Top Names, 8/6/2026
A brief market comment, followed by a Top Names performance update, and this week's Top Ten Names.
The Rankings And Technicals Are Starting To Align Again
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq slipped 0.2% and 0.1%, respectively, on Thursday, but both remained solidly higher for the week. Brent crude rose 3.8%, and the 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 4.67%, adding pressure to growth stocks already contending with sharp post-earnings reactions.
This week’s Top Names lean decisively toward the AI stack. The first six names span compute, cloud observability, memory, data-center connectivity and storage. Five of those six have potential returns of at least 80%. The remaining four add exposure to power, genomics and managed care.
The timing is especially interesting. During much of July’s momentum correction, chip and memory names kept appearing in our Top Names, but most failed the technical screens we use for options entries. That kept us from opening new trades on them after the first week of July.
Now the rankings and technicals are beginning to align again. This week’s #1 name returned to the top after reporting strong earnings, pulling back and clearing our technical screens when we reviewed it Wednesday night. Another post-earnings AI infrastructure name ranks fifth, although Thursday’s sharp decline means its technical picture needs fresh confirmation.
Strong Results, Lower Prices
That tension fits the argument we made earlier this week in the AI buildout keeps accelerating. Demand for AI compute, memory, storage, optics and power continues to grow, while the stocks supplying those bottlenecks have become far more volatile.
Portfolio Armor’s ranking estimates potential returns over the next six months. Lower share prices can improve those estimates, all else equal. Our separate technical screens help determine whether the opportunity is ready for an options trade or still needs time to stabilize.
The next confirmation we want is stabilization among the post-earnings leaders. When six-month potential returns, technical strength and attractive option pricing line up, we’ll add exposure. Until then, the rankings can identify the opportunity without forcing the timing.
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 week:
4-leg combo on ATI (ATI 0.00%↑). Entered for a $1.50 net debit on 3/24/2026; exited the May 15th, 2026 $130–$125 put spread for a $0.20 net debit on 4/21/2026 and the October 16th, 2026 $175–$185 call spread for an $8.00 net credit on 8/6/2026. Profit: 420% on premium outlay (95% of max risk). 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 February 5th.
Over the next 6 months, our top ten names from January 29th, 2026 returned -16.41%, versus +13.66% for the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF (SPY 0.23%↑).
So far, we have 6-month returns for 163 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 17.73% over the next six months, versus SPY’s average of 9.66%. 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.
