I get asked all the time what happens in the dark corners of the market when Big Tech sucks all the air out of the room. Well, here is your perfect cross-section—from AI-fueled rockets to delisted hardware dinosaurs and a bunch of hype-chasing ETFs. This is stupid and here's why.

Let's start with the AI crowd. Rezolve Ai (RZLV.US) just shocked everyone by projecting USD 127M in first-half 2026 revenue, an absurd 20x jump that drove massive stock swings. Good luck with that. We have seen this movie before where a single partner deal artificially inflates the numbers. The real test is sustainability.

Meanwhile, the companies doing the actual dirty work are raking it in. Coherent (COHH.US) reported full-year 2026 sales of USD 7.1B and is busy selling substrates to cool down AI chips. Then there is Powell Industries (POWL.US), a traditional switchgear maker that pulled in a massive data center order over USD 400M, pushing its backlog to USD 2.4B and driving the stock to outperform the sector. This is how you sell pickaxes during a gold rush. Why aren't you other infrastructure players moving faster?

Outside of AI, reality bites hard. e.l.f. Beauty (ELF.US) grew Q2 net sales by 14% to USD 343M, but tariffs are eating into its gross margins. Even if kids love cheap lipstick, you cannot escape geopolitical costs. On the opposite end, Cambium Networks (CMBMF.US) is a complete disaster. With an estimated Q2 net loss of USD 9.3M and a delisting to the OTC market, this is a textbook strategic failure. Are you asleep at the wheel?

Then there is Netlist (NLST.US), which generated USD 333M in LTM revenue mostly while suing everyone. They finally squeezed a USD 239M upfront payment out of Samsung. But litigation is not a scalable business model.

The rest of this group is a chaotic mix. DeFi Technologies (DEFT.US) saw Q2 revenues drop to USD 7.8M, proving again that crypto reliance is a fickle game. Throw in GraniteShares Gold Trust (BAR.US) catching safe-haven flows, the highly volatile Leverage Shares 2x Long UEC Daily ETF (UECG.US), and the crypto-tracking Bitwise Hyperliquid ETF (BHYP.US), and you have a perfect snapshot of today's market: everyone is just chasing momentum.

This article does not constitute investment advice.