Closelook@Hypergrowth
AI Stocks — The Flow Came True. The Builders Fell, the Sellers Rose
Last week the flow said the AI builders were rising on tired legs and the applications were turning while they fell. This week the price followed. The builder index fell 3.4% with four of its 36 sub-indices green; the applications index rose 4.9% with all nine green; the runner between them closed at a record. Security, observability and data software led, Schneider Electric bought PTC at a 42% premium, and a report on OpenAI's revenue sent the chip names down. Five winners and five losers of the week, the supply gauges cooling, and ASML and TSMC on Wednesday and Thursday with a new question — not how much was sold this year, but how much will be spent next year.
Current edition · 2026-10-11
1 · This Week's Action
The week in one line: the flow came true. A week ago the house Directional Flow score — which measures whether each stock's trend is gaining or losing force — said the builders were rising on tired legs (110 of 126 members of the builder index losing strength) and the applications were turning while they fell (33 of 40 getting stronger). This week the price did what the flow said. Capex (Rubin Build-Out) −3.44% to 2,094.58; opex (Agentic Ecosystem) +2.76% to a record 1,786.36; applications (Agentic Winners 40) +4.91% to 942.64. The builder had four of 36 sub-indices green; the applications index had all nine.
What moved it. Two things, one on each side. On Thursday a report put OpenAI's annual revenue nearer 50 billion dollars than 70 billion, and the market asked whether AI's biggest buyer earns enough to keep buying: the chip index fell 3.4% that day, Broadcom 4.4%, Micron 4.8%, CoreWeave 7.8%. On the other side the software that runs, watches and secures AI was bought all week — and on Monday Schneider Electric agreed to buy PTC, the industrial design software maker, for 205 dollars a share in cash, a 42% premium and 22.6 billion dollars, the clearest price tag this year on a software company the market had marked down as an AI loser.
The ten best of the week, across all three indices — security, data and software. PTC +35.0%, Zscaler +18.9%, Money Forward +14.0%, Fastly +13.5%, monday.com +12.9%, Shopify +12.8%, Trend Micro +12.6%, Spotify +11.9%, MercadoLibre +11.4%, Palantir +10.8%. Three security companies (Zscaler, Trend Micro, with Fastly's edge network), three software platforms (PTC, monday.com, Money Forward), three consumer and commerce platforms (Shopify, Spotify, MercadoLibre) and Palantir. Not one makes or builds the physical layer of AI.
The ten worst — the tools, the power and the neoclouds. Aehr Test Systems −21.1%, LPKF Laser −16.5%, IREN −15.7%, ams-OSRAM −15.0%, SÜSS MicroTec −14.5%, Vicor −13.9%, Arm −13.4%, BE Semiconductor −12.4%, Amkor −12.3%, Intel −12.3%. Test, laser and bonding tools (Aehr, LPKF, SÜSS, BESI), packaging (Amkor), power delivery (Vicor, sold with the power and cooling suppliers on Wednesday), a GPU renter (IREN) and two chip designers (Arm, Intel). Last week's winners list — the testers, the packagers and the optics — is this week's losers list, almost name for name: LPKF and ams-OSRAM were on both.
