Happy Fourth of July weekend. Some quick housekeeping before we get started. The U.S. stock market was closed Friday for the Fourth of July holiday, so this week’s official close is Thursday July 2. On to the notes. I will be brief because I went very long on a post this week about Trump Accounts.
1. A lot of recent fluctuations. Year to date, still looks great.
Thus far I have spent a lot of weekly post time talking about what had just happened. This week I want to zoom out a bit. Anyone who has been reading this column or watching the stock market knows the last six weeks have been a bit volatile. Cerebras IPO. Jobs report killing rate cut hopes. Chip stocks selling off. SpaceX going public. The Federal Reserve removing its easing bias. The Iran deal that never made it to implementation. RAMageddon. The Magnificent Seven losing over two trillion dollars in market value in a single month. If all you did was read the headlines, you would think 2026 has been brutal for investors. You might be feeling a bit anxious. I have been.
Just to step back quickly, I want to define the Magnificent 7 in case you made it here without understanding the term. It is basically referring to seven of the most dominant technology companies: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. Prior to this for a long time, top companies were referred to as FANG (by Jim Cramer). FANG was Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google. Apple was added at some point to make it FAANG but now we have the top 7 which are always referenced. Then you look at where the indexes actually stand year to date through Thursday and you see something interesting and much better. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 10.06 percent. The S&P 500 is up 9.32 percent. The Nasdaq Composite is up 11.15 percent. The Russell 2000, which tracks smaller companies, is up 20.72 percent. Every major index is up nicely. Small caps are having a genuinely exceptional year so far. If you only checked your account on December 31 last year and again on July 2, you would think 2026 has been a fantastic year.
This is the same lesson I have been writing about in different forms across this site. The path is full of noise. The destination is quieter. The disciplined investor who keeps showing up does fine over time. I wrote a few posts thus far that address this topic. One is a simple investing strategy that protects you from getting shaken out during volatile stretches like the last six weeks. It is about Dollar Cost Averaging. If you have not read it, that is a good companion piece to what I am sharing here today. Another is about not trying to time the market in volatile times.
Let me make this personal because I think it lands harder that way. I checked my current employer 401(k) account this week (all prior accounts are rolled up into one account). Here is what it showed:
In the first quarter of 2026, my account was down 4.51 percent. That was a real loss. Over the last 12 months, that same account is up 12.82 percent. Since I opened it, the annualized return is 9.31 percent. That last number is right in line with the historical average of the U.S. stock market over the long run.
The Q1 loss did not disappear. It was absorbed by the recovery that followed. The investor who saw the first quarter decline and reacted would have missed the recovery. The investor who kept contributing every paycheck and stayed invested captured both. That is dollar cost averaging working over time. That is discipline compounding while headlines try to distract you from the plan.
So here is what I want you to take from this week. Hang tight. Dollar cost average when you can. Trust the process. The market goes up and down. Sometimes for months at a time it feels like it is only going down. But over any reasonable period of time, the diversified investor who keeps showing up does fine. Not a promise. A pattern.
2. Meta wants to be a cloud company now
On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Meta is building a cloud infrastructure business to sell its excess AI computing capacity to outside customers. The stock jumped roughly 8 percent on the news. Then on Thursday, Meta gave back most of that gain and closed down almost 5 percent as the market reassessed. That two-day pattern is itself a teaching moment about how the market processes news, but the deeper story is what Meta is actually doing and why it matters.
Here is the setup. Meta guided to $125 to $145 billion in AI-related capital spending for 2026. The rest of the Magnificent Seven have similar numbers. Microsoft is at around $190 billion. Amazon is at $200 billion. Alphabet is at $180 to $190 billion. Combined AI capital spending across the biggest tech companies is projected at roughly $725 billion this year alone.
For years, the market rewarded this spending because AI was a growth story and these companies had the balance sheets to fund it. In 2026, the market started punishing it. The Mag 7 lost over two trillion dollars in combined market value in June, largely on concerns that the spending is not translating into returns fast enough.
Meta’s announcement is a direct response. If your infrastructure is being punished as a cost, turn it into a revenue stream instead. Rent the excess compute to other companies. Host their AI models on your servers. Charge them for it. Suddenly the balance sheet line item that Wall Street hated becomes a business Wall Street can value.
Meta is not the first to try this. SpaceX started doing it earlier this year, renting compute capacity to companies like Anthropic and Google out of its Colossus data centers. Now Meta is joining the same playbook. My guess is Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet will lean harder into their existing cloud businesses for the same reason. The market wants proof that the AI capex is producing revenue, and selling compute to other AI companies is one direct way to show it.
The bigger picture is this. The Magnificent Seven companies used to be capital-light businesses that generated huge free cash flow with relatively little investment. They are becoming capital-heavy businesses that have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers and chips just to stay competitive in AI. That is a real change in what these businesses are. Markets value capital-light businesses differently than capital-heavy ones. What is happening right now is the market working out whether to treat these companies the way it used to, or to reprice them for their new reality.
None of this means the Mag 7 is broken. These are still among the most profitable companies in history. But the way to think about them is shifting, and the stock prices are reflecting that shift in real time. As always, I am not making a prediction. I am pointing out that the story is more nuanced than either “AI is a bubble” or “AI is going to save the world.” It is a real business model transition happening in front of our eyes.
Meanwhile, chip stocks continued to slide this week. Thursday was split. The Dow hit a new record high, up 1.14 percent. The S&P 500 was essentially flat. The Nasdaq fell 0.80 percent. Micron dropped roughly 7 percent, Applied Materials fell over 7 percent, AMD dropped 4 percent. Tesla fell 7.5 percent despite a strong deliveries report. If you were concentrated in tech, Thursday was painful. If you were diversified, you were probably fine or even up. Same lesson I have written about for weeks now.
3. Two impossible things people did anyway
I want to close this week outside the market entirely. This site is Money ‘and’ Inspiration and I want to make sure to include more inspiration in the Weekly Notes. A quote I have carried with me for most of my life comes from Nelson Mandela.
It always seems impossible until it is done.
This is a quote I will reference often. I believe it with all I am. I saw two examples of that quote in action this week and both stayed with me.
The first was on America’s Got Talent, an episode I had recorded and got around to watching. I love this show tied to the contestant stories because you often learn about folks that have overcome obstacles.
On this episode, a contestant came out to do parkour. He seemed humble, seemed like an amazing guy. He walked back to the back lot to start his routine, ripped off one of his pant legs to reveal he was an amputee, then took off his prosthetic leg and completed the entire course on one leg. His name is Ruben Roldán Bustos. I sat there in awe. Awe actually might not be the right word because I believe in the quote. I was mesmerized seeing the quote lived out in real life. This guy had an accident, lost half his leg, probably heard from an army of people about what he couldn’t do……….he didn’t listen. I would say my life motto that Blessings Come From the Worst of Times was also in play here.
The second was Friday’s World Cup match between Argentina and Cape Verde. Argentina is the reigning World Cup champion, one of the most decorated national teams in the history of the sport, led by Lionel Messi. Cape Verde is a nation of about 500,000 people playing in its first World Cup ever. The world did not give Cape Verde a chance. Cape Verde did not care. They tied the game at 1 in regulation. They tied it again at 2 in the first period of extra time. They pushed the reigning champions to the very edge before finally losing 3 to 2. The announcers were in awe. Fox Sports called it the best television of the summer. Yahoo Sports called Cape Verde World Cup legends. A country of half a million people almost knocked out the reigning champions. I am a sappy dude and absolutely had tears in my eyes watching this team give every drop of what they had left for their nation.
The lesson at both scales is the same. One person and one team. Individual and collective. You really can set out to do anything you choose. There are no limits no matter what you think or others tell you. It always seems impossible until it is done.
That applies to a lot more than parkour and soccer. It applies to starting a blog with no audience. It applies to saving for retirement when the numbers look impossible. It applies to showing up to work through the hardest weeks of your life. It applies to whatever thing you have been telling yourself you cannot do.
You can. Keep showing up.
See you next Saturday.
Nothing here is personalized financial advice — just one person’s notes. The companies named are examples, not recommendations. Always do your own homework before you invest.
Weekly Notes — July 11, 2026