I tracked 48 stocks that power AI data centers for 3 months. Everyone's buying NVDA but the trade is splitting apart

Here's something I've noticed. When people say "I'm invested in AI," they mean one of two things: they own NVDA, or they own NVDA and maybe some SMCI and AMD.

But the AI infrastructure story is way broader than GPUs. Data centers need to be built. Those data centers need electricity - a single AI training cluster uses as much power as a small town. They need cooling systems, networking equipment, and physical real estate. There are 48+ publicly traded companies that directly benefit from AI infrastructure buildout.

I wanted to know: are they all still moving together, or has the trade started to diverge?

\*\*Is the "AI infrastructure" theme still one trade, or has it split into winners and losers?\*\*

I tagged about 580 stocks by their AI exposure - which companies are genuine AI infrastructure beneficiaries (GPU manufacturers, data center REITs, power providers, networking equipment) and which are legacy IT services and enterprise software companies getting disrupted by AI tools.

Then I tracked each stock individually against the S&P 500 over 12 weeks, measuring not just performance but momentum - is the outperformance accelerating or decelerating?

In early 2024, if you plotted the AI infrastructure basket, you'd see a tight cluster of green dots all in the upper-right quadrant. Everything was moving together. That's gone.

Right now the 48 stocks are scattered across all four quadrants. The theme has diverged internally, and that's a big deal if you're only holding chip stocks.

| Basket | Leading | Weakening | Lagging | Improving |

|--------|---------|-----------|---------|-----------|

| AI Infrastructure (48 stocks) | 12 | 11 | 16 | 9 |

| Disrupted IT (16 stocks) | 1 | 1 | 12 | 2 |

The chip names are rotating from Leading into Weakening. Still outperforming SPY, but the momentum is fading. That doesn't mean sell - it means the explosive phase is over and returns from here will be more modest.

Data center REITs are the new leaders. Makes sense - they have the physical assets that every hyperscaler needs, and their pricing power is only increasing.

The power and utility names are mixed. Some ran 80-200% in 2024 on the "AI needs electricity" narrative, but plenty of them don't actually have signed data center contracts. The market is starting to differentiate between companies with real AI-driven revenue and companies that just \*could\* benefit.

And the short basket is interesting - 2 stocks in Improving. The "disrupted by AI" stocks that got crushed are beginning to turn. Not because AI failed, but because the market over-extrapolated how quickly these companies would become obsolete.

I think the main takeaway is that "buying AI" is no longer one trade. Where you are within the AI stack matters a lot more now than it did a year ago. If you're only holding NVDA, you're concentrated in the part of the theme where momentum is fading. The next leg will likely be driven by the infrastructure around the chips, not the chips themselves.

All 48 tickers and their current rotation positions available in the sheet. I'll update this monthly. Let me know if you want me to do a similar breakdown for any of the other themes I'm tracking.

\*\*Positions:\*\* Long a mix of the AI infra basket. No single-name YOLO.