The AI infrastructure boom has fundamentally shifted market dynamics, with equal-weight indexes outperforming market cap-weighted counterparts this year. Market participation has broadened considerably, with nearly two-thirds of stocks trading above their 200-day moving averages, indicating healthier breadth rather than narrow foundation. As per recent market analysis, the S&P 500 has gained 26.26% in 2023, 25.00% in 2024, 17.86% in 2025, and is up 13.95% year to date in 2026. The bull market has entered its fourth consecutive year of strong gains, challenging bearish predictions that such momentum was unsustainable. Critics who argued AI spending resembled self-reinforcing cycles are being proven wrong as external capital providers increasingly step in to fund AI infrastructure investments rather than relying solely on Nvidia itself.
According to data from two major international brokerage platforms for US stock trading, Nvidia remains the most popular US stock among Indian investors. On Appreciate, Nvidia has drawn about a fifth of all buy orders across its ten most-bought stocks this year, roughly 1.6 times the stock in second place. The platform reports that five of the ten most-ordered stocks are semiconductor and memory names, together making up 51% of all orders in that top ten. Vested Finance confirms a similar trend, with Nvidia, Micron, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, AMD, SanDisk, Broadcom, Google and Tesla making up its top ten for the last six months. The recent announcement involving major financial institutions meaningfully challenges concerns that AI spending represents self-reinforcing cycles within the same group of companies.
The rally in AI-linked stocks has shifted focus from whether Big Tech's spending spree will pay off to identifying companies that will deliver returns over the longer term. Results from Microsoft and Amazon reassured markets that demand remains robust for AI infrastructure, with cloud growth accelerating and capacity constraints persisting. As per Reuters, hyperscalers are being recognised as companies likely to be very large beneficiaries of this AI paradigm shift. Wellington Management, which manages about $1.3 trillion in assets, has increased positioning in these companies recently. A Reuters analysis estimates hyperscalers will generate about $340 billion more in annual operating cash flow in 2027 than in 2025, while capex is expected to rise by roughly $534 billion. The argument that hyperscalers are borrowing future demand may miss the bigger picture, as roughly 250,000 people worldwide are actively training AI agents currently, with potential for hundreds of millions in the future.
Perhaps the most telling trend across both platforms is a rotation happening within the semiconductor trade itself, away from compute and toward memory and storage. Appreciate's data shows three of its seven largest stock positions this year are memory and storage names — SanDisk, Micron and Western Digital — together accounting for about 37% of the money in that group, roughly 1.7 times what has gone into Nvidia. Vested Finance confirms the same pattern, noting that 'Micron has overtaken Nvidia as the number one name' on its platform since June, and SanDisk — absent from its top ten last year — has now broken in. Memory and storage together make up roughly 18% of all stock volume on the platform. This rotation reflects the practical reality that AI infrastructure demands are creating persistent constraints across chips, power, memory, data center capacity, and electrical infrastructure.
As energy prices remain volatile due to Iran-US tensions affecting global supply chains, investors are increasingly turning to AI stocks that help companies optimize resources. According to recent market analysis, three key AI stocks are emerging beyond Nvidia - Adobe, ServiceNow, and Broadcom - each representing different aspects of enterprise AI transformation. Adobe, with a market cap of US$105 billion, is positioned as a global software leader with US$14.8 billion in segment adjustment revenue, while ServiceNow has achieved 35.7% annual earnings growth over five years with AI contract value exceeding US$1 billion. Broadcom*, valued at approximately US$1.9 trillion, combines custom AI silicon, networking solutions, and VMware-based private cloud software to serve enterprise data center needs. The argument that AI agents represent a science project searching for a business model has been dramatically challenged as demand has surged to the point where the bigger challenge is no longer finding customers, but securing enough infrastructure to satisfy them.
Both platforms converge on similar allocation ranges for global market investments. Appreciate notes that about 97% of global market capitalisation sits outside India, and for serious long-term investors, 35-40% in US and global assets is the right structural weight. The platform points to two supporting factors: Indian and US equities have moved at a long-run correlation of roughly 0.4, meaning the two markets don't move in lockstep, and the rupee has weakened against the dollar by roughly 4.5% a year since 1991, which lifts the rupee value of dollar assets. Vested Finance offers a more graduated range: 10-15% for someone starting, and 20-30% for a more experienced investor, but stresses that currency exposure should drive the decision. The market bears should have gone into hibernation, as the bull market has continued to challenge bearish views with strong S&P 500 gains and broader participation supporting momentum.
