Noah
Stock Investor & Trader, US Equities
Mastercard's payment and earnings growth make it more satisfying than ever to own amid Alphabet's and Amazon's post-earnings reactions. Q3 2026 revenue rose 14% to $9.8 billion, adjusted EPS rose 21% to $5.31, and adjusted operating margin was 60.5%. Volume grew 7%, cross-border volume 11%, and $3.8 billion went to shareholders through buybacks and dividends. x.com
Mastercard may be the only scaled, capital-light network benefiting from AI, with bloated technical debt uniquely addressable by coding tools. Nominal inflation-linked recurring revenues and hardware attach add to the case at low-teens free-cash-flow yields. While payments getting bid in a red market probably signals the rally is over, these traits could mean it is not. x.com
Mastercard isn't really cheap for its growth, while Nvidia is cheap, and Nvidia should handily outperform Mastercard over the next three years. x.com
Low PEG ratios and continuing AI demand make leading AI stocks attractive after rolling corrections. Nvidia is at 0.39x PEG, Amazon 0.64x, Broadcom 0.66x, Micron 0.73x, Oracle 0.59x and TSMC 0.41x. This usually signals at least a local bottom, possibly a major one; midterm-year seasonality helps into year-end. Nvidia, Broadcom and Amazon remain favorites; Micron and TSMC look buyable on dips. Low PEG can mislead if growth slows or estimates are wrong. x.com
AI infrastructure bottlenecks could give eight stocks as much as 18x upside. Nvidia supplies frontier-model GPUs; Broadcom and Marvell supply custom silicon and networking; TSMC makes advanced chips; Micron supplies sold-out HBM; Vertiv provides power and cooling; Palantir monetizes enterprise AI; Alphabet spans TPUs, research, cloud and apps. The list tracks where AI infrastructure spending is flowing. x.com x.com
NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, Marvell, MediaTek and Cadence could not look more bearish, because hyperscalers don't want to work with them and are incentivized to cut them out. NVIDIA in particular is being disintermediated by Google's TPU program while priced like a monopoly; a post the author replies to notes it is now worth more than the GDP of every country except the US and China. x.com
Low forward earnings multiples across eleven stocks cannot persist indefinitely. Nvidia trades near 17.5x, its lowest in over a decade; Oracle near 15x, its lowest in six years. Uber is at 17x, Broadcom 19x, Vistra 15x, AppLovin 14.5x, TSMC 19x, Forgent Power Solutions 18x, Nokia 19.5x, American Express 17x and Western Digital 14x. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com
Rapid revenue growth against forward valuations makes Nvidia and Micron additional calculated risks after the selloff, alongside Meta, Broadcom, IREN, Vistra, Nokia and Oracle. Nvidia grew revenue 106% and guides Q3 to $108B, plus or minus 2%, at 17.5x forward earnings; Micron grew revenue 379% to $54.2B, guides $61.5B next quarter and trades at 5x. The other six retain their growth, contracted-demand or customer-order cases. x.com
Broadcom's roughly 60% margin looks unsustainable because its custom-chip design role is not irreplaceable. Google's TPU v8i has already succeeded, and it is being handled by MediaTek, whose margin is at best in the 30% range. That undercuts the claim that customers need Broadcom's design capability to compete with Nvidia, especially when Broadcom's margin is not far from Nvidia's own. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com
Broadcom's integrated optics, electronics and packaging could lower custom-chip system costs because separate suppliers defend their margins. At similar valuations, it is preferred to Nvidia and has more room to beat expectations. Google TPU v8 shipments are estimated at 4.0M in 2026 and 9.1M in 2027, assuming Broadcom supplies the remainder after MediaTek's allocation. Anthropic financing adds value only if chip profit exceeds likely support payments and capacity costs. x.com x.com