Markets have spent the last few years trying to put a number on AI. We are in the middle of that. Regardless of your stance on how you use it, AI has already changed how we live, forever.
Software had a cleaner revolution when Salesforce took the work from Oracle and Siebel. People made fortunes packaging cloud, but AI does not package the same way. It belongs to everyone. The frontier labs will keep fighting over who gets paid for the model but that is their problem.
For the rest of us, the money is in the companies building the infrastructure that makes the technology run.
The market already ran that trade once in 2026. April into June was the rip. Then the AI group went into a correction for about three months. A lot of the leaders gave back as much as 50% from the highs and built bases, which is very constructive for investors.
Monday, September 21st, was an inflection point in the Nasdaq. The market had spent three months chopping sideways, but Monday changed the character. Real buying power coming back into AI:
So how do we get involved?
I’ll cover five groups and the leaders inside each one. You can own the ETF and keep it broad, or you can do what I do and drill into the names. Both are valid.
Exact levels and the full plan live in New Stock Market Ideas, the weekly trading plan that goes out Sunday before the close.
How we trade these names: This is not financial advice. Do your own research. Managing risk comes first. Never blindly buy a name from a newsletter. Build your system and follow your rules.
Semiconductors: SMH 0.00%↑
This is the backbone of the AI trade. The semiconductors are the chips that train the models and run them, and if you want one chart for the health of the group, this is it.
The VanEck Semiconductor ETF is the proxy for the space. It holds names like AMD, Nvidia, Intel, Arm, Marvell, and Semtech, which are the names driving the group forward. Some of those stocks are more volatile than others, and the ETF is there if you do not want to pick among them.
The chart is building a big cup base. The pivot inside that base is $600, and the ETF is trading right at that level after breaking resistance. That is an inflection point. I would expect this to keep building as long as it stays above all of the moving averages, which it is, and it is well above the 200-day, which is the line in the sand for whether we are in a long-term uptrend.
Full disclosure: I own Marvell in this group.
Memory: DRAM 0.00%↑
Chips do not work without memory. Training runs eat it, inference eats it, and high-bandwidth memory is the bottleneck inside the rack.
The Roundhill Memory ETF is the proxy. It holds SanDisk, Micron, SK Hynix, and Silicon Motion, and the big dogs in the group are Micron and SanDisk. SanDisk had one of the greatest model-book runs I have seen, and Micron was right behind it. These are stocks that ran thousands of percent, went through a base, and reset. When a stock builds a base after a move like that, you get another chance to work higher from a cleaner starting point.
The pivot in DRAM is $62.04, and we are trading right at that level. The job now is to define support for the group over $60. All of the moving averages are in order and trending higher, which puts this in a constructive place.
I own Micron here. The last time this trade was set up, I was in SanDisk. One thing to watch is that Micron reports next Wednesday, September 30th. That will put volatility into the group and should tell us something about the near term.
Neoclouds: NCLD 0.00%↑
Neoclouds sit one layer above the chips. They buy the GPUs, stand up the buildings, and rent the compute, so you do not have to own the cluster. You rent the hours.
The Roundhill Neocloud ETF is the proxy, and the leadership in here is Nebius, IREN, and CoreWeave. This sleeve is lagging memory and the semis. The chart is a mess right now. It is sitting in the middle of a sideways consolidation and does not have a pattern I would name. The actionable area is around $27, and it has to clear that range before I would treat it as a trade.
It stays in the back pocket.
Power & Infrastructure: AIPO 0.00%↑
Data centers do not run on fairy dust. They run on electricity, which means cooling, switchgear, turbines, and grid work. That is the power sleeve.
The Defiance AI & Power Infrastructure ETF is the proxy, with names like GE Vernova and Eaton on the electrical side of the buildout. This one has been consolidating since the end of June in what you can call a descending triangle. It has found consistent support around the 200-day, but it is still underneath the 50-day.
I think this is constructive above $30. The character change I want is a move back over the 50-day that can hold as support. That is the entry. Until then, this stays in watching mode. As the AI trade works higher, this group has to come with it, because the buildings do not turn on without the power.
Cybersecurity: CIBR 0.00%↑
I included cybersecurity in a post about the AI trade because of where the landscape is heading next, which is agents. It started with OpenClaw. After that, it was obvious the frontier labs would ship their own solutions, and it became a race for user loyalty before the big labs arrived. Grokbot came first. Meta is out with Muse. OpenAI and Anthropic are next, and those will change how agents get deployed.
I use Grokbot, and I find it hard to go back. Agents that work inside my tools and through my day have a little Iron Man energy to them.
Agents will spend money, talk to other agents, and eventually get out. Hugging Face already had an incident. The world is trying to figure out how to keep that contained, and that is a cybersecurity problem. That is why this group belongs on an AI map.
The group has already broken out. The pivot was around $101, and it is trading at $104, which makes it a touch extended here. I would look at the individual stocks rather than chasing the ETF. The support I want is the 50-day. Pullbacks to that average would be normal, and those are the areas where I would add or initiate.
The First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF holds names like Palo Alto, CrowdStrike, Fortinet, and Zscaler.
I own $PANW.
ETF or the leaders
You can put exposure in the ETFs and keep the risk broader, or you can do what I do and research the leaders in these groups and trade those. Both work. It is a style choice.
Monday changed the character of the tape. Chips and memory are at their pivots, and those are the groups I want to keep closest. Neoclouds stay in the pocket until $27 clears. Power needs the 50-day back. Cyber already broke out, so the work there is in the individual names and in pullbacks to the 50-day.
Happy trading!