Ken Goodreau, CMT

This is unprecedented. Micron, $MU, and Nvidia, $NVDA are expected to account for 36% of the S&P 500’s earnings growth in Q3 2026 earnings season. This comes as $MU and $NVDA are expected to contribute +5.2 and +4.6 percentage points to the index’s +27% YoY earnings growth, respectively. Meanwhile, the next 8 top contributors are projected to add +8.2 percentage points, accounting for ~30% of the estimated S&P 500’s net income growth. Then, the remaining 490 stocks are set to contribute just +9.2 percentage points, representing 34% of the index’s projected earnings growth. Excluding those top 10 contributors, earnings growth is estimated to decline -11% YoY in Q3. Never in history have we witnessed market concentration like this.

US electricity prices are skyrocketing. The average price of US residential electricity has risen +11% since January 2025, to 19.6 cents per kilowatt-hour in August 2026, near an all-time high. Average prices during the first 8 months of 2026 were +40% higher than in the same period of 2019. The largest increase in residential electricity prices over this period was in Maine, at +90%, followed by California and New York, at nearly +70%. This comes as the AI boom is intensifying electricity demand, with data centers requiring enormous amounts of electricity to power thousands of chips and cooling systems. A 1-gigawatt data center can consume as much electricity as 800,000 homes. As a result, wholesale electricity prices in areas near significant data center activity surged by as much as +267% between 2020 and 2025. The AI revolution is driving a surge in electricity demand, and households are increasingly feeling the cost.