Retail Ramp-Up, Chinese Tech Catalysts, and a Bitcoin breakout? 8/17/26

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**Kelly Evans** (0:56)
You're listening to The Exchange. Here's today's show.
Thank you very much, Scott. We start a new week with the memory and chip names breaking out again, although not enough to lift to the broader averages. I'm Kelly Evans and welcome to The Exchange. Who needs a roller coaster ride this summer? Just look at the moves we've seen in the memory space. Shares of Sandisk dropped nearly 60 percent in a month from late June to late July, and have since risen 77 percent. And the rebound in the memory and chip names comes even as bond yields have been drifting higher. 471 on the 10-year today as we cross over 40 trillion on the national debt for the first time last night. We'll talk about that. Plus the foldable iPhone continues. That debate, will it be a huge product? Won't it? We talked to the analyst who thinks it will give Apple a huge boost with the shares now up 11 percent year to date. And Katie Stockton on why this breakout in small caps is a very big deal. But let's begin with these wild swings in the AI supply chain. Bahan Janjigian is the Chief Investment Officer at Greenwich Wealth Management. Bahan, it's great to see you. And listen, this is important for a couple of reasons. Number one, it's the leadership area. So it always feels like it has implications for the rest of the market. Number two, because we've had so many of these rotations where the S&P 500 kind of continues to march higher today, notwithstanding.

**Vahan Janjigian** (2:16)
Yeah. Hi, Kelly. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, you're right. So the AI trade, I think for a large part, has been going on for a while. We often see stocks selling off and then coming back again.
I think this is a signal that it's really time to start thinking about some other parts of the market.
The market indexes are doing pretty well. They're near all-time highs. And of course, they had been driven by these AI stocks in large part earlier. But we're seeing the rest of the market catching up. And I think you're seeing value outperforming growth. You're seeing small cap outperforming large cap. So the indexes are doing well despite all of the volatility in these technology stocks. But I think it makes sense for this rotation to continue and people to pick up some of the value names.

**Kelly Evans** (3:01)
Rattle those off, The Hon. What does the Greenwich Wealth Management portfolio look like these days?

**Vahan Janjigian** (3:06)
Well, I mean, some of the ones that I like a lot in the value area, three stocks that I like very much right now are like Pfizer, I like Smucker and I like Verizon. These stocks pay very generous dividends. Those dividends have been increasing every single year for a very long period of time. I think in Smucker's case, it's almost three decades. And the yield is very high. I don't have any fear about the dividends being cut.
The stocks are making good money. They're selling at incredibly low forward PEs. And they're outperforming many of these technology stocks year to date.

**Kelly Evans** (3:44)
What about the Mag 7? This is an area where the valuations, you could say, look fine. I mean, there's their value stocks practically. Shouldn't they be in your portfolio?

**Vahan Janjigian** (3:54)
Yes, of course they should be in your portfolio. They should be a core part of your portfolio. But remember, portfolio needs to have more than just one sector or one kind of stock or something like that. It needs to be well diversified for long-term investors. I mean, I don't want to play the game where I'm constantly rotating from one sector to another. But I do occasionally rebalance. And because many of these tech stocks have done very well, I have trimmed. Like for example, SMH is a pretty big holding in my client's portfolios.