Dear Reader,

I hope you have enjoyed the relative stability of the stock market during first half of 2026 to the fullest.

Because two massive economic forces are colliding in real-time, and the result is set to upend everything we thought we knew about investing.

The first force: We're living through the fastest rate of technological change in human history. AI isn't just disrupting a few tech companies — it's threatening to make the world we know unrecognizable in just a few years.

The second force: Trade relationships and peace deals that have held our global economy together for decades are hanging by a thread. If that thread breaks, we're looking at an era of chaos that will make 2008 look like a minor correction.

I call what's coming The Age of Chaos.

And almost no one I talk to is prepared for it. Not yet anyway.

The Age of Chaos isn’t just another market cycle where you will eventually see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The Age of Chaos is a fundamental reshaping of the economic order. And when the dust settles, we'll be managing our money in a completely different investment landscape.

The wealth transfers will be historic.

People who are wealthy today could be penniless when this decade ends. While those who position themselves correctly right now could build massive wealth.

The great restructuring of the stock market is already happening:

Reliable, household-name companies that fund managers have loved for years are getting crushed in 2026:

• Intuit: -57%
• Boston Scientific: -49%
• Tractor Supply: -40%

Meanwhile, a surge of dynamic companies positioned for this new world are exploding higher:

• Sandisk: +573%
• Rackspace: +444%
• Atomera: +262%

This isn't random market volatility. This is the beginning of an irreversible economic division that's just getting underway.

And here's the uncomfortable truth:Many of the companies that could fail in The Age of Chaos may already be sitting in your portfolio right now.

Names that have seemed untouchable throughout history. Names that every "expert" tells you to buy and hold forever. Names that could rob you of your hard-earned savings if you don't act soon.

But I didn't reach out to you today to spread doom and gloom. I wrote because there's a way to protect yourself and potentially profit from what's coming.

It starts with understanding which companies are on the brink right now... and which are positioned to thrive in The Age of Chaos.

I'll show you the names and tickers of specific companies I believe you should sell before they crater, including some that might shock you. These aren't fly-by-night operations. These are companies that have been market darlings for years – and are still overweight in many investors’ accounts.

More importantly, I'll share the names and tickers of the companies you can upgrade to that could multiply your money in the coming months. Companies that aren't just surviving this transformation but driving it.

For instance, while everyone's focused on whether Tesla will get a much-needed lifeline from Space X, I've identified a little-known company that was just tapped as Nvidia's self-driving partner, already putting them miles ahead of Tesla in the autonomous driving race. (Get the ticker FREE here.)

I've also got details on what could be the biggest megadeal in the AI space this year – a potential rupturing of the company referred to as "the unseen winner of the AI race." This company could soon split up into three of the hottest new AI stocks of 2026. If it does, all you have to do to automatically get shares in all of them is buy this stock NOW. It's a once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity you do not want to let pass you by.

I'm giving away all of this analysis completely freein this broadcast. No membership required. No credit card. Just the unvarnished truth about what I see coming and how to position yourself for it.

The Age of Chaos isn't something that might happen. It's already underway.

Knowing the names and tickers of these stocks could mean the difference between winning and losing in the months ahead.

Stream my free presentation today right here– and get all my carefully selected buys and sells now.

Sincerely,

Marc Chaikin
Founder, Chaikin Analytics

The Trade Desk’s Earnings Miss Raises a Bigger Question About Its AI Future

Authored by Jessica Mitacek. Posted: 8/20/2026.

Aside from millennials who came of age in the '90s and investors who endured the dot-com bubble, not many people remember Netscape. Launched in 1994, the pioneering web browser predates Chrome, Firefox and Safari. At its peak, it dominated 90% of the browser market. Netscape lost most of its market share to Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Internet Explorer during the browser wars, and AOL ultimately discontinued Netscape browser development and support in 2008.

Today, company co-founder Marc Andreessen is perhaps better known for writing a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Why Software Is Eating the World.” His argument was that software was beginning to take over major industries around the globe. He cited examples such as Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPE) “jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily in software” and Google’s plans to buy Motorola Mobility.

In 2017, Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA), popularized the next iteration of that quote by stating that “AI is going to eat software.”

And after reporting second-quarter earnings in early August, The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD) may have just proven him right.

Adapt or Lose: Software Is Yielding to AI

For decades, the tech playbook entailed building software and charging monthly, per-seat subscription fees or self-service fees to license workflows behind complex dashboards. And for decades, it worked.

The post-dot-com market recovery was dominated by names including Microsoft, Oracle (NYSE: ORCL) and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), whose respective market capitalizations swelled as they dominated niches within the industry.

But AI’s evolution has disrupted that model, and the paradigm has shifted. Companies that evolved—including Microsoft, Oracle and Intel—continue to find success through cloud services and data center infrastructure. However, firms providing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and self-service demand-side platforms (DSPs), such as The Trade Desk, increasingly illustrate the kind of disruption Huang anticipated.

According to industry consultancy Grand View Research, the global AI market is forecast to grow to nearly $3.5 trillion by 2033, registering a compound annual growth rate of 30.6%. Meanwhile, legacy platforms with complex user interfaces risk becoming less valuable in a world dominated by AI applications and AI search.

The Shift to AI Search May Have Broken The Trade Desk

Companies continue to turn to AI for agentic applications, allowing autonomous tools to act on behalf of humans rather than software serving as a tool used by humans.

When agentic AI executes tasks in this manner, it can undermine traditional SaaS, seat-based licensing by reducing the number of human users needed to perform a task.

That’s one problem software firms are facing. Another is AI-dominated search. The Trade Desk isn’t a SaaS company; it is an ad tech provider with a cloud-based DSP platform that helps advertising agencies and brands buy digital ad space. It boasts omnichannel reach, enabling campaigns to span connected TV, streaming audio, websites and mobile devices.

But growth has slowed dramatically as a structural shift toward AI search—and away from parts of the open Internet—has created a new threat to its business model. Meanwhile, its stock has plummeted more than 75% over the past year.

The Trade Desk’s business model benefits from a healthy open Internet with a large supply of advertising impressions outside the major walled gardens. But as users increasingly turn to AI overviews that combine data from multiple sources and provide quick answers, web-browsing behavior is shifting, while some publishers are seeing declining referral traffic from traditional search.

For The Trade Desk, that creates the risk of so-called impression scarcity—a decline in available web traffic and, subsequently, digital ad impressions across parts of the open Internet. At the same time, agentic media buying offered by big tech rivals could allow brands to automate more of the advertising-buying process within platforms like Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), potentially reducing the value of independent DSPs like The Trade Desk.

Q2 Results Show The Trade Desk’s Growth Problem

For months, The Trade Desk was touted as an undervalued bounceback candidate. Proponents pointed to the company’s intact fundamentals and attributed its poor stock performance to being an unwarranted victim of the SaaSpocalypse.

But after it reported Q2 earnings on Aug. 6, shares of The Trade Desk hit a seven-year low. Revised guidance shocked the market, and ongoing pressures from walled-garden ecosystems—including Alphabet, Amazon and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META)—resulted in Wall Street downgrades.

The Trade Desk announced earnings per share of 34 cents, missing analyst expectations of 40 cents. Revenue rose just 3% year over year (YOY) to $715.06 million, below the consensus forecast of $752.41 million. Operating expenses rose 6% YOY, or 12% when excluding stock-based compensation, while net income fell to $64 million from a multi-year high of $187 million in Q4 2025, representing a nearly 66% decrease.

The stock carries a consensus Reduce rating, with 10 of the 39 analysts covering it assigning TTD a Sell rating. Current short interest of 18.10% and zero insider buys over the past 12 months indicate that tough times may lie ahead for shareholders hoping for a reversal.