CEO Watchlist: Week In Review (8/30/26)

TOP NEWS AFFECTING THE STOCK MARKET THIS WEEK:

Is This Tech Sector The Next One To Run Higher? Here's Why We Think It Is and The 3 Stocks We Are Buying ... (Source)

Stocks mentioned: $CIBR, $HACK, $CRWD, $OKTA, $PANW, $NET, $TENB, $MSFT, $GOOG, $NTSK, $MITK

This past week gave us a clear signal in a volatile market. While a lot of tech kept swinging up and down, cybersecurity stocks quietly put together one of their strongest weeks in a while. Major cyber ETFs like CIBR and HACK jumped 7% in just a few days. Now that doesn't mean that we are out of the woods just yet. Cybersecurity could pull back, but after the bullish news that came out for the sector this past week, we think this is a great place for us to rotate capital into for the long term. With that said, let's jump into why cybersecurity did great this past week, and why we think that trend can continue over the next 5-10 years.

The move started with earnings, and two names led the way. CrowdStrike (CRWD) reported revenue of $1.47 billion, up nearly 26% year over year, and the stock had its best single day ever, climbing about 20%. Okta (OKTA) beat as well, posting $805 million in revenue and jumping close to 30% in one session. CrowdStrike sells software that monitors and protects all of a company's devices and servers from one place. Okta handles identity, meaning it verifies that people and, increasingly, AI systems are who they claim to be before granting access. Both companies raised their guidance for the year, and both pointed to AI as a source of new demand rather than a threat. When two of the biggest names in the space beat and raise in the same week, the rest of the sector tends to get pulled up with them, and that is exactly what happened. Stocks such as Palo Alto (PANW), Cloudflare (NET), Tenable (TENB), etc... they all rallied alongside Crowdstrike and Okta's great reports. But great earnings wasn't all that cybersecurity had going for it this past week...

The other major driver of price action in cybersecurity this past week was actually thanks to the founder of Chat GPT. This past Thursday, the founder of OpenAI (parent company of Chat GPT), Sam Altman, released an open letter demanding that the government and other companies strengthen their cybersecurity before it's too late. He went on to say, "In the coming months, AI-enabled cyberattacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models around the world become increasingly capable." He added that there is a, "limited window to strengthen cyber defenses." When one of the largest AI models in the world is calling for increases in cybersecurity, it probably means that we need more cybersecurity! And if that's the case, then that means more money is going to flow into cybersecurity stocks, hence cybersecurity stocks should move higher. Just to note, 100+ other companies backed Open AI's sentiment with companies like Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG) coming out and agreeing that more needs to be done before it's too late.

So now that we've covered the 2 major bullish events that occured for cybersecurity in the past week, here are the 3 names that we like ranging from very large market caps, to very small market caps:

CrowdStrike (CRWD) - The large cap leader sitting at $223 billion. It just posted its best quarter and best trading day in company history, and management says AI systems are becoming customers themselves, which turns the AI threat into a growth driver. I like owning the clear category leader while the whole category is accelerating.
Netskope (NTSK) - This is a mid cap growth name sitting at $6 billion. It focuses on protecting data as companies move to the cloud and support work from anywhere, a shift that is not reversing. I see it as a way to get exposure to the same demand trend without paying the premium the largest names carry.
Mitek (MITK) - Finally, here is a small cap name, sitting at $850 million. It specializes in identity verification and fraud prevention, which is exactly the problem that grows when AI can convincingly fake voices, faces, and documents. The smaller size means more risk, but also more room to run if that problem keeps expanding.

Stepping back, the case is straightforward. AI is getting more capable on both sides, offense and defense, so spending on security has to keep pace with the rising threat. That is not a one-week story, it is a multi-year spending cycle where budgets are far more likely to grow than shrink. The honest caveat is that these stocks are not cheap after moves like this and a hot sector can cool off quickly, so strength this week is not a guarantee of strength next month. But when earnings, the AI narrative, and the largest companies in tech all point in the same direction in the same week, that alignment is worth taking seriously. For us, cybersecurity has and will continue to be a dominant sector that will continue to outperform the overall market for years to come. Whether these stocks move up or down in the next couple weeks is not something we're concerned with because we have such high conviction that these stocks will move exponentially higher and at some point, in the next few years, we could very well see the first $1 trillion pure-play cybersecurity stock.

We Got Nvidia's Earnings Results and It Was Massive!!! Here's What Happened and The 5 Stocks We're Watching This Week... (Source)

Stocks mentioned: $NVDA, $PANW, $AVGO, $SNOW, $ZS, $PL

This past week gave us the single most anticipated earnings report of the season, and Nvidia (NVDA) did not disappoint. For those that are new, "earnings" are the "quarterly report cards" public companies hand investors, showing how much money they made and just as important, what they expect to make next. Nvidia's report card was close to flawless! Revenue came in at $96.2 billion, beating Wall Street's forecast of roughly $92.3 billion, with earnings of $2.22 per share against the $2.09 expected. But the real showstopper was the guidance, meaning the forecast for the coming quarter. Nvidia told investors to expect around $108 billion in revenue next quarter, well above the $104 billion Wall Street was modeling. This is a level so high that only a handful of S&P 500 companies have ever crossed $100 billion in a single quarter. CEO Jensen Huang summed up the mood bluntly, saying AI has reached its inflection point and demand is accelerating. When the largest chipmaker on earth tells you demand is speeding up, that is about as bullish a signal as the market gets.

Here's the honest wrinkle, though. A blowout report does not automatically mean the stock rockets, and Nvidia is the poster child for that. The bar was set at near-perfection going in, with analysts noting that roughly 70% year-over-year growth was already baked into expectations. Think of it like a straight-A student bringing home another report card full of A's: impressive, but the family already expected it, so there's no fireworks. That's not a knock on the business. It's a reminder that price and fundamentals are two different things. What Nvidia proved is that the underlying engine of this market, real demand for AI infrastructure, is still firing. The fundamentals are intact even if the market reaction is muted moving forward.

That matters because the backdrop right now is anything but calm. As we covered last week, the Fed under Kevin Warsh is openly worried about inflation, and the odds of a rate hike jumped after his Jackson Hole speech. High interest rates and lingering hike fears act like a headwind on the whole market, making borrowing pricier and pulling money toward safer assets. Layer on the seasonality data and we're heading into the historically choppy September and October stretch of a midterm election year, a window that tends to produce sharper pullbacks. So the picture is genuinely two-sided. Fundamentals, as Nvidia just showed, remain strong. But the macro environment (rate hikes, Fed uncertainty, and seasonal turbulence) keeps volatility elevated. We're holding both truths at once rather than pretending only one exists, and that shapes how we're approaching the market moving forward.

Next week brings a fresh wave of "report cards", and there are 5 we're watching closely. In the order they report:

Palo Alto Networks (PANW) - Reports Tuesday, September 1. Palo Alto is a cybersecurity heavyweight, and security spending tends to hold up even when budgets tighten, so it offers a look at enterprise health in a different corner of tech than the AI hardware names.
Broadcom (AVGO) - Reports Wednesday, September 2. This is the headliner of the week. Broadcom designs custom AI chips and networking gear, and it's become a second bellwether for AI demand alongside Nvidia. A strong report here would reinforce that the AI trade has more than one engine, while a soft one would raise questions the whole sector would have to answer.
Snowflake (SNOW) - Reports Wednesday, September 2. Snowflake runs the cloud platform companies use to store and crunch their data, and data is the raw fuel that AI runs on. Its results are a read on whether businesses are actually putting AI to work or just talking about it, since real AI adoption tends to show up as heavier data usage.
Zscaler (ZS) - Reports Thursday, September 3. Zscaler is another cybersecurity name, but it leans into cloud-based security, so pairing it with Palo Alto gives two angles on how much companies are still willing to spend to protect themselves. Steady demand here is a sign enterprise budgets remain healthy.
Planet Labs (PL) - Reports Thursday, September 3. Planet operates a fleet of imaging satellites, a very different business from the chip names, and it serves as a check on appetite for smaller, higher-growth, higher-risk stories. How the market treats its results says a lot about overall risk tolerance right now.

Nvidia reminded everyone that the fundamentals underpinning this market are still solid, and the reports coming this week will test whether that strength runs deep or sits with just a few names. At the same time, we're not letting one great report lull us into ignoring the rates, the Fed, and the seasonal turbulence that keep this a two-sided market. Strong fundamentals and a shaky macro backdrop can absolutely coexist, and the smart move is to respect both. We'll be reading next week's earnings through that exact lens: watching for confirmation that the demand is broadening, while staying prepared for the volatility that this stretch of the calendar so reliably delivers.

"Super Investor" Spotlight: Harvard University (Source)

Stocks mentioned: $SPCX, $TSM, $CBRS, $AMZN, $GOOGL, $NVDA, $IAU, $MSFT, $AVGO, $META

Most people think they know everything about Harvard University, but almost nobody actually looks at what the school does with its money, and that's exactly the kind of blind spot we love digging into. Harvard's endowment is the largest of any university on the planet, and the team behind it has spent generations building one of the most sophisticated capital allocation operations in existence. It doesn't chase headlines. It doesn't announce its moves. It just quietly deploys capital into publicly traded stocks without a majority of people even knowing. The public stock portfolio we're looking at here manages billions on its own, and the way it's positioned tells us a lot about how the smartest money in academia is thinking right now. When an institution like this puts money to work, it's worth slowing down and paying attention.

Harvard's public equity philosophy is built around one idea that jumps off the page the moment you see this portfolio: conviction. This is not a diversified index with 100 different names. This is a concentrated bet on the technologies the endowment believes will define the next decade, anchored by an enormous position in SpaceX and backed by a semiconductor and AI infrastructure thesis that runs through nearly every major holding. Harvard isn't trying to own a little bit of everything. It's putting real weight behind the companies building rockets, chips, and compute, and it's holding household-name compounders alongside them. That approach produces a portfolio that looks genuinely different from what most institutions are running right now, heavily tilted toward frontier technology, with the picks and shovels of the AI era doing most of the heavy lifting.

Here are the top 10 holdings in Harvard University's public stock portfolio:

SpaceX (SPCX) - 51.8%
Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM) - 8.2%
Cerebras (CBRS) - 5.6%
Amazon (AMZN) - 5.5%
Alphabet (GOOGL) - 3.9%
NVIDIA (NVDA) - 3.7%
iShares Gold Trust (IAU) - 3.5%
Microsoft (MSFT) - 3.4%
Broadcom (AVGO) - 3%
Meta (META) - 2.8%

This is a portfolio that believes the AI and space economy is the defining trade of the era and isn't shy about saying so with real dollars. We will continue to monitor Harvard's portfolio alongside dozens of other hedge funds, politicians, and "Super Investors", and will keep reporting back every week with updates on any new moves they make.

INSIDER STOCK TRADES FROM THE WEEK:

1. Klarna (KLAR) - Sebastian Siemiakowski (CEO) bought roughly $10,000,000 of KLAR at an average price of $14.37/share on August 26, 2026, but it wasn't reported to the public until August 28, 2026. (Source)

2. NGL Energy Partners (NGL) - John Raymond (Director) bought roughly $5,000,000 worth of NGL at an average price of $16.98/share on August 25, 2026, but it wasn't reported to the public until August 26, 2026. (Source)

3. Ameresco (AMRC) - George Sakellaris (CEO) bought roughly $100,000 of AMRC at an average price of $22.66/share on August 26, 2026, but it wasn't reported to the public until August 27, 2026. (Source)

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