Our new AI trade is exploding in value. Are you profiting?

Today’s issue in preview:

• Our new AI trade is exploding in value. Are you profiting?

• Massive government support will drive a super boom in this industry. How to invest with Trump heavily on your side

• How to invest in one of Elon Musk’s favorite new technologies

• Our extraordinary track record gets even better: Our thematic trades in Battery Tech, Semiconductor Equipment, Critical Metals, Solar Energy, and Machine Sensory Perception produce more profits.

Our new AI trade is exploding in value. Are you profiting?

Credit: Alexander Sikov

Over the past 39 days, the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) has advanced a stunning 51.6% to reach new all-time highs.

It’s one of the largest short-term moves we’ve ever seen from a big ETF that holds many big companies, such as Nvidia (NVDA).

It’s also a huge validation of our longstanding advice to ignore the AI bears… and stay long AI infrastructure stocks.

And while high-profile semiconductor designers and makers get most of the press, don’t forget about our recommendation to own “semiconductor equipment” leaders as well.

In late 2022 – before ChatGPT was released to the public – I told friends and colleagues that AI was about to explode into public awareness. Shortly after, AI did just that, marking the beginning of one of the biggest investment themes of our lives… one that has produced dozens of 100%+ stock winners.

Now, more than three years into this huge boom, big tech firms Meta (META), Google (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), OpenAI, and Microsoft (MSFT) are racing to build the world’s best AI models and infrastructure. They’ve already spent more than a trillion dollars. This year, they are on pace to spend over $700 billion on AI infrastructure, with more than $3 trillion expected to follow. It’s the largest collective investment effort of all time.

During this boom, many AI skeptics have said big tech’s spending is madness. It won’t generate the revenues and profits required to justify it. Once the world realizes this is the case, GDP growth will stall, and the stock market will crash.

For the past three years, I’ve urged investors to ignore the AI bears and stay long the AI infrastructure megatrend. This advice has been very useful. On April 9, I highlighted how AI infrastructure stocks of many kinds have soared to all-time highs.

This week, the bears took another beating as SMH advanced to all-time highs. This ETF is one of the most prominent embodiments of the AI infrastructure super boom that so many people have been on the wrong side of. It has demolished the “AI bust” thesis by soaring 155% over the past year.

Plus, one of the unsung, under-the-radar heroes of the AI super boom – the semiconductor equipment group – broke out to new highs this week.

Semiconductor equipment makers play a special role in the AI megatrend. They do not build semiconductors themselves. Instead, they provide a wide range of services and equipment that enable semiconductor production. They sell fabrication machines, chip components, and provide testing services, among other vital services that make the semiconductor industry go. They sell picks and shovels to the companies making picks and shovels.

No semiconductor equipment industry, no AI boom.

The three U.S. leaders in semiconductor equipment are Applied Materials (AMAT), Lam Research (LRCX), and KLA (KLAC). Each firm holds a dominant role in the AI semiconductor equipment industry, is enjoying terrific revenue growth, and is experiencing a strong uptrend. They are all up more than 100% over the past year.

On March 20, I detailed how these three stocks were holding up well during the Epic Fury-induced market decline. This “relative strength” was a bullish sign. It was a “tell” from the market… that the fundamental forces driving these stocks are very strong. And this week, those fundamental forces drove the semi equipment group to new all-time highs. They are up an average of 22.7% since our March 20 note (an annualized pace of 172%).

In other words, it’s good to be on the receiving end of the largest investment boom of all time. We remain bullish on the semiconductor equipment theme.

Massive government support will drive a super boom in this industry. How to invest with Trump heavily on your side

Credit: William_Potter

After trading in a two-month sideways consolidation, the critical metals theme is breaking out and poised to run higher. The Van Eck Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF (REMX) just registered a new high.

Keep this theme on your radar… and perhaps your portfolio.

In a research note last June, I detailed the large financial opportunity related to such critical resources.

The megatrend thesis goes like this: President Donald Trump has staked his legacy and reputation on massively expanding U.S. manufacturing capacity. The Trump & Friends administration is working with business leaders to invest trillions to pursue this goal.

Apple (AAPL), for example, has committed to invest $600 billion in U.S.-based manufacturing over the next four years. Nvidia (NVDA) says it will invest $500 billion in U.S.-based manufacturing over the next four years.

However, any plan to increase domestic manufacturing capacity must overcome a big problem: We don’t have the critical resources to build the required infrastructure.

We don’t have the copper, iron ore, rare earths, lithium, antimony, nickel, and other vital building blocks required to build all those data centers… all those factories… all those robots…. all those electric grids… all those power plants… and so on.

To make matters worse, we also lack the refining, smelting, and processing facilities needed to turn the raw forms of those resources into ready-to-use end products. We rely on China for a lot of that.

It’s as if we very much want to build a big house… but we don’t have the lumber, screws, or nails we need to get the job done.

Solving the big “critical resources problem” is possible… and it is an enormous financial opportunity.

To ensure we have the critical resources to build trillions of dollars in infrastructure, the U.S. government will change any law, kill any regulation, and write any check that will increase production and processing capacity.

This means that after more than 30 years of the U.S. government being hostile to domestic mines and mineral processing facilities, it is now supporting them. Trump can’t have his big manufacturing dream without them. This makes the U.S. a giant force in the global scramble to secure critical resources.

Mining investors and entrepreneurs are now operating in an incredible new era… one where the U.S. government is their best friend. It means the critical resource industry will generate dozens of huge stock market winners… helped massively by its powerful, big-spending partner.

This industry is also enjoying a powerful demand wave driven by booming high-tech applications such as robots, satellites, drones, and defense technology. Many high-tech industries consume huge and growing amounts of critical metals.

Over the past year, I’ve highlighted critical metals firms Idaho Strategic Minerals (IDR), MP Materials (MP), USA Rare Earth (USAR), US Antimony (UAMY), Perpetua Resources (PPTA), Almonty Industries (ALM), and Sunrise Energy Metals (SREMF) as ways to benefit from this megatrend. Diversified one-click ways to invest in this megatrend include REMX and the Sprott Rare Earths Ex-China ETF (REXC). The latter fund owns a basket of critical metal firms not based or operating in China.

As you can see in the one-year chart below, this trend is moving. REMX had a strong 2025, spent time consolidating at year’s end, and just broke out to a new high. The strike on Iran drove this price action by reminding us that resources are scarce and often the cause for conflict.

Given this price action, I stand by my 2025 thesis that I’ve repeated many times: Partnering with the U.S. government to increase domestic and friendly-country supplies of critical resources will prove to be one of the most lucrative financial activities of this decade.

How to invest in one of Elon Musk’s favorite new technologies

Credit: SweetBunFactory

It’s not getting much press, but the boom in machine sensory perception we forecasted is here. Opportunity is ahead.

In January 2026, Tesla announced it was ending production of Model S and Model X vehicles and converting its Fremont, Calif., factory to produce Optimus humanoid robots (go here for how to invest). Musk is also aiming to produce 10 million units annually at Gigafactory Texas.

In other words, the world’s most visionary and serially successful technology entrepreneur is betting big on robots.

Regular readers know robotics is one of our top investment themes for the next decade. It is a giant, multi-faceted theme that will forever change the world. It will yield greater factory automation, surgical robots, autonomous vehicles, autonomous air taxis, humanoid worker robots, and much more.

This megatrend is moving rapidly.

In April, Meta (META) acquired Assured Robot Intelligence (ARI), a robotics startup. Venture capital investment in robotics now tops $20 billion annually (vs $13.8 billion last year). We’ve seen humanoid robot maker Figure raise $1 billion in a single funding round. We’ve seen Amazon deploy its millionth robot.

On October 21, we detailed how “machine sensory perception” is one of our highest-conviction subthemes within the robotics megatrend.

For robots to be safe and useful, they must be able to sense their surroundings. That’s why one of this trend’s most promising angles is machine sensory perception – robots seeing, feeling, and sensing. This field includes cameras, lasers, heat sensors, force sensors, and magnetic field sensors. Companies in machine sensory perception are poised to enjoy a huge tailwind. Demand for their products and services is set to stay high for decades.

Plus, well-positioned machine sensory equipment makers are “picks and shovels” plays on the robotics boom. They are not bets on who will make the best robots. Instead, they sell their products and services to numerous robot makers – adding a layer of safety and stability to their business models.

We recommended Analog Devices (ADI) as a leading machine vision play on Dec. 18, 2025. Since that recommendation, ADI is up 52% and recently broke out to a new one-year high. We also recommended Sensata (ST), which is up 37% since then and recently hit a new one-year high. Cognex (CGNX) is up 48% since our October note and recently hit a new one-year high.

Two other machine sensory perception players with growing businesses that could soon join ADI, CGNX, and ST on the new highs list:

Ouster (OUST) is a $1.8 billion market cap high-growth LiDAR company that reported earnings this week.

LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is a machine-sensory technology that creates 3D models of environments. It works by firing rapid laser pulses from a scanner towards surfaces. The sensor measures the “time of flight,” or the time it takes for each pulse to reflect off objects and return. By processing this data, LiDAR calculates precise distances to create detailed maps and models. It is widely used for topographic mapping and autonomous vehicle navigation.

Ouster reported 49% growth year over year to $49 million in the quarter, achieving its 13^th straight quarter of revenue growth. The biggest highlight was the launch of Rev8, which OUST has called the “world’s first native color LIDAR.” This is a big breakthrough in the LiDAR world. Rev8 also doubles the range and resolution of prior models and has attracted interest from firms such as Google (GOOGL), Volvo, Skydio, and many others.

Aeva Technologies (AEVA) is a $1 billion company that can be considered a “high risk, high reward” investment in machine sensory perception.

AEVA operates in 4D LiDAR, which is a far more complex and advanced operation technology than traditional LiDAR. It detects both position and velocity, allowing robots and vehicles to react much more quickly and accurately to moving objects in their environment. Nvidia (NVDA) has selected AEVA as the reference LiDAR sensor for its DRIVE Hyperion autonomous vehicle platform.

Every robot deployed – whether it’s one of Amazon’s one million warehouse machines, a Figure humanoid on a factory floor, or an autonomous vehicle – needs to see, sense, and perceive the world around it. Without that capability, the robot is useless. ADI, ST, OUST, and AEVA are the picks and shovels of that buildout.

By making an investment in this area, you are not trying to pick the biggest hit robot maker. You’re selling critical components all manufacturers must buy. This makes the machine sensory perception theme a great way to invest in the robotics megatrend.

Market Notes

• The bull market in solar energy, which we’ve highlighted many times, continues to run higher. The Invesco Solar ETF (TAN) reached a new one-year high today.

• The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG) jumped 5% this morning to reach a multi-week high.

• Our recommendation to invest in the robotics megatrend continues to generate returns. The ROBO Global Robotics and Automation ETF (ROBO) reached a new all-time high today.

• Tech supergiant Apple (AAPL) reached a new all-time high today.

• Giant lithium miners Albermarle (ALB) and SQM (SQM) rallied to new one-year highs today. This is making our advice to invest in the Battery Tech boom a winner.

• America’s largest billboard advertising firm Lamar Advertising (LAMR) jumped 4.9% today to reach an all-time high. As we detailed on May 4, this is a bullish economic signal.

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Regards,

Brian Hunt
Editor, Money & Megatrends

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