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.
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.
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.
China’s AI disruptor DeepSeek is preparing to introduce a new model. Reuters had initially reported that DeepSeek would launch its next‑generation model “V4,” focused on coding, in mid‑February 2026. Rumors now peg the expected release window as “Q1–Q2 2026.” The mid‑February window has passed but context‑window changes and internal benchmark leaks signal that V4 is close. And it will be a BIG DEAL for AI competitors AND ai chipmakers such as Nvidia (NVDA). A big enough deal that the V4 release will move the entire tech sector and quite probably the stock market as a whole.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) reported that January sales grew at their fastest clip in months. The contract chipmaker for Nvidia, Apple, and virtually every AI company reported a 37% rise in January revenue to $12.7 billion, above the 30% revenue growth the company projects for the full year. Those results confirm the company’s decision to budget as much as $56 billion in capital spending this year, which would be up 25% from 2025. The ADRs rose 1.83% today, Tuesday, February 10, to close at $361.91. For investors, the question is what next. The Wall Street consensus target is $392–410, implying a low‑ to mid‑teens upside from the current price. Is that enough reason to hold onto the shares? Is there a reason to buy even more?
Alphabet/Google (G00G) borrowed another $20 billion in its biggest ever U.S. dollar bond sale on Monday. And that’s just the beginning. The company is also planning debut deals in Switzerland and the UK. Including the sale of 100-year bonds.
Drum role, please: That would be the the first time a tech company has tried a 100-year offering since the Dotcom boom of the late 1990s. (Remember how that ended?) The big borrowing spree comes just days after tech companies from Meta Platforms (META) to Amazon.com (AMZN) said they were ramping up capital spending to build out infrastructure for AI. Those capital spending plans sent AI sector stocks into a steep decline on fears that AI companies would not be able to generate the cash flow needed to fund these capital spending plans. But that was sooo last week.
A Next Big Thing doesn’t need to start with a blank slate. Yes, it can be a whole new industry or sector–as is true with quantum computing or nuclear fusion. But it doesn’t have to be. Artificial intelligence, for example may look like it came out of nowhere but here were precursor companies and technologies such as neural network computation. And sometimes an existing sector can get a big jolt that serves to accelerate grow to such a degree that it makes it see like the sector came out of nowhere. And where the acceleration to growth is big enough so that it reorders the ranks of the companies that had been dominating the sector. Right now I think that’s a good description of what’s about to happen in the cyber security sector. Thanks to AI and the coming emergence of quantum computing we’re about to see a huge surge in growth for the companies in the sector.
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.
No slowdown on plans for AI capital spending in earnings results this past week from Big Tech. Alphabet/Google (GOOG) said it was increasing what it planned to spend on A.I. data center projects this year by $6 billion, after spending nearly $64 billion over the past nine months. Microsoft (MSFT) said it had spent $35 billion in its latest quarter, $5 billion more than it had told investors to expect just a few months ago.
Amazon (AMZN) said it would be “very aggressive” in adding more data centers and would spend $125 billion this year-— and even more next year. Meta Platforms (META) raised its spending forecast to at least $70 billion by the end of the year, which would be nearly double what it spent last year. The stock market reaction wasn’t unalloyed joy. Investors seemed generally positive on spending plans from Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon. And skeptical of Meta’s strategy and spending.
For the coming fiscal year, big tech’s total capital expenditure on AI is slated to balloon, leaving the total for 2024 in the dust. In total, the four tech companies will spend more than $400 billion on capex in the coming year, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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.
Walmart warned Thursday that price increases look certain–possibly within weeks–even after President Donald Trump announced a deal to reduce tariffs on Chinese exports to “just” 30%.
“We’re positioned to manage the cost pressure from tariffs as well or better than anyone, but even at the reduced levels, the higher tariffs will result in higher prices,” Walmart chief executive Doug McMillon said
