GainStreet — the Daily Brief, the Boyz slate, and the receipts
Morning brief, Friday, September 18, 2026: The Fed hit us with a hawkish rate hike, but yields caught their breath and our mega-cap tech led the rally
Stocks Rebound After Hawkish Fed Rate Hike: Markets rebounded as Treasury yields stabilized following the Federal Reserve's quarter-point interest rate hike, leading mega-cap tech higher. Oklo Spikes 11.31% on Bullish Analyst Launch: Oklo surged 11.31% as Piper Sandler initiated coverage with an Overweight rating and $55 target, citing AI nuclear energy demand. Moderna Surges 8.55% on Cancer Vaccine Gains: Moderna rallied 8.55% as momentum built following landmark Phase 3 melanoma vaccine results and recent FDA approvals for updated shots. DraftKings Drops 7.64% on Insider Sales: DraftKings fell 7.64% as regulatory uncertainty, insider selling filings, and ongoing profitability concerns continued to weigh on the stock. Watch Central Banks and Micron Earnings: Traders should monitor global central bank rate decisions and Micron's upcoming earnings report on September 30 for the next major AI signal.
Stocks Rebound After Hawkish Fed Rate Hike
Markets rebounded as Treasury yields stabilized following the Federal Reserve's quarter-point interest rate hike, leading mega-cap tech higher.
Oklo Spikes 11.31% on Bullish Analyst Launch
Oklo surged 11.31% as Piper Sandler initiated coverage with an Overweight rating and $55 target, citing AI nuclear energy demand.
Moderna Surges 8.55% on Cancer Vaccine Gains
Moderna rallied 8.55% as momentum built following landmark Phase 3 melanoma vaccine results and recent FDA approvals for updated shots.
DraftKings Drops 7.64% on Insider Sales
DraftKings fell 7.64% as regulatory uncertainty, insider selling filings, and ongoing profitability concerns continued to weigh on the stock.
Watch Central Banks and Micron Earnings
Traders should monitor global central bank rate decisions and Micron's upcoming earnings report on September 30 for the next major AI signal.
Posture: With Fear & Greed at 29, we adopt a Neutral posture, leveraging fear-driven market pullbacks to accumulate proven fundamental winners.
Tickers in focus: QQQ, MU
Upcoming earnings
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The GainStreet Boyz — the slate
Stages: Buy Zone means we would buy at today's price; Hold means the position stays but the easy entry is gone; Take Profit means price is at our value. Reasons are published as written; the ledger records who made each call.
Buy Zone (12)
- TSM (price $435 · G-Street value $532 · upside 22.5% · since entry +3.4%)
Up 3% to $430 as the chip rebound ran a third session — memory led on the Intel–Hynix Ohio talks and the foundry came along. Now 2% above our $420 entry with 19% to our $512 value; record August revenue and 2nm shipping are why it stays a buy-zone rather than a hold. - NVDA (price $222 · G-Street value $307 · upside 38.2% · since entry +4.9%)
Up 2.5% to $219, 4% above our $212 entry. Nebius is raising GPU cloud pricing 17% to 21% — demand for Blackwell capacity still outruns supply — and the CFO’s Form 144 for 34,918 shares is a pre-set plan, not a tell. 33% to our $292 value at 14x forward. - MU (price $1,016 · G-Street value $1,185 · upside 16.7% · since entry +3.3%)
Up 5.5% to $978 as memory ripped on the Intel–SK Hynix Ohio talks and Nebius put a 41% price increase on supply-constrained memory. Back to our $983 entry with 21% to our $1,185 value and the Sept 30 print thirteen days out at 6x forward. - AVGO (price $358 · G-Street value $506 · upside 41.5% · since entry -8.1%)
Up 2.3% to $347, still 11% under our $389 entry and still the first name we would add to. Nothing in the numbers moved: AI semi revenue ran $16.7B last quarter, up 221%, and Meta’s Broadcom-built MTIA racks are dated for the first half of 2027. 40% to our $487 value. - ORCL (price $148 · G-Street value $264 · upside 78.8% · since entry +16.8%)
Up 5% to $151 with the AI complex’s third day of repair, now 19% above our $126 entry. The receivable-risk argument on the OpenAI contract has not gone away, and neither has the $664B of RPO or the $90B-plus FY27 guide behind it. 75% to our $264 value — the biggest gap on the slate, and the most levered balance sheet. - APP (price $308 · G-Street value $420 · upside 36.2% · since entry -11.2%)
Off 1.5% to $322, 7% under our $347 entry, on a day the rest of the AI trade bounced. Wurl’s CTV data platform is a week old and Axon’s 52% growth at 15x forward is the same math. 30% to our $420 value. - SIMO (price $272 · G-Street value $345 · upside 26.9% · since entry +8.2%)
Up 5% to $253 with the memory complex, back above our $252 entry after Monday’s 17% air pocket. Still no downgrade, no filing, no guidance change — the convert hedgers and a thin ADR did that. 36% to our $345 value. - RDDT (price $151 · G-Street value $195 · upside 29.1% · since entry -3.4%)
Down 3% to $153, 2% under our $156 entry, with no filing and no news — the ad names lagged a chip-led tape. Ad revenue growing 61% with the Google data deal as the free option; 29% to our $197 value. - TDG (price $1,086 · G-Street value $1,420 · upside 30.8% · since entry -12.1%)
Off 0.4% to $1,076, 13% under our $1,235 entry. A co-COO sold 3,900 shares on a pre-set plan — noise. Guggenheim’s Neutral on pricing scrutiny is the bear case, and the $3.0B of 6.75% notes due 2035 is done. 28% to our $1,378 value. - TLN (price $292 · G-Street value $436 · upside 49.2% · since entry -1.3%)
Up 2% to $293 as the House passed the Ratepayer Protection Act 417–3: data centers pay the full incremental cost of the grid upgrades they cause. That is the model Talen’s 1.9 GW Amazon deal already runs on. 1% under our $296 entry, 49% to our $436 value. - AMAT (price $445 · G-Street value $560 · upside 25.9% · since entry -3.7%)
Up 0.5% to $417, 10% under our $462 entry. Applied put $5B over ten years into India — a 140-acre research park in Bengaluru and a tenfold bigger local supply chain — the kind of decade-long capacity bet a company makes when 2027 tool orders are committed. 34% to our $560 value. - COHR (price $317 · G-Street value $404 · upside 27.2% · since entry +7.2%)
Joins in AMD’s slot at $296, 33% under our $395 value at 21x forward. Coherent is the optics inside the AI rack — 1.6T transceivers ramping now, co-packaged optics next — with datacenter revenue up 59% last quarter to $1.6B on 34% total growth. It sits well off its summer high on transceiver price-competition fear; that is a margin question, not a demand one. Buy-zone from $296.
Hold (8)
- GOOGL (price $350 · G-Street value $416 · upside 19.0% · since entry -2.8%)
Up 1.3% to $347 with the tape, 3% under our $360 entry. The ad-tech remedies are public and survivable, and the UN just handed Google its development datasets to index for AI agents — small, but the kind of default-position win that compounds. 9% to our $378 value: hold. - META (price $666 · G-Street value $737 · upside 10.6% · since entry +0.7%)
Up 1.3% to $682, 3% above our $661 entry. A Frankfurt court held Meta liable for scam ads on Facebook and Instagram — algorithmic ranking is not passive hosting, it said — which is an EU precedent to watch, not a number that moves the model today. Meta One subscriptions are the new lever. 8% to our $736 value: holding, and next to book if it closes the gap. - AMZN (price $254 · G-Street value $324 · upside 27.7% · since entry +2.5%)
Up 2.1% to $251, 1.5% above our $247 entry. The FTC widened the Prime refund order — a $200 cap per customer on a settlement already paid for — and the $20 operations floor is a day old. Against $496B of AWS backlog neither matters. 27% to our $318 value; the next hold in line for a buy-zone promotion on any real dip. - IREN (price $46.68 · G-Street value $80.9 · upside 73.3% · since entry +38.8%)
Up 2% to $43, 29% above our $34 entry. Nebius raising GPU rates 17% to 21% is the neocloud pricing power J.P. Morgan’s $65 target rests on. Holding a winner; the swings are too wide to add. - UBER (price $70.5 · G-Street value $90.89 · upside 28.9% · since entry -2.2%)
Flat at $71, 2% under our $72 entry. Uber sold $182M of Aurora stock at $6.21 in a block trade and still holds 157M shares — trimming a passive stake, not walking away from robotaxis. Costco is nationwide on Uber Eats as of yesterday. 25% to our $88 value: hold. - RKLB (price $64.57 · G-Street value $95.95 · upside 48.6% · since entry -4.5%)
Up 6.5% to $68, back to our entry price. The Iridium financing is done — $1.94B raised, the bridge cancelled — and the dilution overhang is behind it. 45% to our $98 value on a multiple only earnings can fix: hold on execution. - SKHY (price $188 · G-Street value $227 · upside 21.1% · since entry +36.0%)
Up 4.6% to $183 as the Intel Ohio memory talks got a second day of coverage and Hynix crossed into the $1 trillion club with Micron. Nothing is signed and Korea’s export review would have to clear it. Up 33% from our $138 entry with 22% to our $223 value: hold. - VST (price $141 · G-Street value $174 · upside 23.7% · since entry +0.1%)
Up 2.3% to $144. The House passed the Ratepayer Protection Act 417–3 — large loads pay their own grid upgrades — which writes the co-location deals Vistra already signs into law, and the Senate is unlikely to touch it before the midterms. 2% above our $141 entry, 21% to our $174 value.
Take Profit (1)
- AMD (price $560 · G-Street value $574 · upside 2.5%)
Up 6% to $545 on Nebius raising its cloud prices — 25% on AMD EPYC racks — exactly the demand tell we bought it for. That puts it 19% above our $460 entry in two weeks and 6% from our $576 value, so we book it: the ramp is intact, the fat pitch is gone. +19%, receipt on the ledger.
Top plays
NVDA
Nvidia remains the indispensable hardware core of the global generative AI buildout, commanding over 80% market share in data center accelerators. With net margins above 63% and revenue growing over 100% YoY, current pullbacks offer a prime entry point into an unmatched earnings engine.
Watch: Watch for Blackwell rack shipment volume ramp and hyperscaler CapEx guidance updates.
ORCL
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has emerged as a cloud partner of choice for massive AI training and inference, building a staggering $664B backlog. Trading at a discount to tech peers relative to its 30% revenue growth, Oracle offers rare large-cap re-acceleration.
Watch: Watch for quarterly OCI revenue growth holding above 45% and CapEx conversion into revenue.
TSM
TSMC possesses an effective monopoly on leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing (3nm/2nm), rendering it critical for Nvidia, Apple, and AMD. Trading at attractive earnings multiples relative to 36% revenue growth, valuation remains compelling for a pick-and-shovel monopolist.
Watch: Watch for monthly revenue reports confirming sustained 30%+ YoY growth and stable gross margins above 53%.
COHR
Coherent sits at the sweet spot of AI data center optical interconnects, supplying 800G and 1.6T transceivers essential for solving cluster bandwidth bottlenecks. Strong senior judgment conviction backs this high-margin optics leader.
Watch: Watch for sequential optical transceiver margin expansion and datacenter segment acceleration.
The receipts
15 booked picks · 20 open · win rate 73.3% · average +11.0% per call · best SNDK +47.4% · worst TTD -21.5%. Portfolio +8.2% booked, +12.0% with open positions marked to market (win rate 63.9% incl. open). Full track record →
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