Despite a tech tumble, stocks rise on hopes that the government shutdown will end soon

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices pared substantial losses to turn positive after CEO Dr. Lisa Su unveiled optimistic medium-term revenue guidance at the company’s Financial Analyst Day.

Over the next three to five years, her outlook is for compounded annual revenue growth of over 35% for AMD as a whole, with growth north of 60% for its data center business.

With a pinch of salt about how predictions are hard, especially about the (further out) future, the consensus estimate for AMD’s data center revenues in 2028 is $51.1 billion. If we use just 60% compounded annual growth and assume AMD hits its year-end estimate for about $16.26 billion, that would put the company’s 2028 AI sales around $66.6 billion.

Everybody knows about tech’s fast growers.

And Palantir’s 63% year-over-year Q3 sales growth rate was impressive. So was Robinhood Markets, which saw a 100% sales rise, or AppLovin, at nearly 70% revenue growth.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions. I own Robinhood stock as part of my compensation.)

But as we turn into the final lap of Q3 earnings season — Nvidia reports its numbers on November 19 and Walmart closes the season on November 20 — natural gas stocks have emerged as some of the most overlooked sources of revenue growth for investors, according to a screen we recently ran using FactSet data.

Expand Energy, created by the merger of Chesapeake and Southwestern last year, is the nation’s largest natural gas producer, and when it posted sales of $2.97 billion in Q3 — up over 350% — late last month, it leapt to the top of the leaderboard for Q3 sales growth, FactSet data shows.

An early US cold snap, strong liquefied natural gas exports from the US to Europe, and doubts about Russian supplies to the world market amid more talk of sanctions and Ukrainian attacks on Russian infrastructure have all helped push up prices for gas.

US benchmarks are up more than 70% over the last 12 months, including a more than 50% gain over the the last three months — and strong demand from power plants competing to churn out energy for the AI data center boom has created a favorable growth backdrop for other gas industry players, from gas pipeline and processing company Oneok, to distributor EQT Corp, to drillers like Diamondback Energy and Coterra Energy.

Fermi fell on Tuesday after it reported a steeper-than-expected loss in its first quarterly earnings report since the company’s initial public offering last month.

The company, which currently generates no revenue, reported a net loss of $346.8 million for its third quarter, compared to the $13.3 million loss analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. The loss was almost entirely comprised of unspecified “other expenses” totaling $309 million.

The company said it expects to have 1.1 gigawatts of gas capacity in service by the end of 2026.

Fermi, which was cofounded by former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, plans to use nuclear energy to power data centers. In its letter to shareholders on Monday, Fermi compared the race to build AI infrastructure faster than China to the Manhattan Project, the initiative to build the first atomic bomb in World War II.

“Not all enemies wear uniforms, but make no mistake, America is at war,” the company wrote.