Familiar news from the Middle East... The latest action from tech stocks... Prepare for the next phase of the AI boom... A case study in memory... A rally underpinned by fundamentals...
It continues...
To start, we return to the broken record...
The ceasefire in the Middle East was once again fragile over the weekend, with Iranian drones attacking at least one ship transiting the Strait of Hormuz. But by this morning, we saw reports that negotiations will continue tomorrow on the 14 points in the U.S.-Iran "memorandum of understanding."
West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude futures are up more than 1% since the end of last week. But those prices are still drastically down from April's peak and remain near prewar levels.
Then there's the AI boom...
The other dominant story of this market year is continuing as well.
Forget about Big Tech taking on more debt than ever before to finance AI investments... and the "circular deals" that could go sideways if spending slows down. Just as it has for most of the past four-plus years, the AI boom is showing signs of resiliency.
Today, the tech sector of the S&P 500 Index was up 2.4%, and "communications" stocks – which include a lot of businesses with stakes in AI – were up close to 2%.
The VanEck Semiconductor Fund (SMH) gained more than 3%, and AI bellwether Nvidia (NVDA) was up more than 1%.
As Ten Stock Trader editor Greg Diamond pointed out to his subscribers Friday, Nvidia's 200-day moving average (200-DMA), a technical measure of a long-term trend, is "coming into play around $190. Can this level hold, allowing NVDA to reclaim its top spot within the sector?"
It's just one day, but today Nvidia bounced right off its 200-DMA.
For the month, we note that the Magnificent Seven stocks are down an average of more than 10%.
That's a garden-variety correction and the type of breather I (Corey McLaughlin) have written about expecting lately from these stocks. And this action, paired with market rotation, as we discussed last week, could be a sign of a bull run setting up for another leg higher.
The Roundhill Magnificent Seven Fund (MAGS) rose more than 3% today.
We may be getting into 'Phase 2' of the AI stock boom...
That's the take from Stansberry Research senior analyst Brett Eversole.
In the latest issue of True Wealth, Brett detailed his thesis and offered a brand-new recommendation to take advantage of a continued bull run for U.S. tech stocks that "has more room to run than most folks realize." As Brett wrote...
We've lived in "Phase 1" for years. That phase was all about building the infrastructure and models needed for the AI boom. Now, Phase 2 is underway... And it's all about selling.
Existing True Wealth subscribers and Stansberry Alliance members should read the full issue if you haven't already. Among the important points Brett pointed out is that...
As of late May, Anthropic reported a revenue run rate of $47 billion a year. To put that number into context, in January 2025, its revenue run rate was only about $1 billion. By the end of 2025, it had jumped to $9 billion.
That means in the first five months of 2026, the company has grown revenue more than 5 times... And since the beginning of 2025, revenue has exploded nearly 50 times higher.
That's unprecedented growth. But it's also worth remembering that the numbers themselves are getting large. At the estimated $47 billion in revenue, Anthropic has higher sales than Nike (NKE), Salesforce (CRM), and Netflix (NFLX).
The company's customers are also high-profile and high spenders... They include eight of the Fortune 10 companies. More than 1,000 businesses spend $1 million or more per year on Anthropic's products.
Obviously, the current growth rate will slow. But even so, within the next few years, Anthropic is on a path to generating several hundred billion dollars in annual revenue. And that's a clear shift in the AI boom.
Make no mistake... Phase 2 is here. We're still building like crazy. But now, we're selling like crazy, too.
These are real revenues. Anthropic's focus on businesses leads to the most durable kinds of sales, too. As long as businesses see efficiencies, they'll keep spending on the tools that get them there.
That leaves room for "Phase 3" to still unfold, too, with the sellers' customers seeing AI benefiting their businesses and industries as a whole. But that doesn't stop the whole AI ecosystem from growing. As Brett wrote...
Just because Phase 2 is beginning doesn't mean Phase 1 is over. The opposite is true... Phase 2 ensures that Phase 1 will continue.
It would be easy for spending on the build-out to slow down if AI wasn't delivering new revenue. No one's going to keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars if there isn't a return on the investment. But watching Anthropic scale at a blistering pace means the economic output is alive and well.
In a few ways, we're already seeing this dynamic play out...
A case study in memory...
The AI world includes the "hyperscalers," like Nvidia, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Amazon, Oracle, and others. They are the tech giants spending to invest in data-center infrastructure (like Nvidia's processors) to run the AI technology developed by the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic.
And then there's the "hidden" layers of the AI boom, for example. I'd throw energy needs for said data centers into this bucket, though that secret has come out. You could argue the same goes for "memory," a specific kind of need in the AI tech stack.
For AI to keep growing its footprint and for capital expenditures to see a payoff, all of the infrastructure needs not just the brains of the AI system, but also advanced memory chips. This is the so-called High Bandwidth Memory ("HBM") that can hold the datasets and AI models that the Nvidia chips and others need to access.
If data is the new oil, these memory chips are something like permanent oil tankers, or refineries.
HBM is made from stacks of chips containing up to 36 gigabytes of storage capacity with bandwidth of 1.2 terabytes per second.
Stansberry Alliance members who attended our annual Stansberry Research conference last year may recall Erica Saint Clair, an analyst who works with Dave Lashmet on Stansberry Venture Technology, presenting on the need for memory chips to fuel the AI boom... She recommended on our Alliance Day that subscribers buy shares of Micron Technology (MU).
If you've been following markets at all lately, you know Micron has gone "parabolic" as the need for memory in the AI ecosystem has become much clearer...
Erica recommended MU shares last October near $198 per share. Even after a slight pullback lately, the stock is trading around $1,100, a roughly 455% gain for conference attendees who followed her advice.
(On a related note, if you haven't grabbed your ticket to this year's conference yet – this year in September in Las Vegas, rather than our usual October – click here for more information. As usual, Alliance members have access to "Alliance Day" and exclusive stock picks from our team.)
Of course, for a seasoned investor, it's natural to wonder whether this run can continue...
As we wrote last week, AI mania is evident... and parabolic 400%-plus moves in less than a year like this typically don't resolve with a whimper. Micron is a stock that tends to see pullbacks. It very likely will again.
But this move still may have room to run higher in general. Despite the euphoric shape of its chart, fundamentals are underpinning the rally. As our Director of Research Matt Weinschenk wrote just last week...
Here's the part of the Micron story that makes this company stand out from most other AI plays...
The big AI model makers (OpenAI, Anthropic, and Alphabet) don't make money. The hyperscalers (Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon) make money by selling computing power, but they're investing those profits and more into big bets on the future of AI.
Every dollar they pour into AI infrastructure is a bet that AI revenue will eventually justify the massive spending. But that day isn't here yet.
Micron, however, is already making a real killing.
The company just reported nearly $42 billion in revenue... up from $24 billion in the prior quarter.
And margins have gone insane. Micron's gross margin hit 85% for the quarter... up from just 38% last year.
On top of that, net income rocketed to $28 billion... up from $1.9 billion in the same period last year.
So yes, Micron's price chart may look overheated – but these fundamentals are something you may never see again in an investing career.
Matt discussed the stock – and the AI boom – more in the most recent episode of our Top Stocks show on YouTube. Matt brought on Luke Lango from our corporate affiliate InvestorPlace for a great discussion...
The episode includes a close look at Micron, including thoughts about why professional money managers still see the stock as attractive, and also how much longer the powerful AI spending "race" fueling the boom may have to go.
As Luke said...
As long as Wall Street keeps rewarding these guys for spending more, then damn right, they're going to spend more. Why would you not? I'm spending more and I'm making more money because my stock is going up. So long as that dynamic persists, you're going to get more spending, and companies like Micron are going to benefit...
I worry about the long term – they can't all win. The [return on investment] only makes sense for all of them if they're all going to take over the global economy. But only maybe one or two of them are going to have a duopoly on the global economy. That's my view on it.
Click here to watch Matt's interview with Luke right now – for free. And if you don't already subscribe to our "Top Stocks" channel on YouTube, make sure you do that, too. We've got plenty more free videos coming from our editors, analysts, and friends.
New 52-week highs (as of 6/26/26): AbbVie (ABBV), Alpha Architect 1-3 Month Box Fund (BOXX), Dick's Sporting Goods (DKS), Healthpeak Properties (DOC), Equity Residential (EQR), Exelixis (EXEL), Hawthorn Bancshares (HWBK), iShares Biotechnology Fund (IBB), Eli Lilly (LLY), LXP Industrial Trust (LXP), Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Invesco High Yield Equity Dividend Achievers Fund (PEY), Roivant Sciences (ROIV), Travelers (TRV), Twist Bioscience (TWST), UnitedHealth (UNH), and State Street Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLV).
In the mailbag today, a note for Stansberry Innovations Report editor John Engel about subscribers' latest monthly issue and recommendation... Do you have a comment or question? As always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
"Hi John, I just finished the June 18th monthly SIR report and wanted to let you know this was the most interesting report you've written.
"It was super interesting to build the story around time shifting... I would have never in life considered it. So bravo for the story build up and the surprise recommendation." – Subscriber Kevin M.
All the best,
Corey McLaughlin
Baltimore, Maryland
June 29, 2026
