Top Names, 7/9/2026
A brief market comment, followed by a Top Names performance update, and this week's Top Ten Names.
Round Trip
Last week’s Top Names post ended with momentum carnage in AI hardware. This week so far has compressed a full cycle of it into four sessions: a record close Monday, a global chip rout Tuesday, an oil spike Wednesday, and a semiconductor-led rebound Thursday. By Thursday’s close, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq had round-tripped back above Monday’s levels, with the Nasdaq up 1.3% on the day as chips staged a comeback.
Samsung Sold The News
Monday opened with SemiAnalysis floating another bearish AI-hardware note, this one claiming Nvidia‘s (NVDA 0.00%↑) Kyber architecture could slip by up to a year. Nvidia’s response: “Our roadmap is intact.” The market sided with Nvidia, and the Dow closed at a record above 53,000.
Then Samsung estimated a nearly 19-fold increase in Q2 operating profit—and chip stocks sold off around the world, with the KOSPI falling hard enough to trigger circuit breakers. When a record quarter gets sold that hard, the problem is expectations and positioning, not demand.
Oil Piled On
Wednesday brought a second stress test: attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. revoking Iran’s oil-sales waivers sent crude up more than 6%, with Brent back above $75. Energy and defensives caught a bid while the Nasdaq fell 1.2%. The market spent three weeks pricing the ceasefire as a peace; this week it repriced it as a ceasefire.
The Demand Data Went One Way
While the tape whipsawed, the evidence kept stacking up on the same side. Penguin Solutions (PENG 0.00%↑) reported record revenue, up 48%, raised guidance, and tied both directly to AI-driven demand for memory and infrastructure; the stock jumped more than 25%. TrendForce reported memory makers have notified customers of another round of Q3 contract-price hikes. And SK Hynix’s upcoming U.S. ADR offering was reportedly more than seven times oversubscribed. By Thursday, semis were leading the market again, with Micron (MU 0.00%↑) up 4.5% and oil falling back. We laid out the fuller case in this morning’s free post:
Where The System Is Leaning
Tonight’s top ten reads like a bill of materials for the AI buildout: optical networking, connectivity chips, the electronics manufacturers that assemble the hardware, and the power equipment that keeps it running, plus a defense-drone name. The system that’s nearly doubled the market’s return since we launched this Substack (more on that below) is leaning the same way we’ve been trading.
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% 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 last month:
4-leg combo on Lam Research (LRCX -1.25%↓). Entered at a net debit of $0.84 on 4/2/2026; exited the put spread at a net debit of $0.20 on 4/13/2026 and exited the call spread at a net credit of $8.00 on 6/15/2026. Profit: 829% on premium outlay (return on max risk: 119%). Signal: 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 8th.
Over the next 6 months, our top ten names from January 8th, 2026 returned +45.12%, versus +8.06% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY 0.23%↑).
So far, we have 6-month returns for 159 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 18.31% over the next six months, versus SPY’s average of 9.68%. 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.
