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Hi all,
Long time lurker but not much of a poster, I maintain a small portfolio (I just don’t have that much capital to work with) but I like it to be well-researched and thought through. I don’t have legendary gains to show for it (mostly due to hesitancy about options, but as I learn more this is changing), but I booked about a 70% return for 2025. Which is nice!
Over the first weeks of 2026 I’ve been scanning around, listening to podcasts, doing DD, and reading substacks to get an idea of where the trades are going for 2026. 4 sectors have jumped out to me and I’d like the community’s opinions about them, as well as prominent names for me to look up. I’ll also be providing some of my own names where applicable. But my ask of the community is to please jump in, add tickers, provide feedback and your takes on the sectors listed, and maybe the Reddit hivemind can get us to some gains for 2026.
One note: Spotlighting companies or tickers that haven't gone completely parabolic would be great. I know that this isn't r/valueinvesting so I'm not looking for Paypal analysis for the millionth time, but let's at least try to find things that aren't screaming overbought (I'm looking at you SNDK)
# 1. Critical Minerals and Miners
* Amusingly, a space that I was about 10 years too early to. Fuel and minerals miners, REOs, tungsten, gold, silver, etc all look set to rip, driven by US administration priorities and the debasement trade. But some notable names are already on crazy runs and who knows if they'll keep it up.
* My own tickers to contribute: UUUU, ASM
# 2. Edge AI and It's Suppliers
* This is a sector where I see so much potential but may have been too late to. Photonics, Testing, Meterology, Semi-Caps, specialized ASICS, all the nerdy tech stuff that's just down the line from GPUs and Memory has been seeing absolutely wild price action, but I'd love to hear whether or not some of these names can continue their run or if it's time to adopt a "buy the dip" approach.
* My tickers to contribute: LITE, LAM, CIEN, SKYW, TSEM, AMBQ
# 3. Small Caps
* I'll confess I know jack shit about small caps looking like they're going to outperform other than the Russell being more up than it was last year and that's about it. People are saying consumer rotation, defensive cyclicals, etc. It's all noise to me. But I'd love some input!
* My tickers to contribute: I literally have none
# 4. Software
* 2025 wasn't a great year for software in general, but when it comes to AI adoption, the narrative seems to be shifting from "this will solve everything" to "this will solve very specific things really well and certain players will win big from it." So with that said, I'm always hunting for beaten down stuff with a good growth story and a shot at actually figuring out what to do with all these cool enterprise AI agents everybody loves.
* My tickers: RBRK, ZETA, PATH, PGY
That's all I've got, but if you feel like I've missed any key sectors (don't say space though I know about space, it's horrifically overvalued) let me know and drop your favorite picks from that sector. Thanks!