Top Names, 7/30/2026
A brief market comment, followed by a Top Names performance update, and this week's Top Ten Names.
A Violent Rebound
Thursday’s 2.8% Nasdaq rally interrupted the worst stretch of the current momentum unwind. Microsoft had its best session since 2008 after its results showed that AI spending was translating into cloud growth and operating profit; semiconductors and other AI-stack names recovered part of Wednesday’s losses.
The rally came despite renewed U.S.–Iran missile exchanges and worsening shipping disruptions around both the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, reminders that geopolitical and energy risks remain active.
Amazon added another confirmation after the close. AWS revenue rose 37% year over year—its fastest growth in 18 quarters—and both its AI and chips businesses passed $25 billion annual revenue run rates. The AI buildout remains on track, and its largest customers are still spending to expand it.
A Sound Thesis, Fragile Financing
The same week also showed how leverage and liquidity can overwhelm a sound long-term thesis. Situational Awareness, the roughly $20 billion AI-focused hedge fund, sold its public-equity portfolio to Citadel after heavy losses and a reported effort to raise fresh capital.
We compared its path with a Portfolio Armor portfolio created on June 5th that held some of the same AI-stack names, but hedged every position against a decline greater than the investor’s 20% threshold. At Wednesday’s low, those securities were down 24.3% as an unhedged basket; the hedged portfolio was down 9.38%. The lesson is to keep exposure to powerful themes while defining the downside in advance.
We examine that comparison in more detail in here:
What Our Rankings Are Saying
Nine of this week’s top ten names have direct exposure to semiconductors, memory, chip testing, optical networking, AI compute, or robotics. Even after the massacre, our system’s highest estimated six-month returns remain concentrated in the physical AI buildout and adjacent automation.
That concentration can produce outsized gains when the theme leads and sharp drawdowns when it unwinds. The basic strategy below manages that risk with equal position sizing and trailing stops. Investors who want each position hedged against a decline greater than their chosen six-month threshold can use the Hedged Portfolio Method. The rankings highlight what to own; position sizing, stops, or options hedges can limit your risk.
Our Basic Strategy
Our basic strategy is to buy equal dollar amounts of the Portfolio Armor web app’s top ten names, put trailing stops of ~20% or more on them, and replace them with names from the current week’s top ten when we get stopped out of a position—there are no options involved in this strategy.
Another Use For Our Top Names
We also use our top names in options trades, such as this one we exited earlier this month:
4-leg hybrid combo on Targa Resources (TRGP -0.22%↓). Entered at a net debit of $2.45 on 4/20/2026; exited the July 17, 2026 $210/$200 put spread at a net debit of $0.20 on 5/14/2026; then sold the September $270 / July $280 call calendar for a net credit of $18.25 on 7/15/2026. Profit: 637% on net debit (125% on max risk). Signal: PA Top Names.
A Top Names Performance Update
Before we get to this week’s top ten names, let’s look at the final, 6-month performance of our top ten names from January 29th.
Over the next 6 months, our top ten names from January 29th, 2026 returned -18.18%, versus +5.1% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY 0.23%↑).
So far, we have 6-month returns for 162 weekly top names cohorts since we started this Substack at the end of December, 2022.
[Skipping ahead so this post doesn’t exceed email length—you can see the top names returns for every week here]
And as you can see above, our top names have averaged returns of 17.94% over the next six months, versus SPY’s average of 9.64%. You can see an interactive version of the table above here, where you can click on each date and see a chart showing each of the holdings that week.
This Week’s Top Names
Below are Portfolio Armor’s current top ten names as of Thursday’s close.
