Stocks closed moderately lower yesterday ahead of this morning's Employment Situation report.

Some tech and AI-related names got hit more than just moderately, however. Memory-chip makers Sandisk, Micron and Western Digital were down -10.62%, -10.57%, and -6.32% respectively.

Despite the extra volatility lately (one day they're up 10%, the next day they're down -10%), they all had stellar runs this year with SNDK up 756.10%, MU up 261.68%, and WDC up 247.34%. And with the AI boom showing no signs of slowing down, I'm expecting a lot more upside to go for these and many other AI stocks.

And looking more broadly, I'm expecting big gains for the indexes this year as well.

Last year saw the S&P 500 gain 16.4%. That was on top of 2024's 23.3%, and 2023's 24.2%.

The historic AI tech boom has been leading the way.

And it's reminiscent of the dot-com tech boom in 1995-1999 when the market surged by double-digits each year for 5 long, glorious years in a row, resulting in a 220% increase for the S&P, while plenty of individual stocks were up several hundred percent to several thousand percent.

I believe we could see the same thing again now.

And so does legendary trader Paul Tudor Jones. In a recent interview, he said the AI-driven bull market still has "another year or two to run," and compared it to the late 1990's tech boom.

That has been my sentiment all along, and comports with my expectation that we'll see 5 years in a row of double-digit market gains, just like we did back then.

This year (2026), would be year 4, while 2027 would be year 5. But nobody says it has to stop there.

With AI being touted as the most transformational tech breakthrough ever, it could very well last much longer.

Moreover, I think we can soar beyond 'just' a 20% gain this year.

Since 1988, only five times has the S&P had an annual gain of 30% or more. Just 5 times over the last 38 years.

But did you know that 2 of those 5 times happened in the 1995-1999 dot-com boom?

In 1995, it was up 37.6%. And in 1997 it was up 33.4%.

And the last time we saw a 30% gain was back in 2013.

We're due for one, in my opinion.

Plus, with the AI boom being even bigger than the dot-com boom, driven by real earnings and real growth, if there ever was a reason to see a 30% gain, now is the time.

In the meantime, this morning we'll get the Employment Situation report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The headline number is expected to show 114,000 new jobs were created in June (124,000 in the private sector and -10,000 in the public sector). That would be a slower pace than May's 172,000 headline, but the private sector would actually be a bit higher than last month's pace of 120K. The unemployment rate is expected to remain unchanged at 4.3%. And average hourly earnings are expected to be up 0.3% m/m (same as last month), while the y/y rate ticks up to 3.5% vs. last month's 3.4%.

All eyes will be on that report this morning, and it comes out at 8:30 AM ET.

Remember, today is the last trading day of the week. The markets will be closed tomorrow in observance of July 4^th, Independence Day.

Have a great 3-day holiday weekend.

See you on Monday.

Best,