How AI is Accelerating the Economy Kevin Cook here, strategist for the TAZR Trader and Healthcare Innovators portfolios, opening Thursday's trading day for Kevin. This morning, investors and traders will be digesting the Initial Jobless Claims report ahead of Friday's big monthly Employment Situation report. The stock market continues to grab new highs despite no clear sign that the Fed will cut rates any time soon. So as inflation cools, the one economic data point that would almost assure monetary easing this year would be a weakening job market. Then investors will view rate cuts as very likely before and after the election. And then stocks will surge again as corporate borrowing costs drop and consumer balance sheets breathe a sigh of relief. The Tectonic Shift One of my favorite economic themes to discuss since 2017 is what I call the Tech Super Cycle where massive productivity is driven by the accelerated efficiency of semiconductors, software, and the automation they create. As Peter Diamandis described in his 2020 book The Future is Faster Than You Think, the synergies of converging technology platforms are transforming everything. Leading the charge of that revolution is NVIDIA and, as the stock surges this week to overtake the market cap of Apple, only the sky seems the limit. Which means many observers are calling this an "AI Bubble." But if you watched CEO Jensen Huang's most recent presentations at the Computex summit in Taiwan, you got to witness a clinic in the fundamentals of "accelerated" computing. In his keynote address, we saw a fresh look at how "Huang's Law" has launched exponentially above Moore's Law in terms of the speed, power, and efficiency of GPU-driven architectures. What some investors still miss is that NVIDIA has given massive "power tools" to industry, business, and scientific researchers. The true power and impact of accelerated computing is that enterprises can process the life-blood of their business, which is data, with nearly infinite variability. And this is what drives innovation. Plus, NVIDIA GPU systems actually lower costs and energy usage. Now throw in robotics and the ability to simulate any environment before building a single piece of hardware and you have the ingredients for incredible innovation in the next decade. The Pie Expands After NVIDIA earnings on May 22, I raised my target price for NVDA shares from $1200 to $1400. But I barely had time to absorb Jensen's keynote before Bank of America raised their PT to $1500. So it appears I'm no longer the most optimistic on the Street. But that won't last. And while a stock split theoretically doesn't make shares more valuable, it seems some additional fuel is being added to the NVIDIA oven ahead of next week's 10-for-1 slicing of the pizza. Provided you are a shareholder of record who owns common stock as of the close of the market today, you'll receive an additional nine shares of NVDA for every share you previously held. Assuming those shares open around $120 next week, I imagine lots of buyers still piling in. But your strategy should be to buy any dips back toward $100. I know I will be. See you there!  Kevin Cook
Senior Stock Strategist, Zacks Investment Research | 
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