Dear Reader,

They declared a ceasefire!

Until they didn’t.

Then Trump said we were about to sign a deal.

Until we started shooting at each other again.

According to one source, Trump has said an Iran deal is “close” 38 times since the war began.

In the time between writing this message and you reading it, who knows whether we’ll be hearing about an imminent deal… or more bombing.

And it doesn’t matter.

This is all a distraction.

Here’s the REAL reason why Trump may NEVER end this war.

To your future,

Addison Wiggin

Founder, Grey Swan Investment Fraternity

Why Apple Could Be the Last One Standing in the Tech Wreck

Authored by Sam Quirke. Originally Published: 7/22/2026.

The past few weeks have been brutal for anyone holding the AI trade. Chipmakers, memory suppliers and hyperscalers have all been hit hard as investors began questioning whether the enormous sums being poured into AI infrastructure will ever generate the promised returns.

However, one name has been conspicuously absent from the carnage. While many of its peers have endured their worst run in months, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has been setting record highs and holding them, with a rally of around 20% since the end of June. For context, Sandisk Corp. (NASDAQ: SNDK) is down more than 30% over the same period, while Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) is down more than 10%.

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The Wall Street Journal is already raising the alarm about a potential market crash, and Weiss Ratings research points to the first half of 2026 as a particularly rough stretch for certain holdings.

Some of America's most popular stocks could take serious damage as a radical market shift plays out. Analysts at Weiss Ratings have identified five names you may want to remove from your portfolio before this unfolds.

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That’s an interesting role reversal, given that Apple has been called the AI laggard among the hyperscalers. The company was criticized for much of the first half of this year for falling behind in the AI race while its peers spent aggressively to build the future. However, as we head into the second half of the year, Apple is suddenly leading the pack.

With its earnings due next week, it’s worth looking more closely at what’s driving this outperformance and how much room the stock might have left to run.

Why Apple Has Been Spared

The simplest explanation is the most compelling one. Compared with most of its peers, Apple has barely participated in the AI capital expenditure arms race that’s now making investors so nervous.

This was a cause for concern earlier in the year, but it’s now the main reason HSBC upgraded the stock to Buy from Hold this week. To put it in context, the firm estimates that Apple is investing only around 2.5% of its expected 2026 sales in capital expenditures (CapEx), compared with roughly 39% for the hyperscalers.

That’s an enormous gap, and it means Apple carries almost none of the return-on-investment anxiety currently weighing on companies that have committed hundreds of billions of dollars to data center buildouts.

The Ecosystem Is Doing the Heavy Lifting

What Apple does have is an installed base that most companies would trade almost anything for. More than 2.5 billion active Apple devices are in the hands of customers who are notoriously difficult to pry away. That’s a fundamentally different kind of business from a niche chipmaker or a cloud provider.

Apple’s moat doesn’t depend on winning the frontier AI model race; it depends on monetizing an installed base it already owns. In a way, it almost doesn’t matter who ends up building the best AI model, because Apple knows it will still be the primary interface through which a very large number of people access it.

What the Divergence Says About Investor Behavior

Put all this together, and a clear picture of the rotation emerges—one that could continue for longer than a few weeks. When you look at NVIDIA's (NASDAQ: NVDA) chart and see that its shares are still trading around the levels they reached last October, it’s easy to see just how spooked investors have been by the level of CapEx.

Compared with Apple’s gains of more than 20% over the same period, it’s clear that capital has been moving away from companies with high levels of AI expenditure and toward one with reliable cash generation and limited exposure to the AI infrastructure cycle.

In effect, the market has decided, for now at least, that Apple is the safer way to own AI. It participates in the theme through its devices and services without bearing the balance-sheet risk of funding the buildout. In a nervous market, that’s an extremely attractive combination.

The Bear Case Heading Into Earnings

The most obvious concern is what investors are now paying. Apple is currently trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of almost 40, its highest level in more than a decade.

Then there’s the margin question. Rising memory prices have been squeezing hardware makers across the board, and Apple has already had to raise prices on some of its products in response. Given how sensitive the stock is to gross margin figures, even modest compression in next week’s earnings report could undo much of the recent rally.

Still, none of that changes what’s happened over the past few weeks. When the AI trade showed signs of cracking, investors ran to the megacap that hadn’t bet its balance sheet on it. Next week’s earnings will show whether that trust was well placed.

These 3 AI Winners Don’t Sell the Tech—They Use It

Authored by Nathan Reiff. Originally Published: 7/27/2026.

As the AI industry remains in its early stages, investors have understandably focused on companies at the center of the space: firms that build the hardware and infrastructure necessary to run AI systems, for example, or those that build and power data centers.

Many large, well-established companies don't need to be part of this foundational aspect of AI to reap its benefits, however. Instead, these firms can use AI to reduce costs, increase revenue, boost customer retention, and more. In this landscape, companies outside the tech sector may emerge as AI winners even without directly developing or selling the technology, particularly if they possess valuable proprietary data or large customer bases. Below are some of the invisible AI companies using and benefiting from the technology despite not making or selling it.

Intuit's Integration of AI Continues to Drive Growth and Cost Savings

ALERT: Drop these 5 stocks before the market opens tomorrow! (Ad)

The Wall Street Journal is already raising the alarm about a potential market crash, and Weiss Ratings research points to the first half of 2026 as a particularly rough stretch for certain holdings.

Some of America's most popular stocks could take serious damage as a radical market shift plays out. Analysts at Weiss Ratings have identified five names you may want to remove from your portfolio before this unfolds.

If any of these are in your portfolio, now is the time to review your positions.

See the 5 stocks to avoid

A maker of bookkeeping, tax preparation, and other financial software, Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ: INTU) has successfully embedded AI into existing products such as TurboTax and QuickBooks. This allows users to more easily categorize expenses, draft invoices, generate financial forecasts, and more. For data-heavy financial processes like those Intuit serves with its products, AI can provide a significant boost.

The company is heading into the second half of 2026—and the final quarter of its fiscal year—with a strong financial foundation. Revenue increased 10% year over year (YOY) last quarter, and non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) also rose, with both the top and bottom lines exceeding guidance. Management recently raised its full-year outlook for both metrics as well. AI has also helped Intuit reduce its workforce by 17% in the last quarter, simplifying operations and reducing costs. Those savings are expected to support both bottom-line and margin growth.

Intuit is a compelling Moderate Buy based on its anticipated 15% earnings growth over the coming year and its low debt-to-equity ratio of 0.3. The company has increased its dividend for more than a decade and currently pays a healthy yield of 1.70%.

Behind-the-Scenes AI Boosts Walmart's Deliveries, Operations, and Shopping Experiences

Multinational retail giant Walmart Inc. (NASDAQ: WMT) benefits from AI in ways that are less visible to customers but still highly effective at reducing costs and improving efficiency. Retailers like Walmart use AI to predict demand, reduce inventory shortages, lower food waste, optimize deliveries, implement dynamic pricing, automate customer support, and more. From AI-first shopping experiences to assistive tools for associates, Walmart has embraced AI in numerous ways.

WMT shares have fallen roughly 9% over the last month and are also down slightly year to date (YTD), as a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of nearly 38 continues to give some investors pause about the company's valuation. Still, its fundamentals are strong in several respects: last quarter, the company increased sales by nearly 6% YOY on a constant-currency basis, while e-commerce sales climbed 26% YOY. Traffic, transactions, advertising, membership fee revenue, and margins are all growing quickly. AI has helped Walmart increase delivery capacity and efficiency, and the company says more than 60% of U.S. households can be reached within 30 minutes or less.

Despite the price decline and valuation concerns, analysts view Walmart favorably—eight out of every nine analysts covering the company give WMT shares a Buy rating.

JPMorgan's AI Applications Can Cut Costs and Streamline Operations

As one of the largest banks in the world, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) generates an incredible volume of structured data. This makes the business well suited to AI-based improvements, with applications ranging from fraud detection and credit underwriting to risk management, money-laundering monitoring, and compliance reviews. In compliance and operations alone, banks like JPMorgan spend billions of dollars each year; even modest cost reductions driven by AI could have a significant positive impact on profitability.

JPMorgan stands out among its rivals following its record Q2 2026 results, which included top- and bottom-line beats as well as healthy loan and deposit growth. Net interest income climbed 9% YOY, aided by favorable rates and an average loan base of $1.5 trillion. A standout metric for the quarter was book value per share, which rose 9% YOY to $133.01, distinguishing JPMorgan from its peers. With this in mind, JPM's Moderate Buy rating from Wall Street appears well deserved, even as shares have risen nearly 24% in a rally since late March.