The iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX), which stacks the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) has moved into Bear market territory with a drop of more than 20% from its June 22 high. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is marginally short of the 29% drop that defines a Bear market. The pain was by no means equally distributed.
I sold Nvidia (NVDA) out go my long-term 50 Stocks Portfolio on March 18 at a closing price of $180.40 My thinking then was that after a huge run Nvidia’s share had moved to an excessively optomistic valuation and it was time to give the shares a rest with expectations that the shares would correct and offer a lower rick re-entry price.
Turns out I was a “bit” early. Nvidia continued to climb until it hit an all-time high of $235.47. The shares closed at $196.93 on July 7. Now, though, I see the rebuying opportunity I was expecting. After losing roughly $1 trillion in market value in less than two months, Nvidia Corp.’s stock is the cheapest it’s been since before the AI boom kicked off and sent the shares into the stratosphere.
Amazon (AMZN) has become the latest company to sell bonds to fund its AI ambitions. The company is looking to raise at least $25 billion from a U.S. dollar bond sale.
The deal would also boost total AI-related bond sales this year to about $335 billion globally, or more than twice the levels seen in 2025, according to Bloomberg data.
Microsoft (MSFT) has abandoned plans to lease roughly $3 billion in cloud computing infrastructure from Oracle (ORCL). The collapse of the multi-year deal highlights how AI titans are increasingly forced to negotiate massive infrastructure-sharing agreements win an effort to work around bottlenecks in compute capacity and GPU chip supply.
And while one rain trop doesn’t make a hurricane, the collapse of this deal–and the vagueness of company explanations–are sure to focus even more attention on growth projections for AI companies.
Last year, America’s crop farmers lost $34.6 billion, and farm bankruptcies surged to numbers not seen since 2020, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. This year, 70% of farmers surveyed claim they cannot afford all the fertilizers they need. Fuel costs continue to rise as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. Prices for some fertilizers are up 47% year over year. Meanwhile, farm exports to China, Canada, and other countries have taken a huge hit from U.S. tariff policy. Ninety-four percent of farmers reported that their financial situation has “worsened or remained the same” since last year. Fifteen thousand farms closed in 2025.
Bankruptcies were up 55% in 2024, 46% in 2025 and 70% for 2026 by May.
Artificial intelligence infrastructure spending is poised to become the dominant force behind S&P 500 earnings growth over the next two years, according to new analysis from Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs projects that beneficiaries of AI infrastructure investment will account for roughly half of S&P 500 earnings per share growth in both 2026 and 2027. That’s two years–for the math challenged.
There’s an old business joke–its origin may stretch back to 1833–that has a company claim that it loses money on every sale but makes it up on volume. I swear I remember it as a kid as part of a radio ad campaign for a clothing store in New Jersey. And now, it seems to be literally true for copper miners Southern Copper (SCCO) and Vale (VALE). For these companies surging prices of byproducts of mining copper–like gold and silver–have turned the cost of producing copper negative.
This week brings a huge earnings test for AAPL, AMZN, GOOG, META and MSFT. I’m going to sell Microsoft out of my 12-18 month Jubak Picks Portfolio on Monday, April 27, ahead of the earnings report. That position is up 319% since I initiated it on June 14., 2018. I am keeping Microsoft in my long-term 50 Stocks Portfolio. That position is up 40% since I initiated it on January 18, 2022.
I already own shares of Cheniere Energy (LNG) in my Jubak Picks Portfolio and my Volatility Portfolio. I will add another position in my 50 Stocks Portfolio on on Monday, March 23.
When the CEO extends the company’s $500 billion revenue projection for 2026 by adding another $500 billion for 2027–we’re talking $1 trillion in revenue here, folks–and the stock barely budges, I think we’re looking at a stock in need of a valuation reset. That’s exactly what happened to shares of Nvidia (NVDA) yesterday and today, March 16 and 17.And it’s why I’m selling Nvida out of my 50 Stocks Portfolio tomorrow, March 18. I expect I’ll be back into Nvidia shares when the valuation is less stretched–either because of a pull back in the shares or because projected revenues have turned into booked earnings (or some of each.) I’ve done this rotation in and out of Nvidia once before, selling in late 2023 and then rebuying in December 2023 for a 290% gain as of the close on March 17, 2026. Nvidia shares predawn 1.75% for 2026 as of the close on March 16.
Journey back with me to the heady days of 1999 when another technology boom pushed stocks to record highs on the promise of revolutionizing everything. Why is this exercise important?Because it’s a real life example of the work on the role of monopolies in our economy by economists like Joan Robinson and Paul Sweezy. Their work begins with the extreme excess returns that companies with effective monopoly power generate–and points to the important role that monopolies play in the business cycle of boom and bust. And because monopoly economics are critical to deciding if the current generation of AI stocks are really going to be worth what investors now say they are.
Nvidia (NVDA) shares rose 3% in after-hours trading on Wednesday after the company reported fiscal fourth-quarter results and guidance that topped Wall Street’s forecasts by a wide margin.
