Sometimes the market scares investors out, and sometimes it wears investors out, and for most of the past 10 months, it’s been the latter. It turns out all of the gains came in the relatively brief April-May period, with the other eight-plus months bringing sideways (S&P 500) to down (Nasdaq and growth stocks) action.
It’s true: if you owned the market from November of last year through March, and then again from June through today, you would have lost 3.5% or so in the S&P 500, and a bigger 12% in the Nasdaq. The same pattern holds for most growth-y funds and indexes, including the Momentum Fund (MTUM, down 7.7%), the Nasdaq 100 equal-weight (down 4.5%) and the Nasdaq Junior 100 (QQQJ, down 1.8%) during those months.
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Still, that’s the past, and with the odds still solidly in favor of the next big move being up (long-term trend is clearly up, the rare April-May strength bodes well, and defensive stocks are not in favor—see the chart of the consumer staples below), the question is what clues will tell us when the next move gets going.
There are some top-down measures I’m monitoring—the 15-day moving average of new highs on the S&P 500 (shown below) and NYSE are near 16-month lows, which is obviously pretty low, so a meaningful upturn from here would tell you more stocks are finally letting loose on the upside.
But I’m watching something more meaningful: Resilient AI infrastructure stocks, of which there aren’t all that many, but a few are setting up and beginning to perk up. If it continues, not only could it provide a buying opportunity or two, but it could also tell us that growthier, risk-on names are coming back in favor. Here are three names to watch:
3 AI Infrastructure Stocks to Watch Now
Dell (DELL) has looked like the leader in the AI space for many weeks, and its positive reaction to earnings (actually breaking out to new highs) is obviously a good sign—it’s one of the few stocks in the entire market that’s kissed new high ground of late. The firm is the leader in AI servers and related full-stack systems, and while many numbers here are ridiculous, the biggest one is that earnings estimates for 2026 were around $13 per share in May—but today stand near $26 as results and bookings have gone through the roof.
Then there’s Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which is a leading player in both the core GPU expansion (for AI training) and now CPUs (which are seeing an avalanche of demand as agentic AI takes off), and it has some of the best growth figures (both actual and estimates) of any firm out there. Shares had a huge, huge run in April-May, and while tedious, the recent base-building effort has been reasonable—and now AMD is pushing back above some near-term resistance. It’s on my watch list.
Last but not least is Arista Networks (ANET), the networking player that wasn’t one of the big AI winners of the past couple of years despite accelerating growth trends—but now that investor perception is improving (more seem to be convinced that Ethernet, where Arista leads, is winning big share vs. other standards for big AI deployments), ANET has been holding well while the market futzes around. Analysts see earnings up 27% next year, which is likely conservative.
All three are worth watching—partially as a “tell” for the growth side of the market, but also as potential entries if and when the bulls retake control.
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