Do you remember 2022… When ChatGPT launched, Nvidia soared 1,800% in 3 years, and 500,000 regular Americans became millionaires?

According to Nvidia's CEO, July 22nd could trigger an even BIGGER explosion of wealth.

Because Tesla is set to unveil a revolutionary technology that could shock the markets… And be "10x bigger than the largest product in history", according to Elon Musk.

And today, you have a rare window of opportunity to get in on the ground floor before this new mega trend goes mainstream.

Matt Monaco turned $2,000 into $3 million by spotting the crypto and AI mega trends early…

Past performance doesn't indicate future results. These results aren't typical. And all trading carries risk.

But he predicts Tesla's next shocking move could ignite the most lucrative mega trend in HISTORY (by far!)

That's why he put together a full briefing that reveals everything… How to get positioned, what to buy, and all the information you need before the potential July 22nd launch date.

Click here to see the urgent briefing before the world finds out.

Analysts See Major Upside for This Top-10 Performing S&P 500 Stock

Written by Ryan Hasson. Published: 9/1/2026.

Every so often, a stock quietly climbs into the upper ranks of the market's leaderboard without attracting the attention its performance deserves. Lumentum Holdings (NASDAQ: LITE) is one of those names.

The optical technology company has surged about 140% year to date, placing it among the top 10 best-performing stocks in the S&P 500. With a bullish technical setup, accelerating fundamentals and a wave of analyst optimism, the run may not be over.

The Backstory to the Run

Rickards Predicts: Trump to buy tiny $2 stock? (Ad)

Jim Rickards believes the Trump administration is about to take a direct stake in a $2 stock sitting on the largest mineral reserve in the country - enough gold for a new Fort Knox, enough copper to rebuild the U.S. electric grid 25 times over.

The Trump administration has previously staked positions in MP Materials, Lithium America, Trilogy Metals, and USA Rare Earth - each time shares moved higher. A landmark policy decision expected before November 3 could reprice this stock from $2 to $20 or more within a year.

Click here to see why Rickards believes this stock is next

Lumentum sits at the center of one of the most important and least understood corners of the AI buildout: optical connectivity. The company designs the lasers, transceivers and optical components that move data at light speed inside and between AI data centers. As hyperscalers scale their AI clusters to hundreds of thousands of accelerators, those chips need to communicate faster than ever, and that demand runs directly through Lumentum's product lineup.

The market has certainly taken notice. Just last week, the stock jumped nearly 8% on an AI connectivity push and fresh analyst coverage, extending a rally that has carried it up almost 15% over the past month. Lumentum is increasingly viewed alongside companies such as Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) and NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) as a direct beneficiary of surging AI infrastructure spending, but it offers a more focused play on the optical layer that the entire buildout depends on.

Fundamentals That Back the Move

The performance is not built on hype. In its most recent quarter, reported Aug. 11, Lumentum delivered adjusted earnings of $3.23 per share, beating estimates, while revenue soared 109.3% year over year to $1.01 billion. That marked another quarter in a lengthy streak of earnings beats, and management continues to guide higher as AI-driven demand accelerates.

Analysts expect earnings to grow another 64% in the year ahead, which helps explain why the stock trades at a forward earnings multiple far below what its trailing figures might suggest.

A Bullish Technical Setup

From a technical perspective, the stock is shaping up for further upward momentum. Across multiple timeframes, from the weekly chart to the daily chart, LITE is currently in a bullish technical formation, trading nearly 17% below its all-time and 52-week highs.

LITE has been in a consolidation pattern for almost four months, with $800 acting as immediate support and $1,000 serving as major resistance and the first breakout level it needs to clear. Importantly, LITE is part of a sector that has established market leadership this year and demonstrated notable strength. Along with LITE's technical positioning, it will be important for the broader sector to maintain its bullish sentiment and narrative, as well as its relative strength over longer timeframes.

Wall Street Sees More Upside

Perhaps most telling is how constructive the analyst community remains even after such an enormous run. Lumentum carries a Moderate Buy consensus rating from 22 analysts, with an average price target of $1,053.83, implying roughly 22% upside from current levels. The most bullish target on Wall Street sits as high as $1,400.

That confidence is reinforced by the stock's standing on MarketBeat, where it ranks in the 84th percentile among all companies evaluated and has one of the strongest news sentiment scores among technology names. The one note of caution worth flagging is insider activity: several executives have been selling shares into the strength. That activity is worth monitoring, even if it is common after a run of this size.

Why the Run May Not Be Over

Lumentum has quietly become one of the market's biggest winners this year, and the ingredients that drove the run remain firmly in place. The company sits exactly where the AI buildout needs it most: revenue is more than doubling year over year, adjusted profitability is strong and analysts still see meaningful upside from here.

After a gain of this magnitude, some volatility should be expected, and the valuation certainly leaves little room for missteps. But as a pure play on the optical backbone of the AI era, Lumentum has earned its place among the market's leaders. Wall Street, like the bullish chart formation suggests, is betting that the story still has room to run.

MSFT Has Gone Nowhere in 2026—Azure Says That's a Mistake

Written by Chris Markoch. Published: 9/7/2026.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) shares closed at approximately $497 on Sept. 2, almost exactly where the stock started 2026. But for investors who owned MSFT at the start of the year, the current price is a relief.

MSFT staged a record-setting post-earnings rally that erased months of losses in a single session. Before that rally, MSFT was down nearly 30% for the year amid anxiety over AI spending, fears about the impact of artificial intelligence on software companies, and concerns over Copilot adoption.

Rickards Predicts: Trump to buy tiny $2 stock? (Ad)

Jim Rickards believes the Trump administration is about to take a direct stake in a $2 stock sitting on the largest mineral reserve in the country - enough gold for a new Fort Knox, enough copper to rebuild the U.S. electric grid 25 times over.

The Trump administration has previously staked positions in MP Materials, Lithium America, Trilogy Metals, and USA Rare Earth - each time shares moved higher. A landmark policy decision expected before November 3 could reprice this stock from $2 to $20 or more within a year.

Click here to see why Rickards believes this stock is next

None of those concerns have proved particularly significant, but that was little solace for shareholders. Net-net, the market still appears to be discounting Microsoft's growing Azure business.

In its most recent earnings report, Azure's growth accelerated, the backlog swelled, and management guided even higher. That means MSFT's post-earnings rally wasn't driven by new information about the quality of the business. The market is simply catching up to information that had been building for months.

MSFT Gets a Boost From Accelerating Azure Growth

The bear case on Microsoft all year rested on one idea: cloud growth was cooling as AI infrastructure spending outpaced returns. That thesis took a direct hit in the Q4 2026 report. Azure and other cloud services revenue grew 43%, up from 40% in the prior quarter, and Azure crossed $100 billion in annual revenue for the first time. Management then guided to roughly 45% Azure growth for the current quarter.

That acceleration matters more than the raw growth number. A business decelerating from 46% to 40% tells one story about maturation. A business accelerating from 40% to 43%, with guidance pointing higher still, tells a different one entirely: demand is outrunning even Microsoft's aggressive infrastructure buildout, not shrinking against it.

Microsoft's $678 Billion Backlog Challenges AI Spending Concerns

Commercial remaining performance obligations (RPOs) rose 84% year-over-year to $678 billion. CFO Amy Hood noted that the sequential growth came from customers outside the frontier AI labs.  That matters because it undercuts another common bearish argument: that Microsoft's cloud demand is a mirage propped up by a handful of AI labs burning venture capital.

That backlog represents signed commitments from a broad customer base, locked in ahead of revenue recognition. When a number that large accelerates that quickly, it's telling you something the stock price, which has chopped sideways for a year, was not.

MSFT Valuation Hasn't Caught Up With Earnings Growth

Even after the post-earnings surge, Microsoft trades at roughly 26x forward earnings—below its own five-year average multiple. That's happening even as forward earnings per share (EPS) estimates have climbed steadily all year, and even as the company just posted its strongest quarter of the fiscal year in its most important growth driver.

Normally, a stock re-rates upward when growth accelerates and estimates rise in tandem. Microsoft's multiple compression alongside rising estimates is the market saying, in effect, "we don't trust this growth to persist." That's a psychological stance, not a fundamentals-driven one—and it's the exact gap that tends to close, one way or another, once enough quarters confirm the trend.

Microsoft's AI Spend Remains the Biggest Risk to the Bull Case

If Azure guidance holds at 45% or higher and the backlog keeps converting into recognized revenue, a below-average multiple on an accelerating hyperscaler starts to look like the market hasn't finished repricing the stock. Investors who anchored to the "AI spend without payoff" narrative earlier in the year now have concrete, recent evidence that the payoff phase has begun.

However, investors should weigh the most significant risk. Capital expenditures (CapEx) are still enormous. Microsoft revised its 2026 CapEx outlook to roughly $175 billion by lengthening the assumed useful life of its data center assets.

If Azure growth stalls even briefly, or if the AI-lab-adjacent demand Hood described proves less durable than the broader commercial backlog suggests, the "shrug" the stock delivered this year could turn into something sharper.

For now, the more interesting question isn't whether Microsoft's fundamentals are strong—the quarter answered that decisively. It's why a stock sitting on 43% cloud growth, an 84% backlog surge, and rising earnings estimates is still valued below its own historical average. That gap between what the business is doing and what the multiple says investors believe about it is the actual story.

The Flat Chart May Signal a Sentiment Shift

What investors believe about a business can remain wrong for a long time. But eventually, the fundamentals make a case that's too strong to ignore. Microsoft investors who were pricing in decelerating cloud growth for most of 2026 got a data point in July that should have forced a real update to that belief.

However, the muted forward multiple suggests plenty of investors haven't fully made that update yet. Whether that gap closes with the stock re-rating higher or with fundamentals eventually validating the market's caution is a question worth tracking before Microsoft reports earnings in late October.