Quick Read
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Intel (INTC) has surged 483% over the past year and 217% in 2026, making it a candidate for trimming; Microsoft (MSFT) has lagged peers and trades near 24% below its high.
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The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and Microsoft wasn’t one of them. Get them here FREE.
The great Trump bull market continues despite all the things that had investors running for the hills just over one month ago. The war in Iran isn’t quite yet over, and there are some who think the Strait of Hormuz could stay closed for quite a while longer. Either way, AI is in the driver’s seat, and it seems like the stock market is more fearful of missing out on the next innings of the AI revolution than any of the significant risks posed by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Any way you look at it, the market’s latest upward spike seems to speak to the resilience in the face of unexpected geopolitical surprises. Of course, there was that initial hit (a correction), but if you stayed the course as an investor, you rode one of the steepest recovery bounces in recent memory. In many ways, it felt like the bounce back from the COVID crash back in 2020.
The resilient market’s heating up quite quickly, but that alone is no reason to sell the S&P
Either way, stocks are spiking, and the big question is whether the post-plunge spike is going to overshoot as it did in 2021 before the great bear market of 2022. While higher energy prices from the blockage in the Strait of Hormuz could increase the odds of a Fed rate hike, it’s really hard to tell what the future holds as a new Fed chair, Kevin Walsh, looks to take his seat.
The pundits would argue that Walsh leans just a bit more towards the hawkish side, but that’s no reason to brace for rapid-fire rate hikes. In any case, after Friday’s good jobs report and inflationary pressures, the case for hikes might not be all too far off. Of course, the odds suggest a pause is the likeliest course of action for the time being.
The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and Microsoft wasn’t one of them. Get them here FREE.
While it’s impossible to tell what comes next with markets (they’ve been incredibly unpredictable almost every step of the way), I do think that focusing on relative value could make a lot of sense. The markets are soaring, but not everything is participating in the upside gains.
Microsoft has lagged, Intel has led. Is there a rotation case here?
Arguably, the mega-caps are doing more than their fair share, and with the red-hot semis going into overdrive (they might be getting a bit bubbly), I do think that selling a parabolic spike in a name like Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), up 483% in the past full year and 217% in 2026, might make sense as one seeks to rotate into neglected value.
