Dear Friend,
Those were the warm-ups.
MP Materials jumped 111% in one week.
Lithium Americas jumped 194% in two weeks.
Trilogy Metals jumped 211% overnight.
Small grants. Small stakes. Measured in millions.
Now the real money is coming.
Five trillion dollars to rebuild the American power grid.
All flowing through a single government body most Americans have never heard of - Trump’s “National Energy Dominance Council.”
Three stocks already proved what happens when this committee picks a winner.
The next pick isn’t a small grant.
It’s the biggest infrastructure project in American history.
And one company is sitting at the dead center of it.
See the company at the center of the $5 trillion rebuild >>
“The Buck Stops Here,”
Kelly Maguire
Behind the Markets
Delta Air Lines Lives Up to Its Claims: Shares Can Keep Climbing
Reported by Thomas Hughes. First Published: 7/12/2026.
Key Points
- Delta Air Lines reported strong Q2 2026 results with revenue up 30.3% and raised guidance, prompting 27 analysts to maintain a consensus Moderate Buy rating with an 89% Buy-side bias.
- Analysts have set price targets between $110 and $116, representing a fresh all-time high, while institutional investors own 70% of shares and continue accumulating.
- Despite a price pullback and risks from rising costs and a C-suite transition, Delta's cash flow, debt reduction, and dividend growth support an intact uptrend.
- Special Report: Forget SpaceX. Buy the company Musk can't replace.
Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) lived up to its motto, with the Q2 2026 earnings results showing strength and suggesting the shares can keep climbing. Drivers include outperformance from international demand, overall demand, premiumization, and structural cost advantages, which together support ample cash flow.
The critical detail in the release was guidance, which points to these trends continuing. More importantly, guidance was raised, prompting a strong response from analysts.
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Reserve your free seat for the Zero-Dollar Trade Advantage session nowWhile no upgrades or price target revisions were tracked within the first hours of the release, several commentaries hit the wires. Analyst commentary reaffirms the strong trends, including numerous initiations, upgrades, and price target increases ahead of the earnings release on July 10.
As it stands, MarketBeat tracks 27 analysts rating DAL as a consensus Moderate Buy; coverage is up versus the prior month, quarter, and year, with sentiment firming and an 89% buy-side bias in the data. The consensus price target implies fair value near the early-July highs, but the trend matters. Recent revisions place this market in the high-end range, between $100 and $116, which would mark a fresh all-time high if reached.
Delta’s July Pullback: A Touch-and-Go Event, Buy the Dip
Delta’s price pullback reflects a market expecting strength, as the Q2 results and guidance delivered exactly that. Revenue growth accelerated sequentially and year over year with a robust 18.7% advance, ahead of expectations.
Delta’s strength showed across metrics, supported by just a 1% increase in capacity. Total revenue per average seat mile (TRASM) grew by 12.4%, with strength in the main cabin and premium segments, which rose by 17%. Domestic revenue grew by 12% and international revenue by 8%, with cargo up 39% and maintenance services up 32%. Loyalty, a forward-looking indicator, grew by 19%, and corporate traffic grew by double digits.
While margins contracted in the quarter, and slightly more than expected, the decline was minimal. More importantly, top-line strength flowed through to the bottom line, leaving adjusted earnings per share of $1.56 ahead of forecasts by 400 bps. Looking ahead, the company expects strength to continue and reaffirmed its guidance. The key takeaways are that free cash flow and capital returns should continue, and that guidance may be conservative. Travel trends remain robust across leisure and business segments, potentially helped by falling energy prices.
Delta’s Cash Flow Recovery Story Takes Flight
Delta’s stock price recovery is underpinned by growth but, more importantly, by the cash flow it generates. Drivers of the share price include persistent debt reduction, improving investment-grade balance sheet quality, and capital returns to shareholders.
Q3 capital returns included dividends but no share buybacks, with the dividend annualizing to about 1%. The payout ratios show no red flags for investors, as the company is positioned to continue executing its strategy while increasing its dividend annually. Balance sheet highlights include higher cash, lower debt, and improving equity, with equity up 4.6% year to date.
Institutional activity reflects the potential in a DAL investment. The group owns a substantial 70% of the stock and has been accumulating at nearly a $2-to-$1 pace over the trailing 12 months. That provides a solid support base and market tailwind that is likely to remain in place, given the guidance. In this scenario, DAL’s share price may continue to pull back in Q3, but downside appears limited, and higher share prices are likely by year-end. Critical support levels are near $85 and $80; lower lows are unexpected.
Delta’s risks center on cost control and execution. Costs, including labor, continue to rise while a major C-suite transition is underway. Two retirements and one executive departure for new opportunities have resulted in several promotions and consolidated roles. The risk lies in disruptive hiccups tied to those role changes, particularly during the upcoming seasonal shift. If Delta fails to match capacity to demand, it risks losing pricing power, which would be detrimental to both top- and bottom-line results. In the longer term, Delta is expected to sustain modest growth over the next five years.
The stock price action is favorable, despite the early Q3 pullback. Delta is rising on a wave of strength, cash flow, and dividends that has yet to fully play out, leaving the underlying uptrend intact. The likely outcome is that support kicks in at or near the early July lows, leading to a trend-following signal and a price rebound later this year. Signals of strength include MACD convergence on the weekly chart, suggesting the latest highs will at least be retested, along with support at the 30-day exponential moving average.
2 AI Stocks That Could Benefit as AI Moves Beyond the Data Center
Reported by Thomas Hughes. First Published: 7/5/2026.
Key Points
- NVIDIA remains the clearest large-cap AI infrastructure winner, with record revenue, strong analyst support and expanding opportunities beyond GPUs.
- SoundHound AI offers a smaller, higher-risk AI software story built around voice, agentic AI, OASYS and the pending LivePerson acquisition.
- Both stocks still carry risks, including valuation expectations for NVIDIA and dilution, acquisition integration and cash burn concerns for SoundHound AI.
- Special Report: Forget SpaceX. Buy the company Musk can't replace.
Investment themes for 2026 reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of how AI is affecting long-term growth, revenue, and earnings strength for mission-critical companies. Unlike other tech fads, AI is persistent. It represents the evolution of technology and the future of tech as we know it, not a passing craze likely to be quickly eclipsed.
Evidence of the market’s disconnect can be seen in Q1 S&P 500 reporting results, which beat consensus estimates by more than 1,000 basis points heading into the reporting cycle.
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Reserve your free seat for the Zero-Dollar Trade Advantage session nowThe underlying cause is an irrational fear of AI disruption that fails to account for the fundamentals. AI demand is being driven by contracted backlogs tied to hyperscalers, which make up the majority of global cloud computing and form the backbone of today’s internet.
NVIDIA Still Has Multi-Bagger Potential
A “bagger,” in stock market parlance, is a stock with the potential to double in value. A multibagger can potentially rise by several hundred basis points relative to the reference price, and NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA), which is already a multibagger for AI traders, is positioned for another substantial move higher. While its revenue is growing rapidly, outpacing estimates and supported by strong guidance, the share price has spent much of the past year in a broad trading range. At these levels, NVIDIA’s valuation does not fully reflect the premium investors often assign to the market’s most important AI infrastructure company.
NVIDIA is no longer just a GPU play. The GPU story remains central to the outlook, but the cash flow it generates and the investments NVIDIA has made have turned the company into something much larger. Today, NVIDIA is the foundational layer for AI; tomorrow, it will be central to nearly every aspect of AI applications, especially physical AI and robotics. Physical AI and robotics include IoT devices, autonomous machines, and self-driving vehicles, all of which rely on the output generated by those GPU clusters. In the long term, revenue growth will be tied to networking, enterprise software, and robotics.
NVIDIA’s valuation metrics, including its price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple and analyst trends, suggest easy near-term double-digit upside in the 50% range and 400% to 600% over time, with the high end depending on NVIDIA’s market premium. Analysts, of which MarketBeat tracks 54, rate the stock a consensus Buy and see it advancing more than 50% at the midpoint target. The trend, the operative factor, points toward the high end, which tops out at $500, more than 100% above early-July trading levels.
NVIDIA stock carries no premium as of mid-2026, but it tends to trade in the low- to mid-30x range when the market is fully priced. Looking ahead, the 10-year forecasts put this stock in the mid-single-digit P/E range, an ultra-deep value that time will unlock.
SoundHound AI: Building Durable, Sticky, Visible Cash Flows
SoundHound AI (NASDAQ: SOUN) is a value hiding in plain sight because the market is getting it wrong. While investors focus on acquisition and dilution risks, the company is using its fortress-like balance sheet to invest in growth and widen its moat. That moat is based on proprietary contracts and long-term, multiyear agreements that produce sticky, visible revenue streams.
Among its strengths is a three-pronged approach to revenue that captures all three pillars critical to SaaS success: subscriptions, services, and commerce. Other strengths include the OASYS platform, which enables users to develop and deploy voice-activated agentic AI applications with ease.
Analyst trends reflect the deep-value opportunity. While fears of a SaaS and AI apocalypse have pressured stock prices, coverage has increased, sentiment has firmed, and the consensus price target has improved. Consensus in mid-2026 suggests more than 120% upside over the next 12 months, with the low end implying more than 30% upside from the 2026 stock price lows.
Catalysts for the stock will likely emerge with the fiscal Q2 earnings release scheduled for early August. Analysts expect updates on the LivePerson acquisition, scheduled for the second half, and signs that OASYS is driving results. OASYS is a higher-margin business and is expected to clear the path to profitability. Closing the LivePerson deal will unlock numerous upsell and cross-sell opportunities and is likely to attract institutional investor interest. Institutions are bullish and have been accumulating shares over the trailing 12 months, but ownership remains light at below 20%, leaving the stock susceptible to volatility.
The biggest risk for SoundHound investors is dilution. The cost of its healthy balance sheet is an increasing share count tied to capital raises. The company has no immediate need for additional capital and has enough on hand for 1-2 years of operations, but it is preparing to raise capital to pay down debt incurred during the LivePerson acquisition.
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