Elon Musk called lithium refining a “license to print money.”
Elon Musk called lithium refining a “license to print money.”
He is right. Here is why.
Global lithium demand is set to grow 5X by 2040. Every EV battery needs up to 60 kilograms of it. AI data centers runs on it. And the old supply chain cannot keep up.
That is why General Motors led a $50 million round into a private company called EnergyX.
What GM saw was simple. The old way of mining lithium takes 18 months and leaves most of the metal in the dirt. EnergyX built a patented system that pulls out 3X more, and it does it in days.
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While chips lost five percent, staples and utilities caught a four-day bid. The structure built. It hasn't resolved.
This morning I graded what resolved. This afternoon, the thing that didn't. There was a setup building under the surface all week, in the part of the tape that never makes the highlight reel, and it has not finished. I'm not in this. The structure is interesting enough to mark.
Here is what built. While SMH bled better than five percent, the defensive sectors did the opposite, and not for one session. Consumer staples were the top sector of all eleven on Tuesday, up 1.77%. Healthcare put up 1.37%, real estate 1.35%, and utilities took a bid. Then they did it again. Four sessions of money quietly stepping out of XLK and SMH and into XLP, XLV, XLU. That is not a one-day hedge. Four days of consistent relative strength is the early signature of a rotation that wants to become a regime.
Four green days in the sectors nobody brags about owning. That is how a rotation starts. It is also how a head-fake starts. The tape hasn't told us which yet.
What would confirm it? The staples and utility bid holding even on a day when tech bounces. That is the test. Real rotations keep the new leadership bid when the old leaders rally; head-fakes evaporate the instant SMH puts up a green candle. We did not get that test this week, because tech never gave us a clean up day to measure against. The structure built in a vacuum.
What would kill it? SMH reclaiming its Tuesday highs and the defensive names handing back the week's relative gain in a single session. If one tech bounce unwinds four days of rotation, then this was money parking, not money moving. The whole thing resolves the first time the leaders try to lead again, and the broad tape is still sitting on that 730 shelf on SPY, around S&P 7,300, deciding nothing.
I have watched both outcomes play out. In the back half of 2021, money rotated out of the most speculative growth into quality for weeks before the index ever rolled over. That rotation confirmed, and in hindsight it was the tell that the easy part was finished. Other times the defensive bid is just a parking lot. Money hides in utilities and staples for a few sessions during an options-driven scare, then floods straight back into tech the moment the scare passes, and the rotation that looked real on Friday is gone by the next Wednesday. The difference between the two is never visible in the buildup. It is only visible in the test, and the test is a green tech day that the defensives refuse to follow. We have not gotten it.
Why this one is worth marking
Most rotations you read about after they are obvious. This one is still in the awkward stage, where the chart looks like noise and the only people watching are the ones tracking sector relative strength instead of headlines. That is exactly the stage worth marking, because the confirmation or the failure is what you actually trade, not the buildup. The buildup is just the setup announcing itself. I am not in this yet. I am marking it, because the group that leads the next leg is usually the one that quietly led the week nobody bothered to watch.
The setup score: Incomplete, on purpose. The defensive bid built for four days and never got tested against a tech bounce. Whether it confirms or fails is the whole story, and the week ended before the tape was willing to tell it.
— Cal Torres, The Trading Desk
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From the Desk of InvestorPlace: I don't forward many outside notes to my readers. But this one from my colleague Luke Lango stopped me cold. If you've been following the OpenAI IPO story — and most of our readers have — what Luke is about to share could completely change how you approach it. Please read this carefully before IPO day arrives.
Dear Reader,
It's no longer theoretical. It's officially in motion.
CNBC just announced that OpenAI – the inventors of ChatGPT – are about to file the confidential paperwork to go public.
And it could be the largest IPO in American history.
We all knew it was coming. But here's what almost everyone is about to get wrong.
They'll rush to buy OpenAI the moment it hits the market.
And if history is any guide, most of them will regret it.
In nearly every blockbuster tech IPO of the last 15 years, the people who bought on day one underperformed.
While a small group of other folks made as much as 3,900% on a little known investment connected to the IPO.
I call it the Pre-IPO Backdoor.
In my view, it's one of the best moneymaking opportunities out there.
It rarely comes around. You only see it when a huge tech company goes public.
And it's about to open again, thanks to the OpenAI IPO.
There's only one catch. You need to get in before OpenAI actually goes public.
Luke Lango Senior Technology Analyst, InvestorPlace
P.S. There's every chance the OpenAI IPO will be the biggest in American history. And that means the Pre-IPO Backdoor opportunities could be the biggest ever too. You may never see another opportunity like this in your lifetime. For your free ticker, click here now.
Today’s editorial pick for you
3 Stocks to Buy Despite Fears of Rising Consumer Debt
Posted On Jun 23, 2026 by Chris Markoch
There’s a conflicting picture about consumer debt, and it’s more than just whether you look at the glass as being half empty or half full. That is, it’s not a case of perception. Instead, recent data shows that consumer debt reflects the reality of many Americans.
Table of Contents
On the one hand, Société Générale, a leading European bank, recently issued a note to its clients. According to the bank, total U.S. household debt is at record levels. That includes mortgage, credit cards, student loans, and auto loans. However, investors would do well to avoid taking that headline at face value. The implications are different based on the K-shaped nature of the economy.
For example, household debt service (i.e. the amount that consumers are required to pay every month) as a percentage of disposable personal income is below any point prior to 2020. Plus, Americans’ liquid net worth (i.e., cash on hand) is near its highest level in three decades.
But that’s an aggregate number. When you look at households with income on the lower leg of the K-shaped economy, the cracks and stress appear.
This is a story that’s been building for several years but is reaching critical mass as the rate of inflation continues to accelerate. It also provides a template for how investors should position themselves with stocks that are built to manage consumer uncertainty.
The same AI tech used to prevent heart failure and grid blackouts can now "see ahead" in the U.S. stock market in a way that sounds like science fiction.
Visa (NYSE: V) is part of what remains a duopoly among payment servicers in the credit market. It operates similarly to a pipeline company in the oil and gas industry. It’s agnostic to inflation; the only thing that matters is payment flow.
The year-over-year (YOY) increases in revenue and earnings per share support the idea that consumers are borrowing at higher levels. The company’s Q2 2026 earnings report showed strong YOY beats and increased guidance for the full year.
Visa also builds shareholder equity. It repurchased a record $7.9 billion in shares in the quarter, paid out $1.3 billion in dividends, and the board approved a new $20 billion repurchase program that increases the company’s total buyback capacity to $33 billion.
And Visa is not overlooking the digital revolution. In the last quarter, the company highlighted several product launches that set it up for growth in the areas of agentic commerce and stablecoins/blockchain.
But V stock is trading at a discount. It’s down 2.8% in the last 12 months, with almost that entire loss coming since the start of the year. That said, the valuation looks attractive for a company that’s forecasting approximately 13% earnings growth in the next 12 months.
Synchrony Bank is a High-Risk, High-Reward Play
The name Synchrony Financial (NYSE: SYF) may not be immediately familiar, but its partners certainly are. The company powers the store credit cards for brands like Amazon, PayPal, and Lowe’s, operating across more than 73 million active accounts. That scale makes SYF one of the most direct expressions of consumer credit stress and a compelling contrarian opportunity.
Here’s how that case lays out. Synchrony carries one of the highest 30-plus-day delinquency rates among major card issuers, serving lower-prime and retail-store card segments at roughly double the rate of JPMorgan and Citigroup. That’s the bad news, and it’s priced in. SYF has pulled back significantly from its highs, with analysts’ price targets being cut broadly across consumer finance names.
But the market may be over-discounting the risk. The company’s Q1 2026 EPS rose 20% year-over-year to $2.27, net interest margin expanded to 15.5%, loan yields came in at 21.8%, and charge-offs actually declined to 5.42%. Management also maintained its full-year EPS guidance of $9.10 to $9.50 and expects net charge-offs to remain below 5.5% for the year, with loan receivables growing in the mid-single digits by year-end.
Capital returns tell the same story of confidence. The board approved a new $6.5 billion share repurchase program with no expiration date, replacing the prior program, and also approved a planned 13% increase in the quarterly cash dividend to $0.34 per share beginning in Q3 2026.
The stock trades at a forward P/E of just over 8x, well below the S&P 500 average, while analysts maintain a consensus Buy rating with 16 buy ratings versus only one sell, and a consensus price target implying roughly 26% upside from current levels. For investors willing to hold through near-term volatility, SYF offers an attractive entry point into a business that is built to profit from a consumer debt environment.
Dollar General Will Benefit from the Spending Squeeze
Discount retailers were the winners of the first quarter earnings season. And there was, perhaps, no better example of that than the report from Dollar General (NYSE: DG). The company reported a top- and bottom-line beat, along with an increase in same-store sales.
That trifecta, along with rising consumer debt data, should have sent DG stock soaring. But it didn’t, as investors took to selling out of retail stocks in the SpaceX hype. That trend has reversed, and with the stock down nearly 14% in 2026, this could be an excellent time to get in on DG stock at a discount.
One reason to believe in Dollar General was what management had to say about the consumer who was coming through the door. It’s not just the lower-income consumer. Even more affluent consumers are hunting for value. Given that inflation is likely to remain above the Federal Reserve’s preferred target for some time, that trend is likely to stay in place.
These 3 Stocks Can Help Investors Navigate the Consumer Debt Crossroads
The Société Générale note is a useful reminder, not a fire alarm. Record consumer debt is a real trend with real consequences — but it plays out unevenly, and that’s where opportunity lives for investors who look past the headline.
Visa benefits regardless of whether borrowers pay their full balances or carry them, collecting its toll every time a card is swiped. Synchrony is priced as if the consumer credit cycle is worsening, even as its own data show charge-offs stabilizing and earnings growing. And Dollar General is positioned to capture the trade-down behavior that typically accelerates when household budgets are squeezed.
None of these is a bet that the economy weakens further. Instead, they’re bets that the K-shaped reality of consumer debt — stressed at the lower end, resilient in aggregate — continues to shape spending and credit behavior for the foreseeable future. That’s a durable enough thesis to act on today.
Editor's Note: See the following from Joel Litman, Chief Investment Officer and Analyst at Altimetry, whose followers include names at Fidelity, BlackRock, Vanguard, and half of the top 300 money management firms in America. Joel has deep ties to Washington, DC and he's consulted for the Pentagon, the FBI, the Department of Defense, and has lectured at the US Marine Corps War College. Today he secured access to one of the most heavily guarded areas in the world to uncover the truth about what could soon become the biggest stock market story of the decade.
Dear Reader,
For years, we've been told SpaceX is a rocket company... that will one day take humans to Mars (and the moon).
This discovery could change our daily lives... and radically lower the cost of power.
And I believe that for you, this could be one the most profitable moments of your financial life if you position your money behind the right stocks before this news spreads.
The AI infrastructure trade has been well-covered from the power angle. Nuclear, natural gas, grid buildout -- everyone knows that story now. What almost nobody has mapped is the water angle. And it may be the more interesting trade.
Artificial intelligence is turning data centers into a major stress test for America's water systems. The pressure is no longer just about power.
Here is the physics problem. Every AI chip running a workload generates heat. As Nvidia's flagship Blackwell rack architecture scales toward 100 kilowatts per rack, and as AMD and custom hyperscaler silicon push densities even higher, the heat problem becomes the binding physical constraint on whether a data center can run at all. Air cooling cannot solve this at scale. The physics of moving enough cool air through a 100-kilowatt rack is a losing battle. Liquid cooling -- pulling heat directly off the chip with a fluid loop -- is the only proven solution that works for the rack densities AI requires.
And liquid cooling requires water infrastructure. Clean, conditioned, chemically managed water running continuously through systems that cannot fail.
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On March 20, 2026, Ecolab announced something that should have gotten more attention than it did. Ecolab agreed to acquire CoolIT Systems, a high-growth, high-margin leader in liquid cooling technology for next-gen AI data centers, in an all-cash deal valued at approximately $4.75 billion. CoolIT is expected to generate approximately $550 million in sales over the next 12 months. The deal is expected to close in Q3 2026.
CoolIT is a pure-play data center liquid cooling company with end-to-end capabilities. It designs and manufactures high-performance liquid cooling systems, including coolant distribution units, cold plates, and direct-to-chip cooling technologies. With more than 25 years of experience, its technology is already embedded with the world's largest hyperscale and colocation operators.
What the deal actually signals: Ecolab paid 29 times next-twelve-month adjusted EBITDA -- in cash -- for a private industrial company. KKR, which sold CoolIT in this transaction, generated approximately 15 times its original equity invested over a roughly two-year hold. Premium multiples and venture-style returns on industrial assets are how the market signals that the next leg of capital deployment has not yet arrived.
Ecolab just told you, in the clearest possible language, that the water treatment and fluid management side of AI infrastructure is worth paying a massive premium for. The broader market has not connected those dots yet.
Vertiv Is Showing You the Order Book
Vertiv reported Q1 2026 results on April 22. Net sales came in at $2.65 billion, up 30% year-over-year, driven by 23% organic sales growth. The Americas region expanded 44% organically on strong data center demand. Adjusted diluted EPS grew 83% year-over-year. Management raised full-year 2026 guidance to $13.5 to $14.0 billion in net sales and $6.30 to $6.40 in adjusted diluted EPS -- implying roughly 51% earnings growth at the midpoint.
The order picture is what really matters here. Coming into the year, Vertiv reported Q4 2025 organic orders up 252% year-over-year -- the strongest order quarter in company history. The backlog stands at roughly $15 billion, up 109% year-over-year, with a book-to-bill ratio of approximately 2.9 times, meaning Vertiv is booking nearly three dollars of new orders for every dollar of equipment shipped.
A 2.9 book-to-bill ratio does not happen in an uncertain market. That is a company with locked-in demand that it physically cannot ship fast enough.
Slight tangent, but it matters. The global data center liquid cooling market was valued at approximately $6.6 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach around $8.2 billion in 2026, with projections pointing toward $29.5 billion by 2033 -- a CAGR of roughly 20%. Multiple research firms put the numbers in different places depending on how they scope the market, but the direction is not in dispute. This category is in early-innings hypergrowth.
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The Water Utility Angle Most Investors Have Not Found Yet
Years of underinvestment are giving way to large-scale infrastructure upgrades, digital modernization, and private-sector partnerships. The result is a market that combines the dependable income of regulated utilities with the higher-margin potential of advanced water technology.
This is reaching beyond the pure-play cooling names into the broader water infrastructure sector. Advanced Drainage Systems reported a telling detail in its most recent results: on May 21, 2026, the company reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 net sales of $676.8 million, up 9.9% year-over-year, with stormwater sales rising 11.7% to $534.7 million. Management said the company remains focused on gaining share in growing construction segments, specifically naming data centers as one of the markets supporting its long-term strategy.
ADS is not a liquid-cooling supplier. But data center campuses require major site-water infrastructure before they can operate at all -- stormwater drainage, runoff control, underground conveyance, wastewater systems. The demand signal is real and it is already showing up in the numbers.
The Framework
There are three distinct layers to this trade. The pure-play cooling infrastructure layer -- Vertiv, Modine, nVent -- carries the most direct AI data center exposure with the highest growth rates and the richest valuations. The water treatment and chemistry layer -- Ecolab post-CoolIT acquisition, Xylem -- offers more moderate valuation with a newer and still-underpriced AI angle layered onto an existing business. The regulated utility layer -- American Water Works, Xylem's municipal customers -- provides slower growth but durable cash flows and meaningful dividend yield as portfolio ballast.
The four largest US hyperscalers -- Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta -- are collectively guiding to roughly $725 billion in combined capital expenditure for 2026, up about 77% from approximately $410 billion in 2025. Nearly all of that increase is AI infrastructure: GPU clusters, custom silicon, data center construction, power, and cooling. Analysts already project combined hyperscaler capex crossing $1 trillion in 2027.
The chips get the headlines. The water infrastructure quietly becomes the constraint. That gap in attention is exactly where the opportunity tends to live longest before the crowd arrives.
This content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Investing involves risk.
The Cheap Investor is a publication of Investing Media Solutions, LLC.
