According to analysis from the well-known Wall Street investment firm Wedbush, the global AI chip leader NVIDIA (NVDA.US), often dubbed "the world's most important stock," is expected to release its fiscal first-quarter 2026 earnings report next week. This highly anticipated report is poised to serve as another catalyst for the global technology stock sector and the "AI bull market narrative" driving the global stock market rally. This is because, even before NVIDIA's official quarterly results and outlook, the global tech earnings season that began in April has already sounded a "super alarm" for skeptics of the AI revolution and frontier technology. As of the close of U.S. markets last Friday, strong employment data and a trading frenzy centered on AI computing power jointly propelled the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indices to new all-time highs, with the S&P 500 marking its sixth consecutive weekly gain. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX), a key benchmark for global chip stocks and an "AI computing power investment barometer" encompassing leaders in the global AI computing supply chain like NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and Micron, surged 11% for the week, also extending its winning streak to six weeks. It has skyrocketed nearly 250% from its April low. Measured by price-to-sales ratio, the SOX valuation has reached a record high. Driven by the unprecedented wave of AI infrastructure buildout and the sweeping "memory supercycle," the South Korean stock market rally has been even more frenetic. South Korea's benchmark Kospi Composite Index led gains in the Asia-Pacific market on Monday against a backdrop of rising oil prices and escalating U.S.-Iran tensions. Year-to-date, the index has surged over 85%, leading global markets and arguably making it the world's most frenzied stock market so far in 2026. Two South Korea-based memory chip giants—Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix—which together account for nearly 50% of the Kospi's weighting, are the primary engines attracting global capital to the South Korean market. The Kospi's year-to-date gains in 2026 have already surpassed its wild 76% surge that led global markets last year. However, unlike the full-year 2025 performance, the index has achieved gains exceeding last year's total in less than five months of 2026. In the view of leading stock market bulls like Wedbush, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, and Yardeni Research, the global stock market狂欢 driven by the AI computing investment frenzy is far from over. Yardeni Research founder Ed Yardeni expects the S&P 500 to break through 8,000 by year-end and reach 10,000 within three years, emphasizing a melt-up trend driven by earnings growth. In comparison, the S&P 500 closed at 7,398 last Friday. Institutions like HSBC and CFRA have also followed with target price increases, citing profit expansion around AI applications and AI computing infrastructure as the core driver. These bullish forces believe that despite short-term technical overbought signals, the stock market still has room for further gains, with optimistic expectations surrounding the AI dividend supporting high-valuation sectors.
**Wedbush: Tech Earnings Season Has Already Sounded Alarm for AI Skeptics Ahead of NVIDIA's Report** Wedbush stated in a research note that even before NVIDIA officially announces its quarterly results and future outlook, the global tech earnings season that began in April has already served as a "super alarm for bystanders of the AI revolution and skeptics of frontier technology." Wedbush highlighted the "monstrously impressive results" last week from data center CPU leader and NVIDIA's strongest AI GPU competitor, AMD (AMD.US), as well as the growing penetration cases of AI applications/AI agents among enterprise software companies, such as leaders in enterprise-grade AI applications/AI agent technology like Palantir (PLTR.US), Datadog (DDOG.US), Snowflake (SNOW.US), and ServiceNow (NOW.US). The Wedbush equity strategy team, led by veteran strategist Dan Ives, stated in an investor note released Monday: "We remain firmly of the view that the monetization stage of the AI revolution is just beginning, with winners not only concentrated among AI computing infrastructure leaders like AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, and Micron, but also representing a significant tailwind for hyperscale cloud providers focused on building the next phase of AI hardware and software infrastructure architecture. We believe Wall Street is severely underestimating the potential for AI-driven cloud business growth and the translation of AI deals into profits for Microsoft/Azure (MSFT.US) and Amazon/AWS (AMZN.US) over the coming year... On the software front, judging from recent positive growth data around AI applications from Palantir, Datadog, and Innodata (INOD.US), a major wave of AI demand driven by AI agent use cases is imminent." Ives and his team believe that as more international investors come to realize that AI application products from unlisted leaders like Anthropic and OpenAI will not spell "doom" for these traditional software giants also focused on AI applications, the U.S. stock market's tech-heavy benchmark indices, which have repeatedly hit new highs, could still rise another 10% to 12% by year-end. Beyond cloud giants and the aforementioned AI-focused software companies, Ives' Wedbush team is also particularly bullish on several cybersecurity software vendors, such as CrowdStrike (CRWD.US), Palo Alto Networks (PANW.US), Zscaler (ZS.US), and Rubrik (RBRK.US). They added: "So far, our numerous earnings season conversations with CIOs and CISOs indicate that the powerful large language models (LLMs) from Anthropic and OpenAI have created a strong positive catalyst for the cybersecurity industry, with enterprise budgets set to increase significantly over the next few quarters as real attack surfaces, threat vectors, and AI agent workforces expand. The key is that AI does not diminish the strong demand for endpoint (and its vendors), identity, security cloud, and SOC automation; on the contrary, as more enterprises deploy LLM-driven AI agent tools, the need for runtime monitoring of AI agent workflows, identity governance, and zero-trust enforcement will multiply. Cybersecurity platforms will become a major execution layer for AI, not its victim." The reason why software giants like Microsoft, Amazon, Snowflake, Palantir, and Datadog are more readily seen as major winners in the AI boom is not just their "large size and strong fundamentals." It's because they aggregate data assets and "AI + core operational workflows," possess solid fundamentals, and occupy several hard-to-replicate layers for enterprise AI implementation: cloud infrastructure, system entry points, identity and security, data foundations, distribution channels, and operational processes tightly integrated with daily employee work. As enterprise AI budgets are prioritized toward large cloud platforms and the model layer, this also means the moats of platform-type software giants will be further strengthened with the aid of cutting-edge AI technologies like AI agent workflow tools, while single-function SaaS faces pressure of complete disruption. In other words, as enterprises transition from AI experimentation to formal deployment, budgets will be prioritized toward platform-type software giants closest to core systems, core data assets, and core workflows, rather than single-point functional layer SaaS.
**The 'AI Bull Market Narrative' Propping Up Global Stock Market Rally Still Has Room to Run** Hedge fund legend Paul Tudor Jones stated that the AI-driven U.S. stock bull market has not yet peaked, and the current stage of AI technological development is comparable to the early commercialization of the internet in 1995. He predicts this AI super bull market has completed about 50% to 60% of its journey and "could last another year or two." Jones views the release of the Claude model by Anthropic earlier this year as a landmark node in the AI revolution, akin to the productivity leap during Microsoft's rise in the 1980s. He notes that the market uptrend is still supported by productivity miracles but warns of non-negligible valuation risks at the bull market's end. Overall, he confirms that the AI computing infrastructure sector and related AI supply chain (AI chips, memory chips, cloud computing, and generative AI application leaders, etc.) still have upside potential, while reminding investors to watch for potential valuation overheating and correction signals. Jones mentioned he has personally increased his allocation to AI assets, diversifying through a "basket" approach, reflecting a strategy to balance growth opportunities with risk management during a bull market. Since the beginning of 2026, stocks related to leaders in the AI computing supply chain have been the main engine driving significant gains in the S&P 500, Nasdaq indices, and global stock markets. The core logic lies in the seemingly insatiable demand for AI computing power from users of AI applications like those from Anthropic/OpenAI, fueling investors' increasingly bullish sentiment on "critical bottlenecks" in AI computing. These include GPU, CPU, memory chips, and optical communications—core infrastructure for AI computing. Wall Street analysts generally believe these bottleneck effects will persist at least until 2027, supporting the strong continuation of this global tech stock bull market. The rapid penetration and adoption of agentic AI agents have significantly boosted CPU demand. AI agents' reliance on long-duration task processing has provided valuation re-rating opportunities for CPU manufacturers like Intel and AMD. The scarcity of memory chips and demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) have driven shares of manufacturers like Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix to record highs. The expanding coverage of optical communications/optical interconnect technology in the massive new construction of AI data centers continues to benefit tech companies closely associated with "light," such as Lumentum (LITE.US). According to financial giants like Morgan Stanley, the dominant narrative for AI computing investment is shifting from a "single-point computing power race centered on AI GPU/TPU (AI ASIC)" to an "AI agent-driven full-stack AI system." In this shift of the AI narrative, the optical interconnect supply chain, data center CPUs, and memory chips could be the biggest winners—whether it's NVIDIA's AI GPU computing infrastructure clusters or Google's TPU clusters (representing the AI ASIC technical route), both will rely on the most advanced data center CPUs, optical interconnect equipment, and data center-grade high-performance memory chips. Analysis data from Jefferies shows that the market rally driven by AI computing supply chain leaders is primarily fueled by earnings growth rather than P/E multiple expansion, enhancing the sustainability of the gains. Expected 2026 profits for the broad U.S. market AI computing infrastructure sector have risen over 30% since mid-2025, with an estimated compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for earnings per share of 38.5% from 2026-2027, compared to just 11.9% for non-AI computing sectors. Performance among sub-sectors shows clear divergence: data center AI servers (around AI GPU/AI ASIC/CPU), optical components, and memory-related stocks offer the most attractive valuations. This implies investors are absolutely prioritizing allocation to stocks of the most core hardware components for AI data centers, which face long-term supply shortages—such as the niche AI investment theme of optical interconnect technology and another hot investment theme benefiting from the AI infrastructure construction frenzy: memory chips. Prominent Wall Street bull and Yardeni Research founder Ed Yardeni expects the S&P 500 to break through 8,000 by year-end and reach 10,000 within three years, emphasizing a melt-up trend driven by earnings growth. Institutions like HSBC and CFRA have also followed with target price increases, citing profit expansion around AI applications and AI computing infrastructure as the core driver. Wall Street financial giant JPMorgan has significantly raised its target for the South Korean benchmark Kospi Composite Index, which has repeatedly hit new highs, twice within less than a month. The core logic undoubtedly lies in the belief that the bull market story driven by the AI infrastructure frenzy and the "memory chip supercycle" is far from over. The Wall Street banking giant raised its base target for the Kospi to 9,000 points and substantially increased its bull scenario target to the epic 10,000-point level, implying a potential upside of up to 33% from last Friday's close. In comparison, the base and bull targets set in late April were 7,000 points and 8,500 points, respectively.
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