While I continue to be a big fan of the mega-cap tech innovators, I also think some lesser-covered AI firms - at least relative to the likes of Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and the rest of the titans worth more than $1 trillion - are worth watching and even betting on, even if their narratives require more patience from investors. It's not just about the hyperscalers!
"So the way I like to think about it is: Is there going to be an AI wobble at some point? Are investors going to be concerned about how those CapEx dollars are being invested? Right now, he continued, alluding to a famous game theory scenario, "there's a little bit of a prisoner's dilemma, let's call it, among the larger firms. You have to invest in it because your peers are investing in it, and so if you're left behind you're not going to have the stronger competitive position to it."
2025 is three-fourths over. While that may be odd to say, the reality is that a new investing year is almost upon us. However, there are still plenty of stocks that are worth buying now, especially to capture an end-of-year rally that may occur as institutional investors reposition their portfolios to capture gains where they think the market will be heading in 2026.
Dividend-oriented strategies aren't just for traditional value investors anymore. Many investors want to capture artificial intelligence (AI) growth while still generating reliable income. That can be achieved by pairing income-focused ETFs with AI-heavy funds, creating a forward-looking portfolio that balances payouts with exposure to transformative technology. Why Combine Dividends With AI? Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries from healthcare and finance to entertainment and manufacturing. Companies such as Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, and AMD are leading this shift.
When OpenAI launched its new GPT-5 model in August, the company bragged loud and hard about how GPT-5 is its "smartest, fastest, most useful model yet" and how interacting with it was like "chatting with a helpful friend with PhD‑level intelligence." When it comes to creative tasks like writing, GPT-5 immediately felt like a major step backward. But as I've tested the model more extensively, I've seen that it does excel at many pragmatic tasks like writing code and analyzing data.
Running a business means your time is already stretched across strategy, operations, customers, and employees. The last thing most leaders want is to spend their nights buried in financial reports and stock charts. Sterling Stock Picker is a platform that is designed to take the complexity out of investing while still giving you smart, actionable insights. With lifetime access available now for just $55.19 (MSRP: $486) using code SAVE20 through September 7, you can finally let technology handle the heavy lifting in the markets.
