Malcolm Ethridge, Mgn. partner, Capital Area Planning Group

What we heard from Alphabet and TPUs and Amazon with Trainium (their own AI chips) flies in the face of Nvidia being the stock to buy now. NVDA is supposed to go parabolic after it breached $200 recently, but he's less confident in NVDA's level of demand because of competition.

Credit them for not getting into the AI arm race and spending a gazillion dollars unlike at least four peers. Meanwhile, they announced enough cash flow to announce another $100 billion share buyback and increasing their dividend. Also, services revenue came in at a record high and 16% growth, their profit generator going forward. iPhone sales have been surprisingly steady recently. The valuation is high, but can grow into that valuation, say they go into a new hardware phase under the new CEO. 

They turned in a great report about Google cloud which surprised him. They've improved margin despite spending aggressively in building their cloud.

Meta has the biggest question mark in the megatechs because they don't have a direct link between a public cloud to sell credit credits against to offset their large capex.

Upgraded. Tremendous opportunity here. There's still overhang from a shortseller, alleging creative accounting. It's trading like it will never grow again. Meanwhile, they just added 1 million members in the past quarter, huge growth that's turning into a financial powerhouse. 

He added more, despite NOW hitting a 52-week low yesterday. It's probably reached peak pessimism. It will separate from the pack, because its moat because CTO's won't introduce new AI start-ups that are supposed to disrupt the data space with companies they've been building in Silicon Valley in recent years. Also, NOW's earnings and free cash flow are growing, so it's growing into its high valuation.

Netflix has a YouTube problem--they have to compete with original content. That's why YouTube unseated them, because audience appetite is for original content.

Annual recurring revenue is growing double-digits. Their report next week should be good.

Nearly every big M&A deal in 2025 included MS (and JPM), and will continue this year.

IPO'd last September, so it seeing analyst coverage only now. Buying will follow.

Is growing annual recurring revenues in enterprise. There remains strong demand for cybersecurity.

His top pick for 2026. Should be a great year for fintech given falling rates and less regulation and AI implementation. A few weeks ago, they announced they would introduce stablecoin via a partnership with Circle to offer global remittances, which charge up to 6% per transfer. A huge market and a great disruption opportunity due to Visa's large user base.  The deal isn't baked into shares.

Investments in robotics hurt short-term but will benefit their long-term; robotics will replace jobs and save $4 billion (estimated) in coming years. That should help the bottom line.

It's giving him a ton of pause. It has a lot of doubt around it. He's looking for an opportunity to get back into it after selling 50% of his stake last October. But there's too much smoke here to add anything now.

He just added more shares following earnings on Wednesday. Shares fell 10%, but what was the market looking for? ZS reported 26% growth in annually recurring revenue, and beat across the board. They've re-done their sales force the past year and focused on their Z Flex model platform--firing on all cylinders. Trades at a slight premium, but they are securing 45% of the S&P 500. Shares have fallen with entire sector where it really doesn't belong. An opportunity.