No Value Pick this week. There is, however, a featured post comparing two Quantum ETFs with the Nasdaq 100 at: https://therousehouse.net/investing-economics/qqq-qtum-wqtm/

Market Summary

The S&P 500 managed to gain 1.2% in a turbulent week following the 4th of July.

  • Monday opened the week positively — the Dow surpassed 53,000 for the first time, setting a new closing record as communications and financial stocks led the way
  • SpaceX (SPCX) joined the Nasdaq-100 on Monday — the addition triggered expected billions in fund inflows, though SpaceX itself fell 6.8% on its first day as an index member, dropping to a new low of $145.07
  • The Iran peace deal collapsed mid-week — Iran resumed attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps firing on tankers and striking its fourth tanker in a single day — this sent the S&P 500 down as oil surged 5.43%
  • Thursday staged a meaningful recovery — the index bounced back as markets stabilized after the initial Iran shock
  • Friday finished the week strong — the S&P 500 rose 0.42%, with Nvidia (NVDA) rising ~4% and Meta Platforms (META) jumping ~6% for its best weekly performance since early 2024

How Our Past Picks Fared

Our past picks lost 1.1% to the benchmark S&P 500. No single company or sector stood out in the decline, but 40 of our past picks failed to beat the S&P this week. Most of them are sensitive to interest rate fears, like Meritage Homes (MTH, -7.8%) and Lowe’s (LOW, -7.0%), or growth stocks like Netflix (NFLX, -5.5%) and Zscaler (ZS, -5.5%), and the renewal of hostilities in Iran had an outsized effect on them. Two of our recent picks picked up some of the slack:

📈 Dell Technologies (DELL) — UP 10.3%

  • The primary catalyst on Monday July 6th was Trump publicly urging Americans at a White House event to “go out and buy a Dell computer” — repeating a pattern that has now twice sent the stock sharply higher in 2026, with the stock surging as much as 9% intraday before closing up 4.4% on the day
  • Momentum continued through the week, with Dell’s pattern of trading higher when new headlines reinforce enthusiasm around its AI server backlog, revenue outlook, and enterprise positioning — with further gains of 3.3% Wednesday and 5.6% Thursday
  • Evercore ISI boosted its price target to $500 on Thursday, and Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy argued Dell’s rally is driven by AI server demand rather than political endorsements, noting “once they got attached to the AI trade, and they started selling a ton to the big neoclouds, that’s how this whole thing started”

📈 Meta Platforms (META) — UP 14.8%

  • The dominant catalyst was the announcement of Meta Compute, a new cloud infrastructure business that will sell AI computing power and models directly, putting META in the same conversation as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud — the market reaction was immediate, with headlines around the new AI cloud unit sending META shares up roughly 8–10% in a single session
  • In-house Iris AI chip production is slated to begin in September, with computing capacity targeted at 14 gigawatts next year — a separate catalyst that lifted the stock roughly 3.8% on the announcement
  • Friday delivered a final surge — SemiAnalysis published a report card on Meta’s AI strategy, concluding that “Meta is the only hyperscaler/neolab on track to be world-class at all three things needed to build a true frontier model: data, talent, and compute — and therefore has the best chance at catching up with Anthropic and OpenAI”
  • SemiAnalysis believes Meta could surpass Alphabet’s AI leadership within six months, driven by Zuckerberg’s aggressive investments in AI talent following the rebuilding of Meta’s AI organization from scratch after Llama 4 was widely regarded as a relative failure
  • New Muse Spark and Muse Image AI models are rolling out across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and ad tools — tying the AI cloud story directly back to core advertising strength, with early tests showing stronger, more photorealistic ad performance

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