Sponsored by
It’s Sunday.
For those that missed it, I published my first-half 2026 portfolio review for Carbon Capital.
The post walks through every single one of my holdings, performance since launch, how much cash has been deployed, and where I may make changes from here.
The portfolio remains intentionally defensive, with a focus on high-quality businesses trading at discounts to their own history.
You can read the full review here:
Key Data Bites Over The Last Week:
Bloomberg shared 10 stocks to watch in Q3.
Apple is expanding its Broadcom partnership in $30B deal.
SK Hynix raised $26.5B in U.S. listing.
Microsoft’s Xbox to cut 20% of staff.
Raymond James sees SpaceX’s valuation climbing above $10T.
Blue Origin is raising $10B at $130B valuation.
U.S. states are seeking $1.4T in penalties against Meta.
Micron to invest $250B in the U.S. through 2035.
David Tepper returned 32% in first half of year with 40% cash.
In today’s newsletter:
🏋️♀️ Micron Carried The S&P 500
📈 Best Stocks H1 2026
📉 Worst Stocks H1 2026
💰 Nvidia’s Valuation
🇺🇸 Countries With Most Millionaires
Let’s jump right in.
📣 Together With Greenfield Robotics
His Father Got Parkinson's. He Built Robots Instead.
Clint Brauer grew up on his family's Kansas farm. His dad sprayed the same chemicals every American farmer sprays. Years later: Parkinson's. Clint walked away from a tech career to build a different way. Today his company, Greenfield Robotics, runs a patented fleet of autonomous bots that slice weeds with centimeter precision, day or night, herbicide-free.
Greenfield is now opening shares to everyday investors under Reg A+. Reserve during Test the Waters and you lock in a 5% bonus that can grow to 20% the week the round goes live. The US has 250 million acres at stake.
Greenfield Robotics is Testing The Waters under tier 2 of Regulation A. No money or other consideration is being solicited, and if sent in response will not be accepted. No offer to buy the securities can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the offering statement filed by the company with the SEC has been qualified by the SEC. Any such offer may be withdrawn or revoked, without obligation or commitment of any kind, at any time before notice of acceptance given after the date of qualification. An indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind. “Reserving” shares is simply an indication of interest. There is no binding commitment for investors that reserve shares in this manner to ultimately invest and purchase the shares reserved of the company, or to purchase any shares of the company whatsoever.
Chips did most of the heavy lifting.
The S&P 500 rose nearly 10% in the first half of 2026, but the gains were extremely concentrated.
According to Jefferies, just 10 stocks accounted for 78% of the index’s return.
Micron led the group, contributing 17% after surging on AI memory demand.
The rest of the biggest contributors were mostly tied to AI infrastructure, semiconductors, and the broader chip supply chain.
A strong first half for the market was really a massive first half for a narrow group of AI-linked stocks.
The market’s biggest winners were not random.
Now that the first half of the year is behind us, we have a clearer picture of which stocks are shaping up to have the strongest year.
Unsurprisingly, the S&P 500’s top performers were concentrated in tech and AI-linked hardware.
Sandisk led the entire index with an 858% gain.
Micron followed with a 304% jump, while Intel rose 278% as investors grew more optimistic around CPU demand, foundry ambitions, and major industry partnerships.
For many of these stocks, the rally has been less about pure multiple expansion and more about investors pricing in much larger profit expectations.
AI is cutting both ways.
While hardware and memory stocks dominated the first-half leaderboard, several well-known software and services companies were hit hard.
Many of the biggest losers are facing questions about how AI could pressure their existing business models.
Intuit is the clearest example.
The stock fell 61% even as recent sales grew and forward earnings estimates moved higher, pushing its valuation to one of the lowest levels in years.
Other companies on the list are dealing with more traditional pressure, including weaker earnings, slower growth, or consumer headwinds.
The same AI trade that lifted one side of the market has punished the companies investors think it could disrupt.
Many people believe that Nvidia is expensive.
The opposite is closer to the truth.
After losing roughly $1T in market value since its May high, Nvidia now trades around 18x forward earnings, near its lowest valuation in a decade.
That puts the stock at a discount to both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100, even as Wall Street profit estimates continue to move higher.
The weakness is not coming from collapsing demand.
Nvidia still dominates the server GPU market and is expected to deliver some of the fastest growth in the S&P 500.
The pressure is coming from rotation, as investors shift toward memory, storage, and other semiconductor names that started the year with lower expectations.
Nvidia is still one of the biggest winners in AI, but it is no longer priced like the only one.
America dominates the millionaire map.
According to UBS’s latest Global Wealth Report, more than 57M people worldwide now have at least $1M in wealth, but the total is heavily concentrated.
The U.S. alone has 23.6M millionaires, roughly 41% of the global total and more than the next 11 countries combined.
China ranks second with 5.3M, showing how wide the gap remains.
The U.S. added more than 440K new millionaires in 2025, helped by strong equity markets, broad stock ownership, entrepreneurship, and homeownership.
Private wealth is still growing globally, but America remains in a league of its own.
📣 Presented By Greenfield Robotics
Physical AI is coming to agriculture.
Everyone talks about AI software. Few are paying attention to AI machines operating in the real world. Greenfield Robotics is building autonomous machines that remove weeds at commercial scale, targeting one of agriculture's largest recurring costs.
Greenfield Robotics is Testing The Waters under tier 2 of Regulation A. No money or other consideration is being solicited, and if sent in response will not be accepted. No offer to buy the securities can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the offering statement filed by the company with the SEC has been qualified by the SEC. Any such offer may be withdrawn or revoked, without obligation or commitment of any kind, at any time before notice of acceptance given after the date of qualification. An indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind. “Reserving” shares is simply an indication of interest. There is no binding commitment for investors that reserve shares in this manner to ultimately invest and purchase the shares reserved of the company, or to purchase any shares of the company whatsoever.
🍿 Viewer Dropoff↗ – Netflix viewers are increasingly abandoning shows after just one season.
🎛️ Model Swap↗ – Microsoft is starting to replace OpenAI and Anthropic models with its own in Excel and Outlook to cut AI costs.
🗑️ AI Unwind↗ – Hedge funds dumped chip stocks for the fourth straight week as the AI trade sold off.
🎰 Burry Bets↗ – Michael Burry bought FanDuel parent Flutter Entertainment and DraftKings, betting prediction-market risks will fade.
💵 Insider Rush↗ – A record number of tech stock insiders are buying their own shares in 2026.
🥊 Apple vs OpenAI↗ – Apple sued OpenAI alleging theft of trade secrets.
Notable Companies Reporting Earnings Week of July 12th, 2026:
Major Trades Published 7/6 - 7/10. Trades may be those of family members. [Source: Capitol Trades]
Buys
Maria Elvira Salazar (R)
Company: Brookfield Renewable Partners ($BEP)
Amount Purchased: $20K - $125K
Company: Salesforce ($CRM)
Amount Purchased: $15K - $50K
Sheldon Whitehouse (D)
Company: Coherent Corp ($COHR)
Amount Purchased: $15K - $50K
Sells
Maria Elvira Salazar (R)
Company: Biogen ($BIIB)
Amount Sold: $15K - $50K
Sheldon Whitehouse (D)
Company: Apple ($AAPL)
Amount Sold: $30K - $100K
Company: Nvidia ($NVDA)
Amount Sold: $15K - $50K
Major Trades Published 7/6 - 7/10
Buys
Netskope ($NTSK)
Insider: William Griffith (Director)
# of Shares Purchased: 610,291
$ Amount: $7,216,081
SEC Forms: [1]
Sells
Disclaimer: The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. All statements and expressions herein are the sole opinion of the author, paid advertiser, or partner and do not reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company.
Carbon Finance is a publisher of financial information, not an investment or financial advisor. We do not provide personalized or individualized investment advice or information that is tailored to the needs of any particular recipient.
The information contained on this website/newsletter has been crafted with the assistance of an AI language model to enhance the content of this newsletter. We have made efforts to ensure the quality and reliability of the information presented, but we cannot guarantee its absolute accuracy. Therefore, readers are advised to exercise their own judgment and seek additional sources if necessary.
THE INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THIS WEBSITE/NEWSLETTER IS NOT AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS INVESTMENT ADVICE, AND DOES NOT PURPORT TO BE AND DOES NOT EXPRESS ANY OPINION AS TO THE PRICE AT WHICH THE SECURITIES OF ANY COMPANY MAY TRADE AT ANY TIME. THE INFORMATION AND OPINIONS PROVIDED HEREIN SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN AS SPECIFIC ADVICE ON THE MERITS OF ANY INVESTMENT DECISION. INVESTORS SHOULD MAKE THEIR OWN INVESTIGATION AND DECISIONS REGARDING THE PROSPECTS OF ANY COMPANY DISCUSSED HEREIN BASED ON SUCH INVESTORS’ OWN REVIEW OF PUBLICLY AVAILABLE INFORMATION AND SHOULD NOT RELY ON THE INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN.
No statement or expression of opinion, or any other matter herein, directly or indirectly, is an offer or the solicitation of an offer to buy or sell the securities or financial instruments mentioned.
Any projections, market outlooks or estimates herein are forward looking statements and are inherently unreliable. They are based upon certain assumptions and should not be construed to be indicative of the actual events that will occur. Other events that were not taken into account may occur and may significantly affect the returns or performance of the securities discussed herein. The information provided herein is based on matters as they exist as of the date of preparation and not as of any future date, and the publisher undertakes no obligation to correct, update or revise the information in this document or to otherwise provide any additional material.
The publisher, its affiliates, and clients of the publisher or its affiliates may currently have long or short positions in the securities of the companies mentioned herein, or may have such a position in the future (and therefore may profit from fluctuations in the trading price of the securities). To the extent such persons do have such positions, there is no guarantee that such persons will maintain such positions.
Neither the publisher nor any of its affiliates accepts any liability whatsoever for any direct or consequential loss howsoever arising, directly or indirectly, from any use of the information contained herein.
This newsletter is sponsored by Greenfield Robotics. Sponsorship does not influence our editorial content. We do not endorse the sponsor’s products, services, or views, and we are not responsible or liable for any interaction or transaction between readers and the sponsor.
Some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that if you click on the link and purchase the item, we will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain our own.
By using the Site or any affiliated social media account, you are indicating your consent and agreement to this disclaimer. Unauthorized reproduction of this newsletter or its contents by photocopy, facsimile or any other means is illegal and punishable by law.
