One type of trade I make every week…

…it’s exciting.

…it’s fast.

…it only takes you opening the trade on Thursday and closing it Friday.

It's a single 0-day options trade — the kind that can expire as soon as the next day — handed to you with the strike, the entry price, and the exit already mapped. Some weeks are quiet. Some weeks one signal like ASTS runs from 65 cents to nearly 3 dollars.

Not every trade wins — and we show you the ones that don't. But the wins are why I keep showing up.

Grab this week's free report to see how it works before the next signal drops:

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Charlie Moon
Thursday Blitz 0DTE service with Prosper Trading

Wall Street Left Software for Dead: 4 Stocks Institutions Are Buying Back

Author: Bridget Bennett. Posted: 10/9/2026.

Software opened the year as the market's favorite casualty. The SPDR S&P Software & Services ETF (NYSEARCA: XSW) and the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (BATS: IGV) each dropped roughly 25% to 27% in the first quarter alone, as traders priced in a future in which artificial intelligence (AI) made subscription software obsolete.

Software earnings never got that memo. Subscriber counts held steady or grew, revenue kept coming in, and the companies sitting on enterprise customer data started building AI into their own products rather than losing business to it.

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Institutions noticed early. The money that fled software in the spring has been flowing back into the names with the stickiest customers, and several of those charts are already well off their lows.

That leaves a sharper question than whether software survived the AI scare. The real question is which companies are turning that scare into a tailwind, and whether the price action confirms it.

Owning the Customer Beats Fearing the Model in Enterprise Software

The AI-eats-software trade missed something basic, according to Pete Carmasino, chief market strategist at Chaikin Analytics. No large enterprise is going to tear out its customer relationship management (CRM) platform and replace it with an AI imitation, however capable the model may be.

History offers a useful comparison. Railroads and the 1990s fiber-optic boom both overbuilt capacity before customers were paying for it, and names like Global Crossing and Lucent became symbols of that excess.

The AI buildout differs in one key way, according to Carmasino. Model developers such as privately held Anthropic already have fast-growing paying customer bases. And the biggest winners of the old fiber glut weren't the builders. They were the companies riding cheap bandwidth, from Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) to YouTube parent Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) to Facebook, now Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META).

That changes the frame. The AI infrastructure boom may work less like a threat to entrenched software companies and more like a subsidy, handing powerful tools to whoever already owns the data.

Not every software name qualifies. The ones that do pair locked-in customers with visible AI adoption.

Institutional Accumulation Marks a Turn for Customer Relationship Software

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) is the clearest example. The stock wasn't sold because the business stopped making money, in Carmasino's view. It was sold on a story, and steady accumulation is now reversing that trend.

The pressure traced back to a large hedge fund trade that shorted software while buying chip and data center builders. When that position unwound, the Chaikin Money Flow indicator and relative strength for Salesforce both turned higher. For Carmasino, that confirmation matters more than the bounce itself.

The business case rests on switching costs. Replacing a CRM system is the kind of project that terrifies IT departments. Salesforce has been an early champion of agentic AI, meaning software agents that take actions on a user's behalf, and it is using its own engineering bench to make the platform easier to use. Easier products tend to keep customers longer.

Analyst price targets have remained above recent trading levels, suggesting the recovery may not be fully priced in. Proof that AI features are lifting renewals and deal sizes could push sentiment further. Watch whether money flow stays positive into the next earnings report.

AI Risk Is Turning Cybersecurity Into a Must-Have Budget Line

If AI opens new doors into corporate and personal systems, someone has to sell the locks. Carmasino sees two powerhouses filling that role. CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) is the purer cybersecurity play, while Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW) adds networking and broader software exposure.

The tailwind is visible. Agentic tools are being granted access to banking and financial accounts, and headlines about AI threats keep stacking up. Security has shifted from nice-to-have to have-to-have, and the systems being guarded aren't about to replace the guards.

Both stocks have pushed toward the top of their 52-week ranges, which invites a valuation debate. Carmasino doesn't dismiss price-to-earnings multiples or forward growth rates, but he lets price set the direction. Bottom fishing is difficult, and he prefers owning a name already in a momentum phase with confirming indicators rather than waiting for a pullback that may not arrive on schedule.

He also favors holding both rather than choosing, since "should have" may be the most repeated phrase on Wall Street. The signal to watch is whether prices keep validating the thesis once AI fear headlines cool.

Pharma's Digital Filing Cabinet Offers a Quieter Software Opportunity

Veeva Systems (NYSE: VEEV) gets less airtime, but Carmasino sees the same customer lock-in in a different industry.

Large pharmaceutical companies use it across the product life cycle, from research to sales, making it something close to the filing cabinet for drug development.

That position compounds. Customers keep adding Veeva services over time, and the data involved, from clinical research to commercial pipelines, is sensitive enough that security is built in rather than bolted on.

AI raises the stakes. Modeling work that once took hours or days can now run in seconds, and research teams across biotech and pharma need a platform to manage that faster process end to end.

The stock has rebounded, yet Carmasino still reads the chart as being at a turning point with room to run.

Sticky Customers and Confirmed Momentum Drive the Software Rebound

Salesforce and Veeva Systems own the records their customers can't live without. CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks protect the doors AI keeps opening. Different businesses, same advantage: demand that doesn't evaporate when a new model launches.

This setup doesn't depend on calling the exact bottom or picking which AI lab wins. It does depend on customer retention holding, AI features showing up in results, and price action continuing to confirm what the indicators say.

The upside is that the AI buildout could keep handing these incumbents better tools at someone else's expense, with switching costs protecting the gains.

The risk is that several of these names have already run, and momentum stocks can give back gains quickly if earnings disappoint or the market's AI mood swings again.

Stay focused on renewals and money flow, because that's what moves software stocks from a relief rally to real leadership.

Chaikin Analytics has mapped where it believes AI and supercomputing are headed next. Get Chaikin Analytics' American Atlas roadmap of the next phase of AI.

3 AI Winners, 3 Very Different Paths to Higher Margins

Author: Dan Schmidt. Posted: 10/3/2026.

Pricing power is often used as a blanket argument for owning certain stocks, but it’s important to understand where it comes from and what can put it at risk. The AI buildout has created a wave of new business for semiconductor companies, while bottlenecks in crucial components and energy have altered some formerly predictable pricing cycles.

Three of the biggest winners have been Lumentum Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: LITE), KLA Corp. (NASDAQ: KLAC) and NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP), but each reached its margin expansion through a very different path. Some companies grow margins by increasing volume and improving productivity. Others maintain margins through first-mover advantages and a lack of competition. Finally, some pass higher costs on to customers and capture several basis points of margin in the process. Each of these three stocks uses one of these strategies, and distinguishing between sustainable and unsustainable margins is crucial for investors in this space.

Lumentum: Margin Growth From Accelerating Volume and Factory Utilization

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Lumentum is aptly named, as its primary revenue drivers are lasers and optical parts used to move data between AI chips.

As AI clusters grow, traditional conduits like copper wire no longer make sense. Lumentum sells the lasers that power complex AI data transmissions, and it can credit operational efficiencies for its margin expansion.

Lumentum’s factories are busy, and management credited operational rigor and pricing discipline for its outsized success. The company reported revenue of $1.01 billion in Q4 of its fiscal 2026 (FY2026), more than double the year-ago figure. Full factories drive revenue higher, while increased operational efficiency supports margin expansion.

Lumentum guided for revenue of $1.225 billion to $1.275 billion in Q1 FY2027, with operating margins of 40.5% at the top end of its guidance, up from 36.6% in fiscal Q4.

The daily LITE chart shows that a dip has been bought, and bullish signals point to more upside as the stock closes in on its April all-time high. The share price is once again trading above the 50-day and 200-day moving averages, with the 50-day average acting as support over the last two months.

Trading has been choppy since the new uptrend began, but the relative strength index (RSI) shows that bullish momentum has been building gradually without becoming too volatile. The indicator remains below the overbought threshold of 70, so there may be more room for gains in LITE shares.

KLA Corp: Defending Margins Through a Process-Control Moat

KLA dominates the inspection and measurement segment of the semiconductor processing chain, and its products already have a strong presence across foundries.

Flaws caught by KLA machinery save semiconductor fabs time and capital, while its moat protects margins amid projected industry growth. In Q4 FY2026, KLA management boosted its total wafer equipment market projection for calendar 2026 to $150 billion from $140 billion.

The company generated more than $820 million in recurring service-contract revenue during the period, while its gross margin was unchanged at 62.5%. Management projected a gross margin of 65% through 2027, balancing sales growth against headwinds from memory pricing, tariffs and supply constraints.

KLAC has suffered the largest recent drawdown of the three stocks on our list, declining more than 30% from the all-time high set in June. However, based on the price action, this drawdown appears to have been more technical than fundamental, and the technical indicators are now beginning to reverse their bearish momentum.

After bouncing off support at the 200-day moving average, the stock broke above the 50-day moving average for the first time since early July. A bullish crossover on the MACD indicator confirmed the new uptrend, and KLAC shares appear ready to resume their quiet compounding once again.

NetApp: Flash Memory Price Cycle Puts Margins at Risk

NetApp has limited control over one of the biggest factors shaping its performance: margins. External forces play an outsized role in determining profitability, leaving the company exposed to pressures it cannot easily offset.

The company’s fastest-growing systems are built on NAND flash memory used in AI data centers, but NetApp buys this memory and repackages it for clients.

NAND memory prices have risen sharply over the last few quarters, and NetApp has captured those price increases and passed them on to clients.

However, memory-price growth is finally slowing, highlighting NetApp’s lack of control over its margins. The company reported a 54.6% gross product margin in fiscal Q1 2027, down 150 basis points from the previous quarter because of rising flash-chip costs.

Gross margins for Q2 2027 were also guided lower, further showcasing the company’s susceptibility to forces outside its control.

Despite facing the greatest uncertainty around future margins, investors in NTAP shares are forging ahead at full speed. Buyers have shaken off the earnings news and pushed the stock to a new all-time high above $210, surpassing the previous record set in early August. A new high at this point in the cycle could invite profit-taking given the margin risk, but the technical signals don’t yet show any evidence of that.

The RSI is firmly in bullish territory without triggering any overbought warnings, and the MACD shows a bullish crossover above the histogram, which typically implies more upside ahead. If memory prices decline more slowly than anticipated next quarter, traders who bought this dip could be handsomely rewarded.