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Market Data Table

Breakfast News: One CEO Trait We Always Look For

September 15, 2026

Monday's Markets
S&P 500 7,620 (-0.48%)
Nasdaq 26,186 (-0.56%)
Dow 52,421 (-0.29%)
Bitcoin $79,126 (+2.46%)

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1. What AI Slowdown? These CEOs Refuse to Blink

Chart comparing Broadcom's and CrowdStrike's gross profit margin over the past five years.

CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:CRWD) closed at a record high above $235, up nearly 14%, after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on frontier artificial intelligence (AI) labs to slow down model development over safety concerns. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz rejected the premise: Slowing new models changes nothing when dangerous models already exist. Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) CEO Hock Tan also pushed back, telling CNBC that demand for running AI models day-to-day should hold even if training slows.

Built for this moment already: Tan's "very durable" demand comment isn't a hopeful guess. It reflects a business built years ago to run AI models, not just train them. Broadcom, a Rule Breakers recommendation, supplies that day-to-day compute demand, so a training slowdown doesn't touch the case Tan built.
Two CEOs, one shared instinct not to blink: Both leaned on conviction, not panic. That's the core of Foolish investing: Buy great businesses and trust the people running them. Tan held steady through the chip-market panic. Kurtz turned AI risk into a business tailwind instead of a threat. Both show why we invest in the person as much as the product.

Why "Top Dog" Broadcom surprised Team RB

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2. Is the Oil Buffer Gone? Chevron Says So

Chevron (NYSE:CVX) pumps and refines oil worldwide. CEO Mike Wirth says the shortage he warned about has arrived. At an Austin energy conference, Wirth claimed buffers that have been holding prices down are gone. With the Strait of Hormuz (which once carried a fifth of the world's crude) closed since February, diesel hit a record $6.23 a gallon this week, while gasoline climbed back to $4.32.

The premise behind the words: Wirth isn't guessing where oil goes next, as he himself says calling the outlook is "hard to predict." He is giving investors a structural reality check: The shock absorbers, the commercial stockpiles, and the reserve releases that soaked up the last few months of disruption are used up.
The dividend thesis cuts both ways: Every dollar added to crude flows straight to the profits behind the Dividend Investor rec. Chevron has increased its annual dividend per share for 39 consecutive years. Last month, Fool contributing analyst Tyler Crowe, alongside TMF co-founder and CEO Tom Gardner, said "Management has proven over and over that it will do well by its shareholders no matter what oil prices look like, and it has more than enough diversity within its assets that its fate isn't completely tied to crude oil prices."

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3. Bank of America's Outlook Hurts All

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), the country's second-largest bank, earns much of its trading profit from market volatility. Shares fell 5.1% to $59.47 Monday, the steepest daily drop since April 2025. CEO Brian Moynihan told a conference that third-quarter trading revenue would come in flat versus last year. It's a tough comparison, since last year's quarter was itself a blowout rebound from a weak second quarter. Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), Citigroup (NYSE:C), and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) fell, too.

A passthrough impact to peers: Bank of America's guidance has become a bellwether for the entire sector. Its number became the placeholder that the rest of the sector got priced against.
A read on mood, not books: Investors should note how the market's response is driven by sentiment, not fundamental evidence about the underlying health of individual banks. Wait for each bank's actual third-quarter results in mid-October before judging anyone but Bank of America.

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4. Why Rising Yields Threaten Growth Stocks

The 10-year Treasury yield broke above 5% early Tuesday, its highest level since 2007, as investors sold bonds ahead of the Federal Reserve's meeting. Traders now price a 25-basis-point hike at near-90% odds. Behind the move is oil: The one-month correlation between crude and the 10-year yield has climbed to 0.96, the tightest link in years.

A looming policy move: The Fed meets tomorrow, and a hike is now in play. That would reverse the rate-cutting story markets have priced in since 2023. It will be a structural shift, as a rate hike resets the discount rate that every long-duration asset -- growth stocks, real estate, bonds -- gets valued against.
A hike changes growth math: This week's actual Fed decision and its economic projections matter most, not the pre-meeting yield spike. If the Fed hikes and signals more increases ahead, growth stocks may start appearing overvalued, but it is always the underlying business that wins in the long run.

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5. The Toll Booth for the Agentic Web

Team Hidden Gems and Team Rule Breakers have both pounded the table on Cloudflare (NYSE: NET) in 43 buy recommendations since 2020. We have sold three of those positions but held the other 40. What unites two very different teams on one stock? A fast-growing share of internet traffic now comes from AI "agents," software that carries out tasks online on its own. Cloudflare runs the network that traffic depends on.

Agents are the new customers: More than half of the traffic flowing through Cloudflare's traffic is automated. That volume drove revenue up 36% year over year last quarter, the third straight quarter of accelerating growth.
But what about price? Cloudflare's remarkable run from our lowest-priced recommendations of $46 all the way to $330 today puts shares at a sky-high valuation. The business is valued at over 45x sales today.

Team Hidden Gems has a 5-year price prediction of $531.47.

Team Rule Breakers has a 5-year price prediction of $508.21.

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6. Today's Question

When one of your big winners hits a high valuation, do you prefer to add, hold, reduce, or sell that position?

Discuss with friends and family, or become a member to hear what your fellow Fools are saying!

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