5 Stocks Gaining Momentum for Second Half of 2026

The AI boom is entering its next phase — and guidance is starting to shift.

While mega-cap tech stalls, a new group of Nasdaq stocks is gaining momentum across AI, biotech, semiconductors, and cloud infrastructure.

We identified 5 companies showing strong growth signals and breakout potential heading into the second half of 2026.

Inside the free report:
• One AI stock analysts see climbing another 31%
• One GLP-1 biotech with 145% upside potential
• One cloud platform benefiting from surging AI demand

Wall Street is only beginning to notice these names so early investors may benefit most.

👉 Discover 5 Nasdaq stocks showing the strongest momentum heading into the second half of 2026.

☕️ GM Munchers! My wife changed a light fixture yesterday with zero help and zero YouTube tutorials. I need this market to turn around fast, because right now she is the only person in this house generating value.

On today’s menu:

• 📉 China Just Broke The Chip Trade

• 🚀 SpaceX Is Crashing Faster Than Facebook Did

• 🍳 Cracker Barrel Fires The CEO

• 💾 Sandisk Just Gave Back Half Its Value

• 🤑 Berkshire Now Holds $397 Billion In Cash

Yesterday’s numbers:

BREAKING NEWS

📉 China Just Broke The Chip Trade

My wife told me yesterday we're having dinner with her parents this week. I thought that was the worst news my Monday could bring. Then Shanghai dropped a bombshell and put things in perspective.

Here's what happened. A Chinese company backed by its government started building its own chip-making machines. These machines are called DUV lithography machines, and they print the tiny circuits inside every computer chip. Until now, only a few Western companies knew how to make them. One Dutch company, ASML, sold almost all of them. So when China said it could build its own, those stocks dropped fast and hard.

• 📉 The Chip Carnage: ASML dropped over 8%, Nvidia fell 5%, and memory makers like Micron and SK Hynix got hit even harder. Nobody did anything wrong. The market just decided these lofty valuations need a haircut if there’s going to be a new Chinese competitor.

• 🔓 Why It Matters: For years the US strategy was to choke off China's chip supply through export bans. If China can now build this gear itself, those restrictions start to look a lot less powerful.

• ⚙️ The Catch: The Chinese machines reportedly still trail ASML on quality and reliability, and moving from a handful of units to real factory use can take years. For now, this is a warning shot, not a checkmate.

• Special Report: Trump’s emergency dollar reset (from Porter & Co)

The timing was almost cruel. Just hours earlier, the sector was flying on a report that Nvidia is in talks to backstop $250 billion in financing for an OpenAI data center. The market went from pure AI euphoria to China panic before lunch.

Two other things worth your attention. First, the Iran situation got murky again. Markets opened calm on hopes of a truce, then Iran went on record saying it is not holding peace talks with the US, which muddied everything. Second, a quiet but wild data point. The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve just fell to 311.4 million barrels, its lowest level since March 1983, after months of emergency releases tied to the Iran conflict. The country's emergency oil cushion is thinner than it's been in over 40 years.

The Munch Take: Here's the question hiding underneath every chip and AI stock right now. What if all this innovation drives prices down instead of up? It's hard to picture every household happily paying $100 a month for an AI assistant when the technology gets cheaper and more competitive by the quarter. China building its own chip machines is that exact fear in real life, more supply, more competition, lower prices. We think the long-run story here is deflation, not endless pricing power, and that's the puzzle the market keeps poking at.

🚀 SpaceX Is Crashing Faster Than Facebook Did

SpaceX ($SPCX) hit the lowest price in its short history yesterday, touching about $108 before bouncing slightly. The stock has now finished red in 13 of its last 16 days and sits down roughly 51% from its $225.64 peak just six weeks ago. Elon Musk, briefly the world's first trillionaire, has watched hundreds of billions evaporate along the way.

The comparison making the rounds is Facebook in 2012. Meta went public at $38, then sank to around $17.55 within months, a drop of about 54%. Investors called it a disaster. Today Meta trades near $600 and had you bought near the IPO and held, you’d be very rich today. So, is the same thing going to happen with SpaceX? Is this an opportunity of a lifetime?

🐂 The Bull Case:

• 🛰️ Starlink is a real, profitable business, and Flight 13 just landed its softest splashdown yet.

• 🎯 Morgan Stanley recently reiterated a Buy with a $300 target, and the analyst average sits around $235. That’s a long way from $110.

• 📡 Reusable rockets, if they really work, will give SpaceX a moat with no real competitor.

🐻 The Bear Case:

• 🔓 Over 900 million shares unlock on August 6, flooding the market with new supply.

• 💰 First-ever earnings land August 4, and critics call the valuation massively stretched. Even after this crash.

• 📉 Short sellers have already booked $15.5 billion betting against it.

• Free Report From Chaikin Analytics: Buy this stock by July 31

Why is it falling? Mostly the post-IPO hangover. New stocks with this much hype almost always overshoot, then give it back once the excitement fades and early investors can finally sell. Polymarket now puts the odds of $SPCX dropping below $100 by end of August at about 55%.

The Munch Take: A rocket can nail a flawless landing while its stock does the exact opposite, because the launchpad and the trading floor answer to different physics. SpaceX the company had a great month. SpaceX the stock is having a brutal one. It all comes down to what that August unlock will do to shares. If you believe in Elon (and we do), there’s a genuine chance that 10 years from now, you’d sell a kidney to have a second chance at buying shares at $110. But we’re not pulling the trigger. We’re not interested in catching the bottom and we’ll wait to see what happens after August.

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STOCK OF THE DAY

💾 Sandisk Just Gave Back Half Its Value

The best-performing stock in the entire S&P 500 this year has a new title: one of the fastest fallers. Meet Sandisk ($SNDK), the memory chip darling we couldn't stop hearing about a few weeks ago. Yeah, not so much anymore.

The stock got hit hard again yesterday, falling about 12% and extending a brutal slide. It's now down roughly 47% from its June 22 record high of $2,354, wiping out something like $170 billion in market value in a single month. That's not a dip. That's half the company gone in about four weeks.

For long-time readers, this shouldn't be a total shock. When this stock was screaming to all-time highs, we told you memory chip names are deeply cyclical. They rip on the way up and they break on the way down, and the same math that makes them soar makes them crater.

Here's what actually triggered it. A Chinese memory company called ChangXin went public yesterday and jumped 466% on day one. That reminded everyone that cheap Chinese supply is coming for this exact market, right as investors were already itching to lock in gains after a monster run.

• 🎢 Cyclical by nature: Memory prices boom and bust. When the market decided AI memory demand may have peaked, the highest-flying names fell the hardest.

• 💰 Profit-taking is real: After a 600% year, plenty of holders simply cashed out. That alone can snowball into a double-digit drop.

• 📅 Earnings loom: Sandisk reports August 5, and people are trimming risk before a number that could swing the stock violently either way.

• Free Report: Your Temporary Download Link Is Expiring (from ProfitsRun)

🐂 The Bull Case:

• 🏭 The business is genuinely strong. Recent quarters crushed guidance, driven by real AI-related demand for storage.

• 📈 Wall Street is still bullish. Citi has a $2,500 target and Evercore went as high as $3,100, both massively above where it trades now.

• 🔒 Management has shifted toward long-term supply contracts, which could make the earnings less boom-and-bust than the sector's history suggests.

🐻 The Bear Case:

• 🇨🇳 Chinese competition is arriving fast, and cheap new supply is the exact thing that ends memory up-cycles.

• ⚙️ The whole sector may have pulled demand forward, which would make the back half of 2026 softer than hoped.

• 📉 A stock priced for perfection has a long way to fall before it finds a floor, and it's still searching for one.

• Special Report: Here’s the stock symbol I’ve promised (from Stansberry Research)

The Munch Take: We don't make explicit buy calls, but we'll give you our honest read. The thing to understand about memory stocks is that the business being excellent and the stock being a good buy are two completely different questions. Sandisk the company is firing on all cylinders. Sandisk the stock is a cyclical rocket that already had its launch. Buying a memory name after a 600% run, right as Chinese supply floods in and earnings loom, is the kind of trade that feels smart because it "used to be higher" and ends in tears. Cheaper is not the same as cheap. We'd rather watch this one prove it has a floor than try to catch it mid-fall. None of that is financial advice. It's just how we're thinking about it, and we've been around long enough to know the up-cycle always ends louder than anyone expects.

MARKET OVERVIEW

🍿 Tasty Movers & Shakers

🍳 $CBRL Cracker Barrel slipped 2.38% after CEO Julie Masino stepped down. Her three-year turnaround tried to modernize the place and ended up annoying the regulars who liked it exactly the way it was. Turns out you mess with the biscuits at your own risk.

🥩 $TSN Tyson Foods jumped 5.67% and $JBS JBS ripped 10.34% after the US moved to resume cattle imports from Mexico. More cattle coming across the border means cheaper livestock, and cheaper livestock means fatter margins for the folks turning cows into dinner.

💊 $LEGN Legend Biotech got hit, falling 13.28%, after its CEO left abruptly. Nothing spooks a biotech stock quite like the person in charge heading for the door with no warning.

🚙 $RIVN Rivian added 4.04% after a Piper Sandler upgrade, driven by stronger delivery expectations and optimism about the upcoming R2 SUV. The R2 is the cheaper model that's supposed to prove Rivian can sell to regular people, not just early adopters. We’ll see.

🛰️ $RKLB Rocket Lab climbed 4.74% after landing a $266 million contract with the US Space Force. While the big rocket names get the headlines, Rocket Lab keeps quietly stacking government contracts.

TRADING SUCCESS

🤑 Tuesday Motivation

🚀 Pre-Market Fuel

1. 😏 9 stocks tied to AI’s physical backbone (Ad)

2. 🤑 Berkshire now holds $397 billion in cash.

3. 😬 Global bond yields are screaming.

4. 🍎 Apple is now the largest company in the world (again).

🍪 Munchy Memes

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