Foldable phones may be the only part of the smartphone industry that will grow this year. The problem, though, is that foldables account for less than 2% of the handset market.
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.
Retail investors’ activity in the technology stocks known as the “Magnificent Seven” hit a four-year low in recent days after having been muted for months, according to Citigroup equity strategists. Retail traders were responsible for just 6% of total trading over the past five days through Friday, June 26, in the group that includes Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla., a team led by Stuart Kaiser wrote in a Sunday note. Volumes in these stocks over five-day periods frequently topped 20% of total trading in 2023 and 2024, and held mostly above 15% in 2025. The trend suggests conviction appears to be waning in a group that’s been a market favorite for years. Volume started to decline late last year and the drop persisted into 2026, Kaiser told Bloomberg in a Monday interview.
I think it’s an understatement to say that investors are looking for evidence that Apple (AAPL) will be able to catch up in AI.
This Monday will go a long way to giving investors an answer as the company introduces a revamped Siri at its Worldwide Developers Conference.
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.
Mark Gurman reports on Bloomerg that Apple (AAPL) has delayed its long-planned upgrade to the Siri virtual assistant again. Apple has run into snags during testing in recent weeks, potentially pushing back the release of several highly anticipated functions. After planning to include the new capabilities in iOS 26.4–an operating system update slated for March–Apple is now working to spread them out over future versions. That would mean postponing some features until at least iOS 26.5, due in May, and iOS 27, which comes out in September. Apple first announced plans for the revamped Siri in June 2024.
A week of Big Tech earnings reports will confirm or reverse what sure looks like a sector rotation away from tech shares and into metal and mining company stocks.
Prices for memory chips are forecast to soar in 2026. but what just as bad/even worse it looks like chip customers are looking at serious supply shortages during the year.
Higher prices and supply shortages could be enough to put earnings at risk at some high multiple cloud and AI companies.
I expect more volatility as forth quarter earnings season picks up speed. Next week, despite the short week created by Monday’s Martin Luther King holiday, 157 companies are scheduled to report earnings with highlights that include Netflix (NFLX) on Tuesday; and General Electric (GE),Procter & Gamble (PG), and Intel (INTC) on Thursday.
In his decision of the remedies in one of Alphabet’s (GOOG) anti-trust cases, Judge Amit Mehta ruled late Tuesday, September 2, that Alphabet must open up competition in online search by sharing more data with competitors, and said that the company could not enter exclusive contracts for search. But Mehta ruled that Alphabet did not have to divest its Chrome the browser, the world’s top browser by market share. Today’s decision followed Mehta’s ruling last year that Alphabet held an illegal monopoly in online search and search advertising. Shares in Alphabet rose after hours, gaining 5.7%.
Going forward, I’m not all that interested in investing in the “old” Magnificent Seven. But I am interested in investing in a new “enhanced” Magnificent Seven that builds on and increases the exposure of these stocks to the market’s AI enthusiasm.
Apple (AAPL) is moving away from a strict reliance on in-house models for Siri and is actively exploring partnerships with third-party AI providers like OpenAI (ChatGPT) and Anthropic (Claude). Apple had focused on
developing proprietary AI technology for its Siri digital assistant.
