All five of the five most upgraded stocks of the trailing 90 days are cybersecurity names.
Software spent most of the past year being sold on the theory that AI would eat it. In the week before this livestream Salesforce rose 26% and CrowdStrike rose 22%, and the analysts on this show say the upgrade table had already been pointing that way.
"Not five of the most upgraded, but the top five, one, two, three, four, and five."
Chris Marotch and Thomas Hughes are MarketBeat analysts, and the format is the reason to listen: viewers put tickers in the chat, the two of them pull the chart up live, and nothing is prepared. As the host tells new viewers, "None of this is pre-done and they've done no research ahead of time."
I listened to the full episode so you can skip it. 68 minutes of audio, 21 minutes of reading.
Here are the 13 takeaways that matter.
👤 Guests: Chris Marotch and Thomas Hughes, both analysts at MarketBeat, who take viewer-submitted tickers live and analyze them cold on air
🎙️ Host: Bridget Bennett, who hosts the MarketBeat podcast and the channel's Monday livestream
📰 Published: 31 August 2026
🔴 YouTube | 🔗 Episode page | ⏱️ 1 hr 8 min | ✅ Time saved: 47 min
Key Takeaways
Every one of the five most-upgraded stocks of the past 90 days is a cybersecurity name
Palo Alto Networks is ranked fifth without having reported its quarter yet
Agentic AI is a security problem before it is a productivity gain
More agents means more points of contact to defend, and buyers do not yet own enough tools to cover them
Cybersecurity is too fragmented for one vendor to cover a company
Even the most comprehensive platform needs two or three others behind it, so the names grow together rather than at each other's expense
A near-100x multiple is defensible if you price the tenth year rather than this one
Palo Alto sits near 100 times current-year earnings and 23 times the 10-year outlook
Quantum computing is a threat to the security vendors, but not for three to five years
IBM and Cloudflare look furthest along on quantum defense
Institutional money came back into beaten-up stocks in early Q3, across the whole AI stack and outside tech
The memory selloff was the summer correction, not a change in the story
The demand signal from Nvidia's quarter reads straight through to Micron's high-bandwidth memory
Ethernet fabric is the piece of AI hardware nobody talks about and everything depends on
Power, not chips, is the bottleneck a data center has to clear
Bloom Energy's fuel cells are quieter than the alternative, which matters where neighbors are objecting
A YouTuber moved GoPro 46% in a day and changed nothing about the business
The neocloud selloff is a timing complaint, not a demand complaint
IREN missed on earnings but says its 2026 capacity is largely sold out
1. A Holding Pattern, Not a Top
The livestream opened on a Monday that started red after weekend news from Iran. Neither analyst treated it as a change of regime.
Both read the move as mechanical rather than meaningful. "Oil goes up, market goes down." Hughes called the move small and said the S&P 500 is in a holding pattern while oil, inflation, the FOMC and Iran resolve themselves
"I think that it's going to continue to cause near-term volatility, but ultimately the market is inherently bullish and wants to move higher."
Marotch agreed and pointed at Friday's jobs report, which is expected to come in better than August's
He also flagged the calendar. September is when institutions typically come back, and September and October have tended to be weaker months for stocks
His forward-looking worry is political. As the midterm issues get framed over the next couple of months, he expects data centers to be one of them, and thinks the tech market is already trying to price that
The data he says is already visible is institutional buying. "But right now what I'm seeing is major spikes in institutional buying and early Q3 for all of the really big important stocks all the way up and down the AI stack"
He extended it beyond technology to value names, blue chips, dividend payers and other sectors, and allowed that a reporting artifact could explain some of it
2. Salesforce Beat the AI Fear
The first name up was Salesforce, after a week that Hughes called a crazy example of how much a software stock can rally.
The stock is the test case for the whole "SaaS apocalypse" argument. "This one's up 26% in five days." He said the company is heading for new highs before year end
"This stock to me is kind of the poster child for the SaaS apocalypse."
His answer to the disruption case is that the company is deploying AI faster than AI is disrupting it. "But what's happening is that Salesforce is able to deploy AI in a more productive manner than AI is able to disrupt its business."
The defense he named is data, not software. "It's got this incredibly large proprietary bundle of data that AI needs."
What he says the results show: rising usage and penetration, high demand for the AI tools and agentic automation, sustained double-digit growth, high profitability and cash flow, and aggressive capital returns
3. Cyber Took Every Upgrade
CrowdStrike rose 22% over the same week. Marotch said cybersecurity was never really exposed to the SaaS disruption argument and fell in sympathy with everything else.
The demand driver he named is agentic AI, and it works through the number of things that have to be defended. Enterprises adopting agents are expanding the threat surface faster than they are buying tools to cover it, and even the ones with tools do not have enough of them
CrowdStrike's Falcon platform sells as modules, and he said many customers subscribe to six or more
Hughes's structural point is that the industry's fragmentation is the investment case. No single vendor covers the whole stack, from model building through deployment, so three to five of them are needed for a complete system
"It needs to have two or three other companies supporting the stack to fill in the gaps."
The consequence he drew is that the large cross-cloud operators grow in tandem rather than at each other's expense
The upgrade table is the evidence. "Yeah, all five of the top five most upgraded stocks for the trailing 90 days leading to today are cyber security names."
"Even Palo Alto's on that list, it's ranked as number five, and it hasn't even reported earnings yet."
He argued the cycle is early: the data centers driving the change are still being built, and "The agentic age is only just now getting started."
The host put the list on screen from MarketBeat's own most-upgraded-stocks page, where the top five are all in the sector
4. 100x Now, 23x in a Decade
A regular viewer asked whether cybersecurity's price-to-earnings ratios are a problem. Marotch conceded the point and then argued past it.
"It is worrisome, but they're pricing in this growth this growth outlook." These are companies that are growing and producing, he said, and the multiple is on the forward outlook rather than on today
He pulled Palo Alto's numbers up live. Near 100 times current-year earnings, against only 23 times on the 10-year outlook — which he called fairly valued against the S&P 500 on a long horizon
His argument is that the long-dated estimate is the conservative one. Companies like this tend to earn and demand a premium over time, so he reads 23 times as perhaps 10 times too low
"So, you know, based on this, we still got a 50% upside."
5. Quantum Is Years Away
Another viewer asked whether quantum computing makes the cybersecurity companies obsolete.
Hughes was careful about forecasting a technology that does not exist yet. "There are cyber security companies working to try to set the framework for quantum security in the future, which I think is kind of weird because how can you secure something that's not even been built yet?"
His view is that today's vendors are positioned to develop the next-generation product and will pivot into quantum security as it becomes viable, exactly as they did with AI
Marotch put a horizon on it for investors. "I don't think this is something you have to worry about in the next three to five years." He would keep an eye on quantum and stay long the incumbents in the meantime
On who is furthest along, Hughes named IBM and Cloudflare — IBM for size, scope and money, Cloudflare because it carries so much internet traffic
The host said IBM was also the first choice of Jeffrey Neil Johnson on the channel's quantum computing video released the previous Thursday
6. Memory Finds Equilibrium
Micron rose about 3% on the day, ahead of an earnings release Hughes put roughly 30 days out.
He read Nvidia's results straight through to Micron's high-bandwidth memory demand, and said analyst sentiment has not needed to change because it was already bullish
A solid buy rating with about 35% upside at consensus, and a consensus that is still rising even though the most recent revision cut a price target to 1300
"So to me, the market still very, you know, bullish on Micron and a holding pattern."
SanDisk rose a little over 5.5% on the day, and he gave it the same reading: the spring peak was the market pricing the long-term outlook, and the summer fall was the summer correction
"So with that in place, I think that what we're seeing today is a buying signal in SanDisk and in Micron stock."
Asked about a claim that the volatility in Micron and SanDisk comes from monthly index rebalancing, he explained the mechanism without endorsing it: big price swings leave the names misallocated inside whatever fund holds them, so the fund takes profits and buys what is down
A viewer in Saudi Arabia asked about the Roundhill Memory ETF. He pulled the holdings up on screen — Samsung, SK Hynix, Seagate, Western Digital, SanDisk and Micron — and called it a decent, diversified way to play the memory shortage
"It does have quite a large holding of US government debt, which is a little bit weird"
The host put that weight at 24% in Treasuries, and Hughes suggested buying two or three of the names outright would give the same exposure without it
7. Two Super-Chat Small Caps
A paid super chat bought two unfamiliar tickers to the front of the queue, and Marotch looked at both cold.
NESR: A Record Quarter
"I will admit I never heard of the company before this." He said he is bullish anyway, on the sector: an oil-field services company of about $3.5 billion, in an area where demand is not going away
The quarter backs it. "Company had a really great quarter last quarter. Record quarter. Earnings were more than double the year before." Revenue was well over 50% higher, and analysts look for earnings growth close to 47% over the next 12 months
It trades slightly above the consensus price target, but analysts have been raising targets since the report, which he treats as a bullish signal because analysts tend to lag
Hughes noted the move that made it a midcap. "I mean, it's moved over 121% year to date, 275% in the last year."
Marotch found the roughly 5% short interest striking for a small-to-midcap that has run that far. "That's a winner. That's you're just not going to bet against that."
The one thing he would change: he would like it more if it paid a dividend
DHI Group
The company runs two career marketplaces, and they are moving in opposite directions. "Right now the story is the two platforms are moving in different ways."
ClearanceJobs targets candidates with government security clearances, and he expects it to keep expanding on demand from Anduril, Palantir, Shield and other defense contractors, because that work cannot be done without cleared staff
Dice, the broader technology job board, is the weak half, and he read it as a signal about the labor market. "The company says the struggles that it has may finally be kind of bottoming out, but it's an interesting one because that's feeding that narrative that AI might be displacing some technology jobs."
Neither analyst could place a clean comparable. Marotch put it in professional services, doubted Kelly Services was a direct competitor, and Hughes raised Korn Ferry before ruling it out as executive search
8. Ethernet Fabric Runs AI
A viewer watching on Facebook asked for an update on Arista Networks.
Hughes explained what the company sells before he valued it. "Ethernet fabric is the hardware and the software that connects all the GPUs and CPUs together into one computer."
"Without Ethernet fabric, AI is dead in the water."
The stock has climbed steadily rather than in leaps since the AI build-out began, and both the 2025 and spring wobbles resolved into rebounds
Asked by Marotch whether the current price is a problem, he described a pause rather than a top. About four and a half weekly candles moving sideways is a consolidation, and he expects it to hold until the next earnings report provides the catalyst
Marotch pointed at the 1% short interest and heavy institutional ownership as what an established, cash-generative business with a backlog looks like on a screen
9. Two Names Still Burning Cash
Two of the day's tickers got the same verdict for the same reason: a good story, a real catalyst, and no money coming in yet.
Datavault AI
The revenue picture looks strong and the share count is the problem. Analysts covering it see an inflection to profitability inside 12 months, but the company is still burning cash
"Just a wicked amount of dilution and overhang plays into the short interest."
Short interest is about 10%, institutions own less than 1%, and Hughes read the small amount of buying as short covering and profit-taking
"This is really a wait and see story, a prove it to me story." He warned that the 29-cent stock could fall to the nickel range before the catalyst arrives
Asked whether tokenizing data for AI models is catching on, he was skeptical about the customer, not the concept. "I think the concept is good. It just depends on which data is getting you know tokenized and which people won't want to buy it."
The model builders already have their data, and companies like Uber, Tesla, SpaceX and Salesforce sit on enough proprietary data that they are unlikely to buy third-party data the way the market once assumed
QuantumScape
Marotch described solid-state batteries as a potential alternative to lithium-ion that would last longer on a charge and go further
His objection is the calendar. "And it's just been kind of a we're going to we're going to be manufacturing next year and next year and next year and they're not there yet and they're still not generating revenue and they're still burning cash."
"The company did announce recently a new multi-year partnership with Honda, which is good." He also noted the company is pitching into data centers, and drew the distinction between pitching contracts and having technology that works at scale
He has written about the company for years and is personally out of it, while allowing that people closer to the technology may reasonably disagree
10. Space After the SpaceX IPO
Intuitive Machines came back to the show a week after its last appearance.
The stock is up about 24% in a month against a 65% fall over three months, which Marotch attributed to the SpaceX listing pulling attention and money out of the sector
The quarter was bad on profit and good on growth. Adjusted earnings per share missed with a wider loss than expected, but revenue was roughly four times the year before
"The story there is that the company keeps adding contracts." The bull case rests on a backlog converting to profit; the bears are not convinced
Consensus points to about 100% upside, though he flagged that price targets have been coming down since earnings, so the upside was larger before the report
On the sector, he had checked which space names institutions were buying. "Lunar looked like it was the one with the shortest runway to profitability." He put SpaceX turning profitable next year, Intuitive Machines late next year, and Rocket Lab and others in the years after
Asked by Hughes about the last few days of selling, he said the chart looks like a bottom retesting support ahead of its next move
11. Intel Looks Like a Bottom
Hughes read the chart as a base rather than a breakdown. The stock is still down about 20% over three months after peaking earlier in the year with the rest of semiconductors, and he thinks it is setting up for another run
"This isn't necessarily reason to buy, but I just saw earlier this summer that Nancy Pelosi bought some Intel."
Analysts are at about 20% upside at consensus, with coverage increasing
The AI angle he named is central processing units rather than graphics chips. Once the GPUs are installed, CPUs are needed to control them for inference, which he expects to be a large business for Intel, alongside the foundry turnaround
The puzzle is the ratings. The company roughly doubled its earnings-per-share beat in its July report, and 31 analysts still have it at hold
Marotch's explanation is sentiment rather than numbers: it is not the headline semiconductor name, and legacy headwinds are still weighing on how analysts see it. "It's really like a legacy player."
12. Power Is the Bottleneck
The host handed over a cluster of power and battery names, and Marotch made the case for treating them as one theme.
His first answer was to buy the theme rather than the name. Anyone looking at all five should find an exchange-traded fund, because the names attack the same problem from five different directions
Bloom Energy
The stock is down over three months after an enormous run. "Yeah, it's up over 138% year to date and 289% last year." He attributed the run to anticipated data-center deals and the pullback to doubt about whether the company can meet the demand it has signed up for
He dismissed talk of a class-action suit over whether it has the scandium it needs as noise
What separates it from the hydrogen names is that it is already profitable, with revenue growing strongly year over year on contracts already won
The claim he found most significant came from the company rather than its customers. "They've been accepted as a source for power units because they have demonstrated an ability to deliver at scale."
Hughes added a second advantage from his own reporting: "So, in this environment, not only do they alleviate the power bottleneck, but they also reduce noise, which is another big complaint for the locals who are pushing back against that construction."
The host confirmed live on air that Nancy Pelosi had bought the stock at the end of July: "She bought between a half a million to a million dollars of Bloom Energy." Marotch said the earnings report, not the disclosure, is what moved it
NeoVolta
A roughly $240 million company, up about 100% in a month and 117% over three months, moving from residential batteries toward utility-scale storage
"So they've got some joint ventures lined up with some manufacturers. That's what's pushing up the stock." Revenue was essentially flat year over year with a slightly wider loss, and the company is not profitable
Institutional ownership is thin, as the market capitalization implies, but the institutions that do own it are buying at about five to one against sellers
GE Vernova
Up about 37% year to date and down over the past month after missing earnings by 70 cents, on revenue that came in fine and earnings still up year over year
Marotch does not think the miss changed the story. The share price is over $840 and near $900, at roughly 58 times forward earnings, which he called a little rich
"They're giving the stock a, you know, a price target of over $1,100, which is over 28% upside."
The dividend grew 100% last year
13. Neoclouds and Marvell
The closing stretch went to the AI infrastructure names viewers ask about every week, and to one question: is the bottom in?
On Marvell, Hughes described a violent round trip that is smaller than it looks. "This stock did see a pretty you know amplified movement 80 to 300." The pullback took back close to half of that
"But given the runup ahead of it the pullback isn't that big."
He expects the reports between now and Nvidia's next one to confirm the build-out is still under way, and the names actually shipping product to regain their highs
IREN fell on an earnings miss that Marotch thinks was over-read. "I don't think the report was as terrible as some people made it out to be." AI cloud revenue was still up, and "Management says that the 2026 capacity is largely sold out."
He read the chart as a possible confirmed low, because it did not return to the late-July level
Hughes gave the sector's problem as a mismatch between the cash going out now and the revenue arriving later. The market looks ahead to the cash flow and then gets hit with how long it takes to arrive
"So within that, yes, I do see a bottom in the complex. I do see upside potential, but I also see a lot of volatility in the upcoming quarters until we really start seeing projects being completed and backlog revenue converting into actual dollars."
Nebius got the gentler reading, because the pullback followed a beat-and-raise quarter rather than a miss — a healthy pullback to buy rather than a warning
Applied Digital, down 46% over three months after a large miss in late July, got the same diagnosis: "Yeah, it's all it's all the same. They're building their network." Hyperscale contracts, a long-term outlook, and the hurdle of converting backlog to dollars
Bonus Insights
SentinelOne is the laggard of the group. Marotch had not looked at it recently but said it has trailed the sector, that its results were good rather than as strong as hoped, and "Yeah, I think it's a good play, but I think that maybe it's not the strongest cyber security play that you could pick."
GoPro jumped 46% in a day on a YouTube endorsement, and neither analyst thought it meant anything. Hughes said the new cinematic cameras take an already niche market and narrow it further, and there are rumors of a board-led strategic review
"But right now I think that GoPro is just as dead in the water as it's been for the last few years."
Marotch's reading of the move: "That kind of shows the power of YouTube and content creators and the power they can have of moving a stock just by getting people interested in it."
On whether it is tradable, Hughes said the upside could be large for a stock this small and the downside afterwards would be at least as large, with new lows likely
NIO is a sideways chart with a catalyst attached. Analysts see small upside; a pivot to profitability inside a year is what would change the market's interest. "They don't really sell cars in America, but they're definitely taking over the international market."
BitMine Immersion took the last slot and neither analyst had covered it before. Viewers described it as MicroStrategy for Ethereum; the two of them found an Ethereum treasury company that also appears to be pivoting its Bitcoin-mining immersion cooling into data-center cooling
Marotch said the cooling pivot interests him more than the treasury claim, and Hughes suggested the ambiguity is why analysts are staying away: "and that may be why analysts are kind of staying away right now because it does, you know, they're not necessarily sure what it is"
On the asset itself: "I think Ethereum is the better play as far as cryptos go, but the entire crypto market is kind of kind of lost its momentum."
A viewer asked about a smaller bitcoin miner the analysts had covered before but could not place from memory; Hughes said a bitcoin-conversion story has a future and the question is where it sits in that story and what is in its backlog
The through-line the two analysts kept returning to is that the AI build-out is still in front of them rather than behind them, which is why they read the summer's damage in software, memory, power and the neoclouds as a correction inside an uptrend rather than the end of one.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Salesforce (The poster child for the "SaaS apocalypse" fear, up 26% in five days; Hughes says its proprietary data is a moat AI needs)
CrowdStrike (Up 22% over the same week; its Falcon platform sells as modules and many customers subscribe to six or more)
Palo Alto Networks (Fifth on the most-upgraded list without having reported; near 100x current-year earnings and 23x the 10-year outlook)
Okta, Fortinet and SentinelOne (The rest of the cybersecurity move; SentinelOne is the one Marotch calls a laggard)
IBM and Cloudflare (Named as furthest along on quantum defense — IBM for scale and money, Cloudflare for its position in internet traffic)
Micron and SanDisk (The memory pair; both read as a buying signal on the view that the summer fall was a correction inside a demand story)
Nvidia (Its results are the demand signal both analysts read through to memory, networking and the neoclouds)
Roundhill Memory ETF (A diversified way into the memory shortage, with a large Treasury holding Hughes called "a little bit weird")
National Energy Services Reunited (Oil-field services, about $3.5B, record quarter, up over 121% year to date on roughly 5% short interest)
DHI Group (Two career marketplaces going opposite ways — ClearanceJobs strong on defense hiring, Dice weak in a way that feeds the AI-displacement argument)
Anduril and Palantir (Named as the source of demand for cleared candidates on ClearanceJobs)
Arista Networks (Ethernet fabric, which Hughes says AI is dead in the water without; 1% short interest and heavy institutional ownership)
Datavault AI (A 29-cent stock with heavy dilution, 10% short interest and under 1% institutional ownership — a prove-it story)
QuantumScape (Solid-state batteries with a Honda partnership and, Marotch says, a manufacturing date that keeps moving)
Intuitive Machines (Up 24% in a month against a 65% three-month fall; revenue roughly 4x, and the shortest runway to profitability among the space names he checked)
Rocket Lab (Placed further out than Intuitive Machines on the path to profits)
GoPro (Up 46% on a YouTube endorsement, which neither analyst thinks changes a business they call dead in the water)
Intel (A bottoming chart, 31 analysts at hold, and a CPU-for-inference case alongside the foundry turnaround)
NIO (A sideways Chinese EV chart whose catalyst is a pivot to profitability; it sells internationally rather than in America)
Bloom Energy (Fuel cells that clear the data-center power bottleneck and run quieter than the alternative; up over 138% year to date)
NeoVolta (A roughly $240M energy-storage company moving from residential into utility scale on new joint ventures, with flat revenue)
GE Vernova (Heavy power equipment, over $840 a share at about 58x forward earnings, with a price target over $1,100)
Marvell (The round trip Hughes says looks worse than it is, given the size of the run that preceded it)
IREN, Nebius and Applied Digital (The neoclouds: one punished for a miss while saying 2026 capacity is sold out, one pulling back after a beat and raise, one down 46% in three months — all with the same backlog-to-dollars problem)
BitMine Immersion Technologies (An Ethereum treasury company that also appears to be turning its mining immersion cooling toward data centers — the ambiguity both analysts think keeps coverage away)
MarketBeat's most upgraded stocks (The screen the episode is built around; the host put it on air to show the top five)
Books & Resources Mentioned
Quantum computing with Jeffrey Neil Johnson (The channel's video from the previous Thursday, in which IBM was named the first choice among quantum defenders)
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