanley, the humanoid robotics market could generate nearly $5 trillion in annual revenue by 2050, making it one of the largest technological revolutions since the Internet. 

With Wall Street forecasting explosive growth in humanoid adoption over the next decade, investors are increasingly looking for the best stocks and ETFs positioned to benefit from the rise of physical AI and advanced robotics.

In addition, new estimates from Morgan Stanley analysts forecast $4.7 trillion in global humanoid revenue by 2050, which the firm said is double the total revenue of the 20 largest automakers in 2024. What’s more, while auto revenue could “very well shrink over the next 25 years,” analysts estimate that global humanoid adoption will accelerate and reach roughly 1 billion units by 2050, the investment bank said, as noted by CNBC.

Goldman Sachs says global humanoid robot demand potentially achieving a $38 billion total addressable market by 2035. Bank of America. believes global humanoid robot shipments will reach 18,000 units in 2025 and 10 million units by 2035.

And Wedbush analyst Dan says humanoid robots could be oneof the biggest opportunities in the AI boom. The market will be worth trillions of dollars over the next decade, Ives added, as noted by CNBC, and “will change the way consumers and businesses operate over time.”

How Humanoid Robots Could Transform the Economy

When that happens, humanoid robots could assist patients, assist with physical therapy and rehab exercises, reduce staffing shortages, automate demand tasks, assist with rescues, perform maintenance and operations in space, the list goes on.

The only question now is – how can we make money from it?

Nvidia Is Building the Infrastructure for Physical AI

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is now betting that the next major wave of artificial intelligence will exist in the Physical AI world by walking, moving, lifting boxes, operating machinery, and working with humans. 

Fueling momentum is Nvidia’s Halos for Robotics, which, according to the company, is the industry’s first, full-stack, open safety system for physical AI and robotics. The platform is designed to help robots and humanoids operate safely in human environments by combining AI computing software, including IGX Thor and the Holoscan Sensor Bridge for AI, with safety operating systems using Nvidia Halos OS. Even better, it’s already seeing early adoption.

A Diversified Way to Invest in Robotics

There’s also the VanEck Robotics ETF (NASDAQ: IBOT). With an expense ratio of 0.47%, the fund replicates the price and yield performance of the BlueStar Robotics Index, which tracks companies involved with robotics and automation technologies. Some of its 67 holdings include Nvidia, ASML Holding, Siemens, Autodesk, and Teledyne Technologies.

The ETF offers investors diversified exposure to several key trends driving the robotics revolution, including artificial intelligence, industrial automation, machine vision, semiconductor manufacturing, and autonomous systems. That diversification can be especially attractive for investors who want exposure to the humanoid robotics boom without having to pick individual winners in what is still an emerging industry.

The Next Phase of AI Could Be Physical—Here’s How to Invest

As advances in artificial intelligence, sensors, and computing power continue to accelerate, humanoid robots could become as commonplace in the workplace as computers are today. For investors looking to gain exposure to this long-term trend, Nvidia offers a direct play on the AI infrastructure powering next-generation robotics, while the VanEck Robotics ETF provides diversified exposure to a broad basket of companies helping drive automation forward. 

If forecasts from Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and other Wall Street firms prove accurate, today’s investments in robotics and physical AI could get explosive.

At roughly $212 per share, Qualcomm trades around 26 times trailing earnings. That sits well below AI infrastructure peers like Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) and NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA). For long-term investors, the question is whether QCOM is a mispriced AI data center story finally breaking out of its smartphone shell.

For short-term traders, the question is very different. The July 31, 2026, options chain shows implied volatility running between 78% and 84% across most strikes. Heavy call interest extends as far up as $250, with active put positioning below $190. That expiration falls just days after Qualcomm’s expected fiscal Q3 earnings release, which TipRanks currently pegs for August 5, 2026.

The combination of a transformational Investor Day, a near-term earnings catalyst, and a six-month trading range of nearly 90 points makes QCOM one of the more interesting setups in the semiconductor group right now.

Why Qualcomm’s Data Center Pivot Could Re-Rate the Stock

At its June 24 Investor Day, Qualcomm raised its fiscal 2029 non-handset revenue target to $40 billion, roughly double its prior guidance. The company also set a data center revenue target of more than $15 billion by fiscal 2029.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) was disclosed as a multi-generational customer for the forthcoming Dragonfly C1000 CPU. Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Azure cloud unit has been tapped for the High Bandwidth Compute chip architecture, slated for mid-2027.

For a business that still draws roughly two-thirds of product revenue from smartphones, that mix shift is significant. Qualcomm also targets $10 billion in automotive revenue, more than $14 billion in IoT revenue, and non-GAAP earnings per share of more than $18 by fiscal 2029. Analysts polled by LSEG currently model fiscal 2029 EPS of $15.26, which means Qualcomm’s own targets are nearly 18% above consensus.

The strategy extends beyond merchant silicon. Qualcomm reported two major hyperscaler custom-silicon wins, each expected to exceed one billion dollars in fiscal 2027. The Modular acquisition, while dilutive, addresses Qualcomm’s historic software gap relative to Nvidia’s CUDA ecosystem.

The Chart Says Conviction Has Yet to Return

Despite Wednesday’s rally, the QCOM chart shows signs of indecision. The stock peaked near $260 in May and has been carving lower highs and lower lows since. The 50-day simple moving average at $197.75 has acted as a battleground rather than a launchpad. Friday’s surge took shares back above that level on volume of more than 23 million.

The MACD indicator, however, remains bearish on a daily basis. The MACD line at 1.33 sits below the signal line at 4.57. The histogram is negative at -3.24. That configuration typically suggests momentum has not yet flipped back in favor of the bulls, even with the strong intraday move.

Options traders appear to be positioning for sharp movement in either direction. The July 31 expiration shows implied volatility above 78% across the call chain and similar levels on puts. The largest open interest in the high-volume calls sits near the $200 strike, with active put hedging at $190 and $180. That pricing implies an expected move of roughly 12% to 15% through expiration. Traders are clearly bracing for an outsized reaction to the August earnings print.

The Bear Case: Why 26x Earnings May Still Be Right

The skeptical view starts with timing. The Dragonfly C1000 microprocessor will be available in 2028. That means none of Meta or Microsoft’s revenue will contribute meaningfully to the next two fiscal years. The all-stock Modular acquisition is valued at $3.92 billion and is expected to close in the second half of 2026, introducing near-term dilution that hits earnings now rather than later.

Smartphone exposure remains the dominant near-term variable. Management guided fiscal Q3 revenue of $9.2 billion to $10.0 billion and non-GAAP EPS of $2.10 to $2.30. Both numbers sit below the company’s fiscal Q2 results of $10.6 billion and $2.65. CEO Cristiano Amon has said China handset shipments should bottom in Q3 before recovering, but memory price inflation continues to pressure Chinese OEMs.

Competition is also intensifying. Broadcom reported $10.8 billion in AI-related revenue in its most recent quarter, up 143% year over year, while Marvell is guiding to 40% growth for the current year. Even Intel and AMD have server CPUs with core counts comparable to Dragonfly’s 250-plus design, and those parts ship years before Qualcomm’s.

Bottom Line: The Setup Favors Patience, Not Conviction

Qualcomm has given long-term investors a credible bull case. Real customer commitments from Meta and Microsoft, ambitious financial targets above current consensus, and a software acquisition that addresses a known weakness all support the thesis. The stock still trades at a discount to AI infrastructure peers, which keeps the “undervalued” framing in play.

The bear case is just as easy to assemble. Data center revenue is years away, the Modular deal is dilutive, and smartphones remain the swing factor for the next several quarters. With earnings on the calendar in early August and options markets pricing in a double-digit percentage move, QCOM is likely to keep behaving more like a trader’s vehicle than a buy-and-hold compounder in the near term.

Why would they? 

The yield on the 10-Year Treasury recently pushed above 4.5%. The 30-Year cleared 5%. Those yields are the foundation everything else in finance gets priced off of – your mortgage, your company’s borrowing costs, the multiple Wall Street is willing to slap on every growth stock you own.

But you see, a market that genuinely believed inflation was heading to 2% with rate cuts coming wouldn’t be demanding some of the highest long-term yields we’ve seen in years. Which tells you that the bond market is calling the Fed’s bluff in real time, with trillions of dollars behind the bet.

Bond Investors Are Underwriting The Next Three Decades.

The Fed’s job is narrow –inflation, employment, financial stability, measured in quarters. A pension fund buying a 30-year Treasury isn’t playing that game. They’re underwriting purchasing power three decades out, government borrowing across multiple administrations and multiple crises nobody’s predicted yet, and whether the dollars they get back will still mean anything when they get them.

That’s a completely different bet than guessing next month’s CPI print.

Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee already acknowledged inflation has moved the wrong direction, and the last stretch back to target is proving harder than the easy progress it made. The bond market priced that risk in before Goolsbee said it out loud. Inflation has cooled a lot from the 2022 peak. Yet yields haven’t followed it down because investors are trying to determine what inflation looks like over the next 3 decades, not the next quarter.

Washington’s Borrowing Habit

Inflation gets the headlines because it’s easy to talk about on TV. Debt is the bigger problem, and it’s getting almost no airtime relative to its size. We’re carrying north of $36 trillion in federal debt now, with interest expense becoming one of the fastest-growing costs in the entire federal budget… faster-growing than most line items anyone in Washington actually wants to discuss in an election year.

Run the logic forward. Deficits don’t close themselves. The Treasury has to issue more debt to cover them. More issuance means more supply hitting the market. More supply means buyers get to demand a better price for showing up – and that price is yield. The Treasury market is the deepest, most liquid market on earth, and it still answers to the same supply-and-demand math as everything else. You can’t flood a market with trillions in new paper every year and expect buyers to keep accepting the same terms forever.

That’s what’s actually being priced into the long end right now. Not just where inflation lands next year, whether the U.S. can keep borrowing at this scale without eventually having to pay up for the privilege.

If You’re Trading Equities And Ignoring This, You’re Trading Half-Blind

Most traders live inside earnings prints and chart patterns and treat the bond market like it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s a mistake that gets expensive fast, because Treasury yields set the terms everyone else is playing under whether they realize it or not. Higher yields mean a higher discount rate on every future cash flow, which hits growth names hardest, since their value sits furthest out on the timeline. Private equity financing gets pricier. Commercial real estate eats another round of pressure. Corporate borrowing costs climb across every sector simultaneously.

None of that stays contained to a bond desk. It bleeds into equities with a lag long enough that most traders don’t connect the dots until their own positions are already bleeding too. The real question isn’t whether the Fed cuts once or three times this year. It’s whether rates are settling into a structurally higher range than almost anybody priced in twelve months ago – and that single shift reaches into tech valuations, housing, and credit markets in ways that dwarf whatever happens at the next FOMC meeting.

We’ve Run This Playbook Before

History doesn’t repeat exactly, but it rhymes enough to matter. Through the late ‘60s and most of the ‘70s, policymakers kept telling markets inflation pressure would fade on its own. Bond investors didn’t buy it then either, and they kept demanding higher yields to compensate for risk they didn’t believe was actually handled. Inflation eventually proved them right.

Although today’s setup isn’t identical – stronger economy, more credible Fed, deeper markets – the mechanism hasn’t changed an inch. Bond investors still care about whether the money they get back is still worth something. When that confidence cracks, yields go up and it doesn’t matter how convincingly the people in charge insist otherwise.

Pay Attention Now

Stocks like NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) dominate the news cycle because they move fast and make for good headlines. On the flip side, bonds move slowly, then all at once, and by the time everyone notices, the damage is already done. A rising 10-Year works its way into your mortgage, your company’s capital plans, your retirement account, and the multiple Wall Street pays for your stocks, whether you’re watching for it or not.

Maybe inflation keeps cooling. Maybe Washington gets its deficit under control. Maybe the market just absorbs the issuance without blinking. None of that is priced in right now. And that gap, between the comfortable story the Fed keeps telling and the price bond investors are actually demanding, is one of the more important disagreements in markets today. When trillions of dollars start pricing a different future than the one policymakers keep selling, everyone should pay attention.