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It's 'Round To It' Time ~
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
Trump’s $250 Bill – See Immediately
TSM just handed Trump's secretive AI project $100 billion
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Editor's Note: Our colleague Louis Navellier manages a $1.1 billion portfolio — including $358 million in AI stocks. He called Nvidia before it went up 44,000%, Apple before a 36,000% rise, and Microsoft before its 60,800% climb. He predicted the 2008 crash in writing, documented by MarketWatch, called the dot-com bust, and called the 2020 Covid rally. Now, as Taiwan's biggest chipmaker pours billions more into American soil, he says the AI arms race just tipped in America's favor — and he's revealing the one stock positioned to benefit, for free.
Dear Reader,
Last week, Taiwan Semiconductor — the company that makes the chips inside almost every AI system on earth, reported blowout earnings.
It beat revenue and profit expectations and raised its full-year growth forecast past 40%.
At least, that's the headline Wall Street ran with.
But, here's the one they buried:
TSM is putting ANOTHER $100 billion into U.S. chip manufacturing.
On top of the $165 billion it already committed.
That's $265 billion, from a single Taiwanese company, betting on American soil, in the middle of an AI arms race with China.
Ask yourself why.
I don't think it's about tariffs.
I think TSM knows something the rest of Wall Street hasn't priced in yet...
Something that's sitting behind a razor-wire fence in the mountains of Tennessee, at the same secretive government lab that built the atom bomb in 1945, American scientists are finishing work on a new AI mega computer.
President Trump himself compared it to the original Manhattan Project. This time, for AI.
And I believe Golden Dawn will be 283 trillion times more powerful than today's leading AI systems; span a territory larger than the state of Texas. And that can accelerate AI breakthroughs by 36,000%, potentially turning five-year timelines into five days.
When it goes live, I believe it will trigger a $100 trillion reset of the AI markets.
TSM's $100 billion bet isn't a coincidental... it's the smart money getting in position before the rest of the market understands what's coming... like we have seen time and time again.
Earnings season is only reinforcing the case. Analysts now expect S&P 500 profits to grow near 24% this quarter, with a real shot at topping 29% once the dust settles. That's some of the strongest earnings growth I've tracked in 40 years, and most of the credit goes to AI and chip demand.
Most investors are watching the score. I'm watching what's coming next.
I've identified one company — still relatively unknown, the same way Nvidia was unknown when I recommended it in 2016 at $2.51, split-adjusted, before it went up 44,000% — that I believe is positioned exactly right for Golden Dawn's launch.
I'm revealing it, down to the ticker, in a new free presentation.
Regards,
Louis Navellier
Senior Quantitative Investment Analyst, InvestorPlace
P.S. Taiwan Semiconductor just told you where the smart money is going — $100 billion at a time. Golden Dawn is where I believe it's headed next.
Go here for the full details, including the ticker — before I'm forced to take this down.
More Reading from MarketBeat.com
3 Small-Cap Stocks Trading Under $10 With Room to Run
Submitted by Bridget Bennett. Originally Published: 7/15/2026.
Key Points
- As mega-cap tech stumbles, analyst James Early recommends Aveanna Healthcare, Genworth Financial, and eGain Corporation as profitable small caps trading under $10 per share.
- Aveanna benefits from insurer demand for home health care, Genworth's mortgage insurance unit offsets a legacy long-term care drag, and eGain is repositioning around AI customer service.
- Despite the appeal of retail investors having an edge over institutions in these smaller names, historical data showing most stocks underperform cash argues for modest position sizing.
- Special Report: The company SpaceX cannot operate without
Big tech is wobbling. The Russell 2000 is not.
That split has sent investors searching smaller names for value that the mega caps stopped offering months ago. James Early, who runs research at Curia Financial and models his stock-picking on Warren Buffett's approach to durable, cash-generating businesses, highlighted three small-cap stocks trading under $10 a share. Each is profitable and built on fundamentals rather than hype.
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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.
If any of these are in your portfolio, now is the time to review your positions.
See the 5 stocks to avoidMega-cap tech's loss has become small-cap America's gain, and these three names show why.
Part of the appeal of a sub-$10 stock is simple math: a few hundred dollars buys far more shares than it would in a $200 name. Fractional shares have made that distinction less important than it used to be, but Early's advice still holds—don't focus too much on price alone. What matters is whether the business underneath is worth owning.
Home Health Care Draws Insurer Interest
Aveanna Healthcare Holdings (NASDAQ: AVAH) provides in-home care for complex and expensive patient cases, with Medicare and Medicaid making up roughly 91% of revenue. Home-based care costs a fraction of hospital monitoring, and insurers have taken notice.
Aveanna Healthcare delivered 16% revenue growth over the past year and raised its guidance twice, evidence that demand is outpacing even management's expectations. The company operates across dozens of U.S. states.
Early sees this as a potential buyout target rather than a moonshot. At a roughly $2 billion market cap, a larger insurer, home health platform, or private equity firm could easily absorb it. The stock has already climbed more than 120% over the past year, but Early argues that run-up matters less for a company this small: institutions can't buy in size without moving the price, which leaves room for retail investors to get in before Wall Street can.
Healthcare overall has lagged its potential in recent years, overshadowed by AI enthusiasm. But roughly 18% to 19% of U.S. GDP flows through healthcare spending, and an aging population isn't a trend that quickly reverses. That demand tends to hold up even in a downturn, since medical care is one budget line people don't cut.
An Ugly Legacy Business Funds a Clean One
Genworth Financial (NYSE: GNW) splits into two very different businesses.
The first is its roughly 82% stake in Enact Holdings (NASDAQ: ACT), which sells private mortgage insurance in a market growing about 8% annually. That segment runs at a 55% net profit margin, funding the second bucket: a closed book of long-term care policies written decades ago and badly underpriced, still costing the company $300 million to $400 million a year.
That drag is finite. Genworth trades at a P/E of 17, below the S&P 500 average, and the stock has climbed steadily over the past five years as the Enact business has carried the load. Early is drawn to exactly this kind of complexity: a company that looks messier from the outside than it performs on the inside.
Growth here won't be explosive. Early expects something closer to 10% to 12% annually, tracking a mortgage insurance market that grows faster than GDP but isn't reinventing itself. What Genworth has demonstrated through both rising and falling rate environments is that the pivot already worked. The stock hasn't moved much with rate swings, and Early argues a softer rate environment ahead, with more housing inventory, could help rather than hurt.
A 1990s Survivor Bets on AI
eGain Corporation (NASDAQ: EGAN) has been around since 1997. Founded by Ashu Roy, the customer relationship management software company went public in 1999, then lost nearly all its value before a reverse split kept it listed. It has quietly remained profitable for decades on $80 million to $90 million in annual revenue.
Now eGain is repositioning itself as an AI customer service platform, and the early data is notable: non-AI customer retention is around 101%, while AI-driven retention is near 116%. Clients include the IRS, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), and other large enterprises.
The stock has fallen from roughly $15 a year ago to the mid-single digits, tracking the broader software sell-off as the market debates whether AI helps or hurts software companies. Early argues the labor-intensive nature of customer service makes AI a net positive here, not a threat, and that eGain's three-decade profitable base offers a floor even if the AI bet takes time to play out. He's still clear-eyed about the risk: this is a micro-cap that can swing sharply for no obvious reason, and he keeps positions like it small, often under 1% of a portfolio.
The Risk and the Upside
The upside in small caps and micro caps is real: institutions largely can't compete for shares, leaving retail investors an edge that mostly disappears once a company gets bigger. The risk is real, too, and it's larger than most investors assume. Research from Arizona State University professor Hendrik Bessembinder, covering nearly a century of U.S. stock market data, found that just 4% of publicly traded companies accounted for all of the market's net wealth creation above cash returns. The rest, collectively, did no better than holding Treasury bills.
That's the case for keeping any single small-cap bet modest, no matter how strong the story. Stay disciplined on position size, because that's what determines whether a good idea turns into a good outcome.
Additional Reading from MarketBeat
Microsoft Bets on In-House AI to Cut OpenAI and Anthropic Costs
By Chris Markoch. First Published: 7/12/2026.
Key Points
- Microsoft is routing some Excel and Outlook prompts to its own MAI models instead of OpenAI or Anthropic to cut costs and improve margins.
- Microsoft is hedging its AI dependency through a three-way approach involving OpenAI, Anthropic's Claude, and its own in-house MAI models.
- Despite falling about 20% year-to-date, MSFT trades near 22 times forward earnings with a bullish analyst consensus and a price target well above its current level.
- Special Report: The company SpaceX cannot operate without
Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has taken steps to reduce its reliance on frontier AI models, though this is not an outright declaration of protest. In June, the tech giant launched its own proprietary AI models (Microsoft AI, or MAI) across select applications in its Office suite.
What this means for the user experience is still an open question, but the move is clearly a margin play for Microsoft. The company competes in multiple areas of the AI infrastructure buildout, which makes this an effort to control the controllable.
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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.
If any of these are in your portfolio, now is the time to review your positions.
See the 5 stocks to avoidRather than taking death by a thousand cuts from OpenAI and Anthropic, Microsoft is trying to widen its existing moat and improve returns on investment (ROI) from its AI spending. But will that be enough to change sentiment toward MSFT, which is down approximately 20% year-to-date?
Microsoft Expands MAI to Reduce Reliance on OpenAI
Here’s the news behind the news. Bloomberg reported that Microsoft is quietly routing some Excel and Outlook prompts to MAI, its in-house model family, rather than to OpenAI or Anthropic. Tens of thousands of prompts per week are already running on Microsoft's own technology.
That is still a small slice of total Copilot traffic. OpenAI and Anthropic handle most of it today. But the direction of travel matters more than the current split, and Microsoft has made its intentions clear.
At Build 2026 in June, Microsoft unveiled seven MAI models, including its first reasoning model, MAI-Thinking-1. The company says it matches Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 on coding tasks. AI chief Mustafa Suleyman put it bluntly: "We pay a lot of money to Anthropic, so our goal is to reduce and ultimately eliminate that cost."
How Microsoft's In-House AI Could Boost Profit Margins
For investors, an easy way to think about this is as follows. Copilot is a $30-per-seat subscription that, prior to the MAI launch, was running on top of someone else's expensive AI model by default. Every prompt costs Microsoft money to process, and multiplied across hundreds of millions of Office users, that bill adds up quickly.
Owning the model instead of renting it changes the equation entirely. Microsoft doesn't need MAI to win over every customer. It just needs MAI to be good enough for everyday spreadsheet formulas and email drafts, at a fraction of the cost.
That is the ROI story. Microsoft won’t win an AI arms race on raw intelligence, but it can compete more efficiently by converting a rented cost center into owned infrastructure.
Microsoft Uses MAI to Strengthen Its AI Competitive Moat
Microsoft chief executive officer (CEO) Satya Nadella has reportedly said he feared Microsoft becoming "the next IBM." By that, he meant a company that let someone else own the most important layer of technology. MAI is Microsoft's answer to that fear.
Instead of a single point of AI dependency, Microsoft now runs a three-way hedge. It holds a stake in OpenAI, embeds Anthropic's Claude in Copilot, and increasingly leans on its own models where the economics make sense. That flexibility is arguably a bigger moat than any one model's benchmark score.
It also insulates Microsoft from a ticking clock. Microsoft's current discounted OpenAI pricing won't last forever, and that deal isn't set to expire until 2032. Building a credible in-house alternative now gives Microsoft leverage in any future renegotiation rather than leaving it stuck paying whatever OpenAI or Anthropic decides to charge.
The Bear Case: Risks to Microsoft's AI Strategy
Before getting too bullish, a few caveats are worth weighing. This shift is still incremental, and Microsoft hasn't published any timeline for expanding it further. Most Copilot workloads still run on outside models today.
There's also a quality question. Microsoft's own materials frame MAI as matching prior-generation Anthropic models, not necessarily the current large language models (LLMs). If MAI-powered features feel noticeably worse, customer goodwill could take a hit that outweighs the cost savings.
What It Means for OpenAI and Anthropic
This is a warning shot worth watching. Anthropic filed confidentially for an IPO in June, and OpenAI is reportedly preparing a similar filing. Their biggest enterprise distribution partner is now also a competitor, building cheaper in-house alternatives.
That doesn't mean OpenAI or Anthropic are in immediate trouble. Both still handle the bulk of Copilot's AI traffic, and Microsoft has made it clear that it isn't ending either partnership. But the "picks and shovels" trade just got a little more complicated for anyone betting purely on third-party AI labs staying indispensable.
Microsoft Stock Rebounds After Hitting a 52-Week Low
Microsoft hit a 52-week low in late June. The 10% bounce off that level isn’t a sign that everything is perfect, but it does suggest that investors are leaning into the stock’s value proposition.
At around 22x forward earnings, Microsoft is trading at a discount to the S&P 500 and to its own history. An argument could be made that MSFT wasn’t overvalued when the sell-off began in November, and there’s ample reason to believe it’s undervalued now. The relative strength indicator reached oversold territory when MSFT bottomed in June.
But a larger story comes from analysts and institutions. The MSFT consensus price target of $559.84 is approximately 45% below its recent trading range. Plus, out of 48 analysts tracked by MarketBeat, 41 give MSFT a Buy rating, and seven rate it as a Hold. Analysts notoriously don’t like to be wrong, which may explain why some have trimmed their price targets, but overall sentiment remains bullish.
The same cautious optimism can be found in its institutional ownership. There's no question that buying has slowed in the first two quarters of the year. But buying still outpaces selling, and with MSFT at 22x earnings, this could be an attractive target for money that hasn’t left the market and is looking for growth in the second half.
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More Reading from MarketBeat.com
Delta vs. United: Which Airline Is Better Built for Higher Fuel Costs?
Written by Chris Markoch. Originally Published: 7/18/2026.
Key Points
- Delta Air Lines and United Airlines both absorbed sharply higher jet fuel costs this quarter, but Delta's earnings and margins held up better than United's.
- Delta's Monroe Energy refinery and hedging gains provided more structural fuel-cost protection than United's liquidity-based approach of raising cash reserves.
- Both airlines successfully raised ticket prices to offset fuel inflation, with Delta achieving comparable unit-revenue growth while expanding capacity far less than United.
- Special Report: The company SpaceX cannot operate without
Airline stocks’ sensitivity to jet fuel prices is tested whenever fuel spikes. In 2026, fuel costs are testing every airline's balance sheet. This quarter, both Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) and United Airlines (NYSE: UAL) passed the test on paper. But they passed it in very different ways, and the difference matters more than the headline numbers.
Delta's adjusted fuel price rose to $3.93 a gallon, up 75% year over year. United's was worse at $4.19 a gallon, up nearly 80%. Neither number is small. United took a significant year-over-year hit to adjusted earnings per share (EPS) and now expects almost $6 billion in incremental fuel expense for full-year 2026, up from its original budget.
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Click here to get the name and ticker of this AI stockThose are real data points that investors shouldn’t dismiss as quarterly noise. The question is which airline has the structural tools to keep passing those costs through to ticket prices without losing the traveler.
How Higher Jet Fuel Costs Are Impacting Delta and United
As noted above, United's adjusted EPS fell 48.6% year-over-year, from $3.87 to $1.99. Delta's adjusted EPS fell 26%, from $2.12 to $1.56. The same pattern was evident in margin compression. United's adjusted pre-tax margin fell just over six points, from 11% to 4.8%. Delta fell four points, from 11.7% to 7.7%. Delta's earnings base shrank by a smaller proportion, even though both carriers faced comparable fuel inflation.
To be fair, not all of the weakness in United’s EPS and margin numbers was due to fuel costs. The company absorbed $184 million in one-time labor contract charges this quarter, versus $561 million a year ago.
Delta's Fuel Hedging Strategy Vs. United's Liquidity Approach
At the crux of the "built for higher fuel costs" question is the strategy of fuel hedging. Most U.S. major airlines walked away from large-scale fuel hedging years ago. Unlike European carriers such as Air France-KLM (OTCMKTS: AFLYY) or Ryanair (NASDAQ: RYAAY), which routinely lock in 70%–90% of fuel needs through derivative contracts extending a year or more out, U.S. legacy carriers have largely stopped using the strategy.
Industry reporting has pegged the impact of that exposure, and it explains the problem well. A 1-cent move in jet fuel can cost a major U.S. carrier roughly $50 million a year, with no derivative book absorbing the blow.
Delta is the partial exception because it owns Monroe Energy, a Trainer, Pennsylvania refinery that supplies a meaningful share of its jet fuel needs. Third-party refinery sales hit $2.09 billion this quarter, up 83% year over year, and Delta credits the refinery with an 11-cents-per-gallon benefit this quarter, including a 5-cent hit from a temporary outage.
Delta's earnings report showed $301 million in mark-to-market hedge adjustments and settlements this quarter alone. That's not the 80%+ coverage ratios you see at Ryanair or Air France-KLM, but it's meaningfully more structural protection than a pure spot-market buyer.
United's approach is based on liquidity.
Management raised $3.7 billion in new liquidity through private bank transactions this quarter, explicitly described as "low-cost insurance" against a further oil spike.
Per sources, United has also secured select fuel supply contracts that limit some exposure, but these reportedly fall well short of the large-scale, derivative-based hedging programs that European carriers or Delta's refinery model provide.
Can Delta and United Pass Higher Fuel Costs to Travelers?
Rising jet fuel costs only matter if passengers aren’t willing to pay. So far, that hasn’t been the case. United grew capacity 3.5% year over year while still pushing adjusted unit revenue (TRASM) up 12.1%. Delta grew capacity roughly 1% while pushing TRASM up 12.4%.
Delta is generating comparable unit-revenue growth on a fraction of United's capacity growth—a tighter, lower-risk version of the same pricing story. United is growing into demand more aggressively, which raises the upside if travel stays strong, and the downside if it doesn't.
Why Travel Demand Remains Strong Despite Higher Airfares
Both United and Delta cited increases in premium and economy/main-cabin demand. United's Basic Economy revenue rose 11%, and its overall economy-cabin unit revenue rose 12%. That was the airline’s second consecutive quarter of positive economy growth after a long soft patch. Delta's main cabin ticket revenue rose 8%, also its second straight quarter of positive main-cabin growth, while premium ticket revenue rose 17%.
At first glance, that pattern looks contradictory. The broader travel narrative through 2025 and into 2026 has been a "K-shaped" split: strong premium demand alongside a documented pullback in budget-conscious leisure travel, with ultra-low-cost carriers absorbing the brunt of that softness. If the price-sensitive traveler is genuinely pulling back across the industry, why are Delta and United both showing their cheapest cabins turning positive at the same time?
It may come down to a share shift rather than a demand surge. Neither Delta nor United built its brand around the price-sensitive flyer, but both have spent recent years building lower-tier fare products. United’s Basic Economy and Delta's comparable main-cabin fares are designed to compete for that traveler when needed.
As ultra-low-cost carriers cut capacity or struggle with their own economics, some of that traffic doesn't vanish. It shifts, "below the line," to a legacy carrier's cheapest available seat. That would reconcile positive economy-cabin growth at Delta and United with a well-documented pullback at the dedicated budget carriers.
Which Airline Is Better Positioned for Higher Fuel Costs?
Warren Buffett has been one of the most outspoken critics of airline stocks. Buffett’s argument comes down to high operating costs outweighing travel demand, which can be fickle. But every rule has occasional exceptions. In 2026, the airline industry is having a moment where, for now, math is working in its favor.
That doesn’t mean this time is different. It just means that there’s an opportunity for growth despite higher jet fuel prices. That is, as long as travelers are willing to absorb the higher costs.
If stock price growth is the only consideration, both UAL and DAL are attractive targets. In fact, an argument could be made that United has more short-term upside. But for an investor looking for long-term growth, Delta’s hedging strategy should do a better job of protecting its margins. Plus, DAL's dividend increased about 15% (from $0.1875 to $0.2150 per share) and will be paid on July 30, 2026, to shareholders of record as of July 9.
More Reading from MarketBeat.com
AI’s Power Crunch Fuels a Pivot for These 2 Oilfield Stocks
Written by Jeffrey Neal Johnson. Originally Published: 7/16/2026.
Key Points
- SLB and Liberty Energy are forming a strategic alliance to provide modular infrastructure and power generation for data centers.
- Behind-the-meter power could help data center developers move faster when grid interconnection timelines are too long.
- Investors may need to weigh the companies’ AI power opportunity against continued cyclicality in their core oilfield services businesses.
- Special Report: The company SpaceX cannot operate without
The physical constraints of artificial intelligence (AI) are no longer limited by silicon or compute capacity. Today, the single bottleneck constraining global technology expansion is electricity. Hyperscale data centers require staggering amounts of continuous power, and national utility grids lack the infrastructure to deliver gigawatt-scale loads on the timelines technology developers demand. Grid interconnection queues often stretch for years, forcing tech giants to seek immediate alternatives outside the traditional utility framework.
This structural challenge has activated an entirely unexpected sector. Legacy oilfield service providers are increasingly stepping in to fill the capacity gap, repurposing existing fossil fuel hardware to deliver modular natural gas power directly to data center sites. Investors watching this shift are seeing a rare moment in which heavy industrial assets are becoming primary enablers of next-generation technology.
Drilling for Data Center Solutions
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Click here to get the name and ticker of this AI stockThe July 2026 strategic alliance between SLB (NYSE: SLB) and Liberty Energy (NYSE: LBRT) illustrates this fundamental market shift. By combining modular infrastructure with integrated natural gas power generation, SLB and Liberty Energy are positioning themselves as critical capacity providers for the technology sector. The partnership bridges the gap between compute infrastructure and immediate power generation, creating a non-cyclical revenue stream that equity markets have yet to fully digest.
Rather than viewing SLB and Liberty Energy strictly as traditional upstream oilfield operators, market participants should begin evaluating them as essential infrastructure providers for the artificial intelligence ecosystem. This pivot offers a compelling blueprint for how legacy energy expertise can help solve immediate macroeconomic bottlenecks.
Behind-the-Meter Economics Take Charge
To understand the economic significance of this partnership, investors should examine the mechanics of behind-the-meter power.
Generating electricity behind the meter means producing power on-site, completely independent of the traditional utility transmission grid. For a data center developer, this eliminates multi-year delays waiting for utility lines to be built and approved by local regulators.
SLB brings deep project execution capabilities and prefabricated modular infrastructure to the table. The company has already shipped more than 1.3 gigawatts of infrastructure for data center projects since April 2024. Management expects cumulative global deliveries to exceed two gigawatts by the end of 2026. This is not speculative research and development; it is an active, monetized pipeline.
Liberty Energy provides the power generation systems and intelligent power controls through its Liberty Power Innovations arm. The company targets roughly three gigawatts of power projects by 2029.
The underlying margin tailwind for this venture rests on feedstock economics. North America has an abundance of structurally cheap natural gas.
Using this localized and inexpensive fuel source to run modular turbines makes the solution offered by SLB and Liberty Energy economically attractive relative to grid-tied utility power, while also bypassing bureaucratic utility timelines.
Mispriced Multiples and Cash Flow Visibility
Despite this strategic pivot toward secular growth, the market continues to misprice energy service companies. Institutional capital still largely treats them as cyclical fossil-fuel operators rather than as emerging technology infrastructure plays. SLB currently trades near $47, with a market capitalization of roughly $70.13 billion.
SLB operates with a trailing price-to-earnings ratio of 20.49 and a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 18.13. Backed by solid operating cash flow of $4.65 per share, SLB supports a reliable 2.52% dividend yield. While SLB trades at a premium valuation relative to legacy peers like Baker Hughes (NASDAQ: BKR) and Halliburton (NYSE: HAL), the stock remains heavily tied to international rig counts and Middle East capital expenditures rather than its digital and new energy initiatives.
Liberty Energy presents a more complex valuation puzzle for fundamental investors. Priced near $24.50 with a $4 billion market capitalization, Liberty Energy trades at a trailing price-to-earnings ratio of 27.14. Its forward price-to-earnings ratio is heavily distorted at 102.68. This multiple expansion reflects analysts modeling a sharp contraction in forward earnings per share, driven by immediate pricing headwinds in the core North American hydraulic fracturing market.
This valuation distortion creates an asymmetric opportunity. The market is pricing Liberty Energy strictly on the cyclical weakness of its legacy completion services, while largely discounting the high-margin cash flows emerging from its natural gas power generation pipeline. While awaiting broader market recognition, investors are supported by a newly authorized quarterly cash dividend of 9 cents per share, yielding 1.47%.
Seeing Past the Fracking Short Squeeze
Institutional sentiment across both equities reflects this fundamental misunderstanding of the evolving business models. SEC filings show a recent pattern of measured insider selling across both boards, including by Liberty Energy's chief financial officer, who divested shares in early July 2026.
Short sellers are heavily targeting Liberty Energy, driving the short interest ratio to bearish levels. Wall Street analysts remain focused on a 25% year-over-year decline in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization from Q1 2026. That decline was a direct result of the cooling domestic frac spread market, but it ignores the forward-looking growth engine. SLB faces a healthier short interest profile but continues to weather analyst price target reductions tied to global drilling fluctuations rather than its emerging capacity to power data centers.
When institutional capital stubbornly anchors to legacy metrics, observant investors gain a distinct advantage. The broader oilfield services sector is actively rerouting hardware to address technology infrastructure bottlenecks. Once revenue from behind-the-meter data center power eclipses traditional upstream operations, SLB and Liberty Energy will likely experience aggressive multiple expansion as the market correctly reclassifies them.
What to Watch as the Grid Transition Scales
The immediate proving ground for this fundamental thesis arrives with the upcoming Q2 2026 earnings reports. Liberty Energy takes the stage on July 22, 2026, followed closely by SLB on July 24, 2026.
Analysts will undoubtedly press management on core legacy operations, but the real value for forward-looking investors lies in commentary surrounding the new joint venture. Initial contract bookings, projected margins on power generation units, and the speed at which Liberty Energy can scale its three-gigawatt pipeline will determine how quickly institutional investors begin re-rating the stocks.
Investors monitoring the artificial intelligence infrastructure boom might consider adding SLB and Liberty Energy to their watchlists as earnings season approaches. Those comfortable absorbing near-term commodity cyclicality could view the current valuation distortion as an optimal entry point before Wall Street fully prices in the shift from fossil fuel service providers to gigawatt-scale technology vendors.
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