Tracking 39 Fresh Portfolio Signals Across 10 Investing Themes
Let’s scan through the headlines for the stories of the week that speak to our Pro Portfolio holdings.
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Microsoft (MSFT) Pres. Brad Smith told the AI industry to get over its “allergy to regulation.” A Habitat for Humanity survey found nearly seven in 10 Americans trimmed their spending to be able to pay for housing costs. And Netflix (NFLX) is cutting close to 6% of its workforce. These are just a few of the more than 40 signals we’ve spotted this week that will give you a greater understanding of and conviction for the Pro Portfolio’s holdings.
If you’ve come across a signal we should know about, be sure to drop a link in the Comment section below.
Aging Population
UnitedHealth raised its 2026 EPS guidance to at least $20.50, its third increase this year, as Q3 profit climbed 75% to $4.1 billion and its medical loss ratio improved to 88.4% from 89.9%. The company is repricing Medicare Advantage for margin over membership, a sign of discipline returning to the managed care names inside XLV. Read more here
Johnson & Johnson’s drug sales rose roughly 8% to $16.76 billion in Q3, led by a 68% jump in Tremfya, but its medtech business grew only 2.5% and missed expectations. Pharma demand remains solid, while medtech is the soft spot to watch. Read more here
Welltower is selling 30 leased assisted living and memory care communities to Brookdale Senior Living for $290 million and extending Brookdale’s lease on another 39 communities by four years. It’s another example of Welltower recycling capital toward the operator-run senior housing portfolio that drives its growth. Read more here
As Medicare open enrollment kicks off, UnitedHealthcare and several Blue plans are dropping Medicare Advantage plans for 2027, citing lower federal reimbursement and higher utilization. Rural seniors are being hit hardest, a headwind for Medicare Advantage growth even as the senior population expands. Read more here
Position: State Street Health Care Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLV), Welltower (WELL)
Artificial Intelligence
Alphabet President Ruth Porat said the company remains “capacity constrained” and that capital spending, roughly $200 billion this year, will “increase significantly” in 2027. She also flagged the risks, including a Gallup poll showing 71% of Americans oppose a data center in their community. Read more here
Microsoft President Brad Smith told the AI industry to “get over the allergy to regulation,” noting there are “more safety rules for a carton of milk than for AI” and calling for independent model testing. Microsoft is positioning itself as the pro-regulation voice as AI policy takes shape. Read more here
AWS is racing to embed specialized engineers with customers, building on the $1 billion forward-deployed engineering unit it committed to in June. The goal is to turn AI spending into enterprise adoption, which is ultimately what will prove the return on all that capex. Read more here
Position: Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Axon (AXON), Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Palantir (PLTR)
Cash-Strapped Consumer
A Circana survey shows planned average holiday spending slipping to $779 from $796, with 74% of shoppers planning to save through deals and store brands. That focus on value favors retailers like Costco and TJX. Read more here
Bain expects Cyber Week spending to top $85 billion, up 8.75% and roughly double its 4.5% growth forecast for the full holiday season. Seven in 10 shoppers plan to shop Black Friday or Cyber Monday, a concentration of spending on deal events that plays to Amazon’s strengths. Read more here
Wells Fargo’s CFO said wages are largely keeping pace with inflation, and its CEO sees no sign of consumer credit weakening. Consumer revenue rose 5% and nonaccrual consumer loans fell 8.4%, suggesting consumers are more resilient than the cash-strapped narrative implies. Read more here
September CPI rose 0.6% month over month and 3.7% year over year, with gasoline up 9.1% and accounting for more than half the monthly increase. Toy prices jumped 4.2% heading into the holidays, and 45% of households told Ibotta they feel financially insecure. Read more here
Position: Amazon, Costco (COST), TJX Companies (TJX)
Cybersecurity, Data Privacy & Digital Identity
IonQ agreed to buy zero-trust security firm Elisity in an all-stock deal worth up to $1.3 billion, pairing Elisity’s microsegmentation and identity tools with IonQ’s post-quantum cryptography. Security M&A is now drawing buyers from outside the sector. Read more here
Dashlane data show passkey logins nearly doubled to 2.5 million a month, yet passkeys still account for only 28% of Google logins and 17% of Amazon logins. Digital identity is moving beyond passwords, but there’s a long runway ahead. Read more here
The Administrative Office of the US Courts says a cyberattack on government contractor BAE Systems has taken down the notice system used by federal bankruptcy courts. Read more here
TFG London detected a cybersecurity incident that impacted IT systems used by the Phase Eight, Hobbs, and Whistles premium fashion brands. Read more here
Position: Alphabet, First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR), Microsoft
Digital Infrastructure
Information Services Group (ISG) announced that AI‑driven infrastructure demand pushed its third‑quarter 2026 as‑a‑service ACV to $41 billion, a 95% year‑over‑year rise. The surge, led by IaaS, lifted the combined managed‑services and as‑a‑service market to $52.4 billion, up 63% YoY, underscoring a shift in enterprise spend toward AI‑enabled cloud capacity. Read more here
Citing the WSJ and FT, DCD reports Broadcom is seeking more than $50 billion to fund several gigawatts of the custom chips it’s building with OpenAI, while SpaceX is pursuing $40 billion in financing to buy Nvidia hardware. Demand for both custom silicon and GPUs keeps growing, even if it increasingly relies on financing. Read more here
ASML reported record Q3 sales of €11.7 billion and said it’s getting order interest through 2030, with EUV demand outrunning supply into 2028. That’s a positive read-through for chip equipment demand and Applied Materials, though China demand is declining. Read more here
TSMC’s Q3 revenue rose 41% to $46.7 billion, it guided Q4 to $52.3–$54.3 billion and set 2026 capex at $60–$64 billion, with CEO C.C. Wei saying “demand is higher than the supply.” TSMC is also checking whether U.S. data center construction and power can keep pace before it adds more capacity. Read more here
SK hynix projected Wednesday that the performance scale of AI infrastructure will grow roughly 20-fold by 2030, driven by rapidly rising demand for AI inference. Read more here
Position: Applied Materials (AMAT), Arista Networks (ANET), Broadcom (AVGO), Eaton (ETN), Marvell (MRVL), Nvidia (NVDA), Robo Global Robotics and Automation Index ETF (ROBO)
Digital Lifestyle
Counterpoint Research says Apple captured a record 22% share of Q3 smartphone shipments even as the global market plunged 20% to a 14-year low on rising memory costs. Apple is gaining share, though its unit shipments still declined. Read more here
A signal that cuts against the thesis: Netflix is cutting about 6% of its workforce, roughly 1,000 jobs and its biggest cut since 2022, as revenue growth slows. Management says it remains on track for its full-year forecast ahead of Q3 results on Oct. 20. Read more here
Google launched Universal Cart in the U.S., a cross-retailer shopping cart with price alerts and checkout built into Search and Gemini, just ahead of the holidays. It pushes Alphabet further into e-commerce and puts it more squarely against Amazon. Read more here
Meta and Apple jointly launched Muse Spark Open, an open-weight AI model built to run locally on high-end Macs. It’s a win for Meta’s model reach and for Apple’s case that AI can run on its own devices. Read more here
Position: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Netflix (NFLX)
Energy Pain Point
Black Hills will build 564 MW of new natural gas generation and manage a 2.1 GW microgrid for a Google data center in Wyoming, a $1.8 billion capex commitment with Google footing the bill. A single hyperscale campus is pulling through an enormous amount of power and electrical equipment. Read more here
PJM asked FERC to let it study SoftBank’s roughly 10 GW Ohio AI “Flagship” campus under a state agreement approach, with SB Energy paying for new generation and grid upgrades. It points to substantial future demand for grid equipment. Read more here
EDF finds the fossil fuel generation pipeline is rebounding while new clean generation slows, as higher load forecasts push utilities toward gas plants despite turbine shortages and rising costs. Power demand and equipment scarcity are both confirmed. Read more here
A signal that cuts against the thesis: a Virginia state senator proposed SB 843, which would freeze data center approvals for three years starting in July 2027 in the nation’s largest data center market, citing power bills and grid strain. Loudoun County is planning its own 12-month moratorium, a growing risk to the pace of the buildout. Read more here
Position: Eaton
Homebuilding & Materials
Century Communities acquired HistoryMaker Homes, roughly tripling its community count in Dallas-Fort Worth and adding lots. It’s the latest step in the ongoing consolidation among homebuilders. Read more here
A Habitat for Humanity survey found 68% of Americans have cut back spending to afford housing costs. It’s a clear sign of the affordability strain weighing on buyer demand. Read more here
September CPI came in at 3.7%, raising the odds the Fed hikes rates as soon as October. That would keep mortgage rates elevated and pressure on housing demand. Read more here
MBA estimates new-home mortgage applications fell 8% in September, putting new-home sales at a 584,000 annual pace, down 12% from August and the slowest since April 2020. First-time buyers were hit hardest by rising rates. Read more here
Luxury Buying Boom
Bank of America Institute data show September card spending per household rose 6.2% year over year, with the top 5% of earners growing fastest at 5.9% on wealth effects. Discretionary spending growth among those affluent households has eased since June, though. Read more here
JPMorgan’s Q3 debit and credit card sales volume rose 10% year over year to $539.5 billion, with travel called out, while its card net charge-off rate improved to 2.91%. That’s a solid read-through for American Express ahead of its Oct. 23 report. Read more here
The Fed’s October Beige Book found that in more than half of its districts, consumer spending was driven by high-income households, while price-sensitive and lower-income shoppers pulled back. That K-shaped pattern sits at the heart of the Amex thesis. Read more here
Brunello Cucinelli’s Q3 revenue rose 13.5% at constant currency, beating forecasts, with Americas sales up 20%, and it raised its 2026 growth outlook to about 12%. The top tier of luxury is outperforming even as broader names like LVMH struggle. Read more here
Position: American Express (AXP)
Safety & Security
Ondas and Palantir formed Regna AI, a new company that builds sovereign AI models for defense and government drone and ISR systems using Palantir’s AI Platform. It extends Palantir’s defense and edge AI reach through partners. Read more here
As the federal fiscal year closed, agencies added more than 22,000 Axon body cameras and evidence-management licenses, DHS selected Axon’s Dedrone counter-drone platform and the VA added more than 1,600 TASER 10 devices. Axon’s federal footprint keeps expanding. Read more here
The Celina Police Department is set to get a series of technology upgrades from Axon Enterprise, a public safety technology company. Celina City Council approved a $9.95 million contract with Axon Enterprise at an Oct. 13 meeting. The contract locks in 2026 prices for 10 years and includes a growth plan that will provide equipment for 10 new police officers and five new patrol vehicles each year… Read more here
Position: Axon, Palantir
The Strategies Behind Our Thematic Models
Aging of the Population – Capturing the demographic wave of the aging population and the changing demands it brings.
Artificial Intelligence – Software, chips, and related companies that facilitate the collection and analysis of large data sets and autonomous generation of solutions given non-machine language prompts.
Cash-Strapped Consumer – Companies poised to benefit as consumers stretch the disposable spending dollars they do have.
Cybersecurity – Companies that focus on protecting against the penetration of digital networks and the theft, ransom, corruption, or destruction of data.
Data Privacy & Digital Identity – Companies providing the tools and services that verify authorized users and safeguard personal data privacy.
Digital Infrastructure & Connectivity – The buildout and upgrading of our Networks, Data Storage Facilities, and Equipment.
Digital Lifestyle – The companies behind our increasingly connected lives.
Digital Payments – This model focuses on companies benefiting from the accelerating structural adoption of digital payments and financial technology (FinTech).
Energy Pain Point – Companies poised to prosper from rising power demand.
EV Transition – Capturing the transition to EVs and related infrastructure from combustion engine vehicles.
Guilty Pleasure – Companies that produce/provide food and drink products that consumers tend to enjoy regardless of the economic environment and potential long-term health hazards associated with excessive consumption.
Homebuilding & Materials – Ranging from homebuilders to key building product companies that serve the housing market, this model looks to capture the rising demand for housing, one that should benefit as the Fed returns monetary policy to more normalized levels.
Luxury Buying Boom – Tapping into aspirational buying and affluent buyers amid rising global wealth.
Rebuilding America – Turning the focused spending on rebuilding US infrastructure into revenue and profits.
Safety & Security – Targeted exposure to companies that provide goods and services primarily to the Defense and security sectors of the economy.
At the time of publication, the Pro Portfolio was long XLV, WELL, GOOGL, AMZN, AXON, META, MSFT, PLTR, COST, TJX, CIBR, AMAT, ANET, AVGO, ETN, MRVL, NVDA, ROBO, NFLX, AXP.
