Chris Reilly here...

As Executive Editor at RiskHedge, I’m lucky to have a front-row seat to what great investors like Stephen McBride and Chris Wood are thinking.

For example, exactly one year ago, right here in The Jolt, Stephen wrote what turned out to be the call of the year.

He predicted two lesser-known memory stocks—Micron Technology (MU) and SK Hynix—would become “two of the best-performing stocks of 2025” as investors realized continued progress in artificial intelligence (AI) is dependent on their technology.

The results?

• Micron closed 2025 as the #3 best-performing stock in the S&P 500… rising 240%.

• SK Hynix surged 275% on the Korea exchange.

Congrats if you pulled the trigger.

So, what’s Stephen thinking now for 2026?

• On our recent, private quarterly call for RiskHedge Reserve members, Stephen reminded everyone of the most important table in investing.

It shows the world’s largest companies by decade since 1980.

As you can see, every decade has a “dominant theme.”

When you get the dominant theme right and invest in it, you make a lot of money. Simple as that.

In the '80s, Japan dominated. The internet dominated the '90s. In the 2000s, a rapidly growing China consumed awesome amounts of raw materials, causing many commodity stocks to skyrocket.

And in the 2010s, smartphones and fast, high-quality internet gave rise to Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Meta Platforms (META).

• Let’s pull up the world’s top 10 companies right now in January 2026...

They are:

1. Nvidia

2. Alphabet

3. Apple

4. Microsoft

5. Amazon

6. Taiwan Semiconductor

7. Meta

8. Broadcom

9. Saudi Aramco

10. Tesla

We’re halfway through the decade, and eight of the top 10 are companies heavily involved in AI. The only exceptions are Saudi Aramco and Apple (AAPL).

AI chip kingpin Nvidia (NVDA), which Stephen first recommended in 2018, is #1.

Alphabet at #2 may be the overall AI leader.

Microsoft (MSFT) at #4 owns 49% of ChatGPT creator OpenAI.

Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) at #6 makes about 90% of the world’s most advanced computer chips. And so on.

Here’s Stephen:

It’s so very clear that the megatrend of this decade is AI.

I’m a big fan of keeping the main thing the main thing. And the main thing is still AI.

• So, what AI stocks should you buy today?

In his recent Disruption Investor issue, Stephen named four AI subsectors to focus on now:

1.  Power

AI data centers are the largest infrastructure buildout in modern history. In 2025 alone, big tech deployed more than $400 billion toward their production.

As these huge data centers come online, we need a way to power them. AI can’t wait five years for grid approvals, so the winners are the companies that can deliver energy quickly—especially through on-site power solutions.

1.  Cooling

Today’s chips run dramatically hotter than yesterday’s did. The fastest-growing slice of AI data-center spending is now going toward cooling and ventilation. The industry is transitioning to liquid-based cooling, a huge opportunity for investors.

1. Memory

This worked great in 2025, and it’ll work again in 2026.

A typical AI server chews through 8X more memory than a classic computer. On Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, 60% of manufacturing cost is on memory alone.

What’s more, memory is a bottleneck. AI chips can sit idle up to 90% of the time, just waiting for data.

1. Connectivity

Clusters of AI chips are no longer single-building warehouses. They’re multi-campus factories that must behave like one synchronized brain.

The industry is standardizing around light-based interconnect and “coherent clustering,” because copper wiring isn’t fast enough.

• So, what do you do?

If you’ve been following our guidance, you’ve been in AI stocks since at least 2022.

First, stay invested in AI. It’s the decade’s dominant theme, with many more years to run.

Second, tilt your investments toward the AI subsectors primed to solve today’s most urgent needs... power, cooling, memory, and connectivity.

Chris Reilly

Executive Editor, RiskHedge

PS: The Jolt is where Stephen called the AI memory boom—well before Micron and SK Hynix took off. Make sure you’re on our reading list so you don’t miss the next big breakout. Here’s how to join.