Let's Talk Money! with Joseph Hogue, CFA

📉 Has the Magnificent 7 become the Lag 7?

This may be bigger than you know! 🔍 One of the biggest investing stories of 2026 has been the rotation away from mega-cap tech. The Defiance Large Cap ex-Mag 7 ETF, so large companies minus the Mag 7 names [graph below], is up 14% year-to-date while the Roundhill Magnificent 7 ETF is down 5%. That's a massive gap—and a reminder that even great companies don't outperform forever. Investors are increasingly asking whether hundreds of billions in AI spending will generate enough returns to justify today's valuations, while money rotates into AI infrastructure, semiconductors, and other technology themes. A big part of the story here is soaring costs for data center components like memory chips [Micron's gain is Amazon's Pain]!

The Mag 7, one by one:
• Google (+13%) – Search concerns haven't disappeared, but Cloud and AI continue to strengthen the long-term story. Mostly a short-term sentiment issue and I still think the Waymo investment becomes a lottery ticket someday.
• Nvidia (+6%) – Still growing, but expectations became almost impossible to beat. Investors are demanding proof that AI spending remains sustainable. This may be the best upside case still as its GPUs still dominate data center buildouts.
• Apple (+5%) – A stable cash-flow machine, but slower innovation and AI questions have capped enthusiasm. Component costs, especially memory are eating into profitability which has always been Apple's strength.
• Amazon (+3%) – Strong cloud and advertising businesses, but heavy AI investment has investors waiting for higher profitability. Love Amazon but investors will have to see that cloud revenue become worth the spending before this one returns.
• Tesla (-7%) – EV competition and execution remain near-term headwinds, though autonomy could still reshape the long-term thesis. Is Musk too destracted now with SpaceX? - tell me what you think in the comments.
• Meta (-15%) – Advertising remains healthy, but investors are questioning whether massive AI and Reality Labs spending will produce adequate returns.
• Microsoft (-23%) – Perhaps the biggest surprise. The business remains exceptional, but after years of leadership, expectations simply became too high while investors reassess the payoff from enormous AI capital spending. It's really software here, does AI replace a lot of the core revenue for MSFT?

💡 My takeaway? I wouldn't abandon the Magnificent 7. These remain world-class businesses that will likely be core holdings for many long-term investors. But markets evolve. Leadership rotates. That's why portfolios also need exposure to the next growth themes rather than relying on yesterday's winners alone.

🎥 Tomorrow I'll break down 7 thematic ETFs that have beaten the market by 72% over the last year—and why they may deserve a place alongside, not instead of, the Mag 7. These are the major growth themes and give you exposure to the next trends in the market!

👇 Which Magnificent 7 stock are you most bullish on for the next 5 years... and which one worries you the most?

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1 week ago | [YT] | 55

Let's Talk Money! with Joseph Hogue, CFA

🔥 Super important chart for SpaceX (SPCX) investors showing the timeline for lockup - when insiders and early investors are allowed to sell their shares into the market. This was more than 95% of SpaceX pre-IPO shares, representing roughly 7.8 billion shares. Obviously not all of these are going to flood the market when the lockup expires (Musk holds 4.8 billion shares and isn't likely to sell) and the lockup schedule is spread across more than 180 days... BUT it still represents a potential wave of selling that could hit the share price.

🚀 On the flip-side, we're seeing upwards of $15 billion in buying in this first month as hedge funds and ETFs buy the stock to track their index. With immediate inclusion into the CRSP, Russell and Nasdaq indexes... if these ETFs don't buy SpaceX, they run the risk of underperforming their index (which can get a manager fired faster than anything).

📉 For long-term investors, doesn't really matter. Just expect some ups and downs as insiders and pre-IPO are allowed to sell their shares over next six months. IF YOU GET NERVOUS about a drop though, be aware of these dates. With the stock doing so well, we're likely to see that 10% conditional tranche of shares unlocked as well (these are unlocked to sell if the stock closes at least 30% above the IPO price - so above $175 per share, for 5 of the 10 trading days ending on the Q2 earnings release date.

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3 weeks ago | [YT] | 69

Let's Talk Money! with Joseph Hogue, CFA

💰 366% Return in 2 Weeks! Where are the trolls that said CPB was dead money when I recommended it two weeks ago? Stock is now up 13% beating the S&P 500 by 15% and the options strategy I recommended using (June12 $22 calls minus $23 calls for $0.18) is now at a 366% return just hours before closing out!

🔥 If you are not using options to leverage your returns, protect your money and create income - you're missing out on one of your best tools as an investor! Still 9 hours left in relaunch discount, save $150 off the Ultimate Options Course. Get everything you need to get started plus 14-day money back trial - this course will pay for itself! mystockmarketbasics.com/optionsave150

Check out the video where I recommended Campbell's and the option trade or check out Dan's email, a long-time citizen of the BOW TIE NATION that made over $27,000 on CPB in less than two weeks! https://youtu.be/sAPcwIN1eS0

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1 month ago | [YT] | 102

Let's Talk Money! with Joseph Hogue, CFA

BOW TIE NATION LIVE!!!!
When do you want to do livestreams? Thinking once a week to do news and stocks I'm watching and answering questions.
👉 What day and time (eastern time zone) works best for you on livestreams? Let me know in comments.

1 month ago | [YT] | 43

Let's Talk Money! with Joseph Hogue, CFA

One of my favorite channels! Talking to ‪@MarketBeatMedia‬ about catching a falling knife investors stocks and what to do instead along with 5 stocks beating the trend in their industries! Check it out!

3 months ago | [YT] | 11

Let's Talk Money! with Joseph Hogue, CFA

BOW TIE NATION! I need your input! Thinking about posting videos later in the day (right now 9am on Monday, 1145am eastern Wed and Fri). Have seen other investing channels going later and want to know when you watch YouTube. Let me know when you watch and what time I should post... bonus question (answer in comments) should I post a video on the weekend?
⚠️ Heads up, gonna be posting Friday 2/20 video later @345pm eastern so be watching for that!

4 months ago | [YT] | 42

Let's Talk Money! with Joseph Hogue, CFA

🚨🎉Answering your investing questions! I'm teaming up with ‪@BusinessWithBrian‬
and will be selecting a couple of your questions to answer in a video on his channel within the next week or so!




We will be talking about investing, personal finance, and more.



Drop your question in the comment section below!💰📈

5 months ago | [YT] | 246

Let's Talk Money! with Joseph Hogue, CFA

🤔Help me out Bow Tie Nation! Do you want to see more of the type of video published today (and linked below)? I'm covering 3-5 news articles that catch my attention and the stocks you should buy on each. Check out the video and let me know if you like the format or want something else.


https://youtu.be/aYIdj6NOGqU

6 months ago | [YT] | 57

Let's Talk Money! with Joseph Hogue, CFA

💵 If you didn't watch our weekly Stock Market Update at least halfway through last Monday, you would have missed a 12% boom in shares of LULU today. Back with a new update and stocks to watch every Monday 9am est before the market opens!

7 months ago | [YT] | 16

Let's Talk Money! with Joseph Hogue, CFA

🚨 The AI Chip War Is Changing — And So Are the Winners 🚨

Nvidia’s stock (NVDA) is up an unbelievable 1,300% in just five years. That is a fourteen-fold return, the kind of performance most investors never experience in a lifetime. But when a company grows revenue nearly 600% in under three years, it does more than attract headlines—it attracts competitors. And right now, every major tech company on earth is quietly building something designed to chip away at Nvidia’s dominance.

🧠 This isn’t a doomsday message about Nvidia collapsing. Nvidia remains an exceptional company. Instead, this is about understanding how the battlefield has changed and why the next 10X stock will almost certainly come from one of several emerging players in the new AI chip ecosystem—an ecosystem that now looks very different from even two years ago.

To understand where this market is heading, you first need to understand how Nvidia became the undisputed king of AI. More than a decade ago, AI researchers discovered something surprising: the same GPUs used for gaming happened to excel at the parallel math operations required in training AI models. Nvidia not only dominated gaming GPUs, but also provided the CUDA software layer, which became the default programming environment for AI developers.

That combination—powerful GPUs and a software ecosystem that locked developers in—gave Nvidia an enormous head start. When ChatGPT unleashed the AI boom in 2022, Nvidia was in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Revenue, which barely moved before 2022, exploded soon after—up nearly 600% in less than three years.

Because its chips were so uniquely capable, Nvidia could charge $30,000 to $40,000 for a single GPU, and up to $3 million for a full rack of its Blackwell platform. With those economics, Nvidia posts operating margins around 59%, meaning it keeps more profit per dollar of sales than nearly any semiconductor company in history. AMD, by comparison, keeps only about $0.09 of profit per $1 of revenue.

But no competitive advantage lasts forever. And the AI chip landscape is rapidly splintering.

⚔️ The AI Chip War Has Split Into Four New Battlefronts

For years, Nvidia thrived because AI workloads revolved around training—the process of teaching massive models using huge datasets. That phase demands the most powerful hardware, and Nvidia’s GPUs were unmatched.

But once a model is trained, the economics of AI change completely. The everyday use of AI—so-called inference—happens billions of times a day across millions of devices. Those workloads don’t require expensive, ultra-flexible GPUs. Companies don’t want to spend $40,000 per chip just to run routine queries or generate simple outputs.

🔥 As a result, companies are now building specialized chips designed for specific tasks. This is where the competitive landscape becomes far more interesting.

1. ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits)

These are custom-built AI chips designed for efficiency rather than flexibility. While a GPU can do almost anything, an ASIC can do one thing extremely well—and far cheaper. Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and even OpenAI are now building their own ASICs. Broadcom plays a unique role manufacturing and designing many of these chips for multiple companies.

ASICs represent the most direct challenge to Nvidia’s dominance in inference, where cost efficiency matters far more than raw power.

2. FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays)

Think of FPGAs as configurable “Lego block” chips. They are not as fast as ASICs or Nvidia’s GPUs, but they are dramatically more adaptable. Companies can reconfigure them for new workloads without designing an entirely new chip.

AMD leads here thanks to its Xilinx acquisition. Intel is also attempting a comeback with its Altera business.

3. Edge AI and NPUs (Neural Processing Units)

This is one of the most important shifts in AI. Instead of every AI request being processed in a distant data center, more AI will run directly on your device—your phone, your car, your laptop, your wearable.

Running AI locally reduces power costs, cuts latency, and avoids expensive GPU-based cloud costs. Qualcomm is currently the strongest player in this area, but AMD, Intel, Apple, Nvidia, and Google are all investing heavily.

4. Training GPUs

Nvidia still dominates training. It shipped six million Blackwell GPUs this year alone and has another fourteen million on order. The next-generation Rubin architecture arrives in 2026. AMD is making real progress with its MI series, winning deals with OpenAI and Oracle, but Nvidia remains the standard.

📉Understanding these four battlegrounds helps investors see where the next generation of winners is forming.

Alphabet (GOOGL) has surprised the market with its TPU line, now on its seventh generation. Its partnership with Anthropic and ongoing discussions with Meta show just how serious Google is about becoming a major chip supplier.

Amazon (AMZN) is investing tens of billions into Trainium for training and Inferentia for inference. Some AWS workloads now run entirely without Nvidia GPUs—an unprecedented development.

Broadcom (AVGO) is positioned better than almost anyone because it builds accelerators for multiple companies. It does not need to pick a winner in the chip war; whoever wins, Broadcom benefits.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is no longer the underdog. Its MI450 is gaining traction, and its open-source approach appeals to developers who don’t want to be locked into Nvidia’s CUDA ecosystem. AMD is also strong in CPUs and expanding fast into Edge AI.

Qualcomm (QCOM) may be the most overlooked contender. If AI becomes heavily device-based, Qualcomm’s experience with mobile NPUs gives it an enormous opportunity.

https://youtu.be/fOR5wBHpXeo

7 months ago | [YT] | 24