All Hail the AI King

January 2, 2026
/ By Michael Comeau

It's 2026. So let's dig into the hot stories we're watching for the New Year.

1. All Hail the AI King

Two weeks ago, I declared memory giant Micron (MU) “the new AI champion” courtesy of its shocking guidance.

It's up almost 20% since then with a big fat gain to start 2026.

And of course, I don't own it.

Micron wasn't the only winner on the memory/storage side of the AI trade today.

Sandisk (SNDK), Western Digital (WDC), and Lam Research (LRCX), all big winners last year, also posted huge gains today.

Now let's talk about the the other secondary AI trade.

2. Uranium Is Going Wild, and Nobody's In It

The Global X Uranium ETF (URA) had a monster gain in 2025, and rose over 7% today.

The bull market case here is very simple.

The world is becoming more nuclear friendly, and AI is driving record demand for electricity.

And you can't have nuclear power without uranium.

But the most interesting thing about uranium is how little money appears to be invested in it.

The #1 company in the industry, Cameco (CCJ), has a market cap of just $42.9 billion.

The URA ETF has just $5.3 billion in assets.

And the Sprott Uranium Miners ETF (URNM) has $1.7 billion in assets.

For comparison, the VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) has $37.3 billion in assets.

3. You People Love Tesla

We recently surveyed the T3 Live community and asked what your favorite stock was.

The #1 name across the board was Tesla (TSLA), which had a stinky day after reporting weak delivery numbers.

Alphabet (GOOGL) was in second place, but it wasn't even close.

We also asked traders which IPO they were most excited about: OpenAI, SpaceX, or Anthropic.

Elon Musk's SpaceX was the overwhelming favorite at 65.8%.

OpenAI was in second at 27.6%.

Just 3.9% chose Anthropic.

So the Cult of Elon is not going anywhere.

And you can count me in that camp because I'm still long Tesla.

4. Traders and Investors Are Bullish

Traders are investors to start the New Year.

In our own survey, 82.9% of respondents said the S&P 500 will rise in 2026.

And AAII's Sentiment Survey showed that 42.0% of investors are bullish on stocks for the next 6 months:

This was the fourth bullish reading in the past 5 weeks.

5. If You Believe in Crypto Miracles… Look at This

As we told you two weeks ago, short interest on crypto-related equities like Strategy (MSTR) and Bitmine Immersion Technology (BMNR) is sky-high.

All of these names put in big gains today, with Bitmine leading the way.

If you are bullish on crypto, you better put these names on the radar because we will see some wild short squeezes.

6. XLE Has Been Waking Up

If you watch the energy sector long enough, you're at risk of falling asleep.

But… it's getting less boring.

As you can see in this weekly chart, XLE has been in a slow-motion uptrend since April and it's about to bang up against resistance around $47:

Keep an eye on it.

This could be the next big sector to run.

7. Earnings Expectations Are High

According to FactSet, Q4 earnings estimates rose 0.4% throughout last quarter.

That bucks the typical pattern of estimates declining by 1.6%.

Analysts now expect 13.1% earnings growth in Q1.

The tech sector has seen the largest increase in estimates, which is no surprise because the big boys like Nvidia (NVDA) and Amazon (AMZN) have dropped one beat after another.

So the bar is higher than we've seen in recent quarters.

And the higher the bar, the harder it is to get those big beats.