Short lessons on momentum trading, every day.

Every Market Cycle Has a “Big Stock.” But the Real Clue Is Usually the Industry Group Behind It.

The market’s biggest winners rarely emerge alone. They are usually part of an industry group benefiting from a powerful new fundamental trend.

2023: AI Compute and Semiconductors

This marked the beginning of a new bull market and the emergence of the generative AI theme.

Big leaders:

• $NVDA | Nvidia

• $SMCI | Super Micro Computer

NVDA became the face of the cycle, but the leadership was much broader. Chips, servers, networking equipment, and the entire data-center buildout were beginning to move.

2024: AI Software, Data Platforms, and Power

Leadership expanded from companies building the AI infrastructure to those finding ways to monetize and support it.

Big leaders:

• $PLTR | Palantir

• $APP | AppLovin

AI adoption spread into software, data platforms, advertising optimization, networking, and power generation. The theme was evolving, but the underlying driver remained the same.

2025: Memory, Storage, and the AI Data Stack

The market’s attention shifted toward the next major bottleneck. AI systems required enormous amounts of high-performance memory, flash storage, and data-center capacity.

Big leaders:

• $SNDK | SanDisk

• $WDC | Western Digital

• $STX | Seagate Technology

• $MU | Micron Technology

These became some of the market’s biggest winners as demand for AI memory and storage accelerated.

2026: The Memory Supercycle Continues

Leadership continued into 2026 and semiconductors remerged as a leading group rather than transitioning into an entirely new theme.

Leaders:

• $SNDK | SanDisk

• $MU | Micron Technology

• $STX | Seagate Technology

• $WDC | Western Digital

But don’t overlook what happened outside the dominant AI theme.

Metals and mining also developed into a major winning group during this bull market period 2024-2026. The market can have one dominant secular story while still producing powerful leadership in completely different areas.

The next monster winner probably won’t be random.

It will likely emerge from a strengthening industry group with accelerating earnings and sales, increasing institutional sponsorship, elite Relative Strength, and a chart that refuses to break.

2023: AI compute and semiconductors

2024: AI software, data platforms, and power

2025–2026: AI memory, storage, semis

Meanwhile, metals and mining proved that major leadership can still emerge outside the market’s primary theme.

What industry group do you think becomes the next true market leader for 2026–2027?

Is PLTR Making a Comeback?

PLTR has been one of the great leaders of this bull market.

From 2023 through 2025, the stock gained more than 2,000%.

But since the fall of 2025, price started telling a different story.

PLTR eventually broke below both the 50-day and 200-day moving averages earlier this year. The earnings story remained strong, but when price breaks down, price is what we follow.

Now things are getting interesting again.

PLTR is back above its key moving averages, pushing back toward its highs, and forward estimates suggest earnings and sales growth may be accelerating again.

That combination has my attention.

The question now is whether PLTR can reestablish itself as a true market leader.

Definitely a name to watch.

PLTR Back From the Dead

PLTR is up nearly 30% after earnings, exploding higher on massive volume.

Quarterly earnings increased 215%, sales grew 93%, and the stock reclaimed its 50-day and 200-day moving averages in a single session.

After months of weakness and a steep decline from its highs, PLTR just came back to life.

Never Trust the Story. Trust the Price.

Years ago, I heard both David Ryan and Mark Minervini make a point that has stuck with me ever since.

Yes, they both place heavy emphasis on CANSLIM-style fundamentals

Big earnings

Big sales growth

Strong margins and ROE

But they also emphasized one rule that overrides everything else:

Never trust the story. Never trust the fundamental numbers unless they are confirmed by price action.

What does that mean in practice?

It means:

If the chart looks weak

If price is not acting right

If the stock is not behaving like a true leader

Then none of the rest matters.

Not the CEO narrative

Not the analyst upgrades

Not the media hype

Not even the strongest earnings report

There is no trade.

This is coming from two U.S. Investing Champions who built their careers on performance, not opinions.

And they are not alone.

You will hear this same principle repeated by many of the most successful traders:

Price is the final judge.

Fundamentals may tell you what should happen

The story may tell you what could happen

But price tells you what is actually happening

And in this game, that is all that matters.

If price and volume do not confirm the fundamentals and story, the market is telling you something is off.

Listen to it.

Need an example….. look at PLTR and CRDO.

Just Like Stocks Follow the Market, They Follow Their Industry Group

When an industry group breaks down, it tends to drag everything with it, just like when the market breaks down.

When the market takes a hit, most stocks go with it, the same thing happens at the industry group level.

When an industry group gets hit hard, it usually brings down even the best names.

This is something a lot of traders underestimate.

A perfect example right now is PLTR and the broader computer software group.

PLTR is a high quality company with strong fundamentals and long term potential. It was an amazing stock to be in during the uptrend, but once the software group started to lose relative strength and roll over, PLTR followed. Sometimes its the big name stock that brings down the industry group and sometimes its the group bringing down the stock. Regardless, you should know this relationship.

PLTR Is a Great Company. Right Now It Is Not a Great Stock.

Palantir Technologies was an amazing stock to be in. The trend was strong, relative strength was working, and price rewarded staying with it.

But for now, price has confirmed it is not a stock to be in.

This is a great real-time example of why fundamentals alone do not matter if price and trend are not aligned.

Despite strong long-term fundamentals, the stock is:

• Below the 200 day moving average

• Printing lower highs and lower lows

That is no longer a stage 2 uptrend. That is a downtrend.

When price breaks below the 200 day and cannot reclaim it, that is the market voting. It is telling you that demand has dried up, regardless of how good the story looks on paper.

This is exactly why I will never buy a stock just because the fundamentals look great while price looks bad.

Great fundamentals do not stop drawdowns. Great fundamentals do not override trends. Price always leads.

PLTR may absolutely be a great stock again in the future. In fact, when a name with strong fundamentals starts to repair and regain trend, it often becomes even more powerful on the next run.

But until price confirms that change, there is no point in being involved.