Only 2 megacap tech names are on Josh Brown’s best stocks list. Why they are in a tough spot
(This is The Best Stocks in the Market , brought to you by Josh Brown and Sean Russo of Ritholtz Wealth Management.) Josh — We have two megacap stocks left on the list. One of them looks like it may fall off. The other is in a no man’s land trend. But you probably own them both or, at a minimum, they are on your screen. Sometimes you have to look at something and conclude that it’s a pass. While the two names we’re going to show you today are currently on our list of Best Stocks in the Market, they have not been earning the right to stay on of late. Buyers are giving up at lower highs. Sellers are showing up on a regular basis and taking control. Apple (AAPL) and Alphabet (GOOG) are just not acting well at the moment, but we’re going to look at them anyway. If tech investors decide to make an intra-sector shift toward quality or safety given the current market environment, both of these could catch a bid. They epitomize steady earnings, although Apple is probably seen as being more defensive than Alphabet given the current spend on data center capex at the latter versus the ecosystem lock-in of the former. Sean’s got the usual high-level Best Stocks stats for you too. Let’s do this. Sector leaderboard As of Mar. 23 , there are 179 names on The Best Stocks in the Market list. Top sector ranking: Top industries: Top 5 best stocks by relative strength: Sector spotlight: Megacaps Sean — Not to pat ourselves on the back here, but this column has written about one Mag 7 stock over the past year (AMZN, no longer on our list). We try to bring you all stocks that have decent setups that no one else is looking at. Today, we’re switching it up and spotlighting the most important stocks in the world. We have two megacaps on the list right now, and both are in difficult situations when you look at the chart. Neither of these need much of an introduction, but I’ll hit on some recent fundamentals first and Josh can go through his technical process on these two. Apple, Inc. (AAPL): Apple delivered a blowout fiscal Q1 2026 , posting record revenue of $143.8 billion up 16% year over year and record operating cash flow of nearly $54 billion. AAPL is earning roughly 80% of revenue due to hardware and 20% is coming from software — things we like to see in a HALO environment. Services continued its steady climb to $30 billion in revenue up 14% year over year, hitting all-time highs across advertising, music, payments and cloud. On the AI front, the headline development is Apple’s collaboration with Google to co-develop foundation models powering future Apple Intelligence features. Apple is leaning into partnerships rather than going fully in-house on frontier model development, which bodes well for cash flow moving forward. Josh — I’m long this name personally as an investment, so what I am about to say is perspective for a would-be buyer. You’re about to see whether there is real support for this name, because it’s facing a big test. This is a stock that’s been making lower highs since December and is now sitting right on its 200-day after losing momentum. There’s been no real demand on the way down, just steady pressure. For traders, this level must hold. If it breaks, you’re likely looking at a move into the low $230s. That would have this story go from “healthy pullback” to a change in trend. A downtrend. Bad. A bounce from these levels makes it more interesting, but we don’t know yet. I’m giving you something to watch at this point and telling you what to watch for. Alphabet, Inc. (GOOG): Sean — Alphabet capped 2025 by crossing $400 billion in annual revenue for the first time, with Gemini increasingly embedded across every major product surface — Search, Cloud, YouTube, and other bets. Gemini 3 is now driving meaningfully longer search queries and higher engagement, and the enterprise rollout has been awesome: over 8 million paid seats sold in just four months. On the Waymo front, the autonomous driving unit completed a $16 billion funding round, surpassed 20 million fully autonomous trips, and is now operating across 6 cities. As for 2026 guidance , the biggest number is capex: $175 billion–$185 billion projected for the year, nearly double the $91.4 billion spent in 2025, entirely focused on AI compute, data centers and cloud capacity. That level of infrastructure spend will accelerate depreciation and probably compress margins, but management is clearly signaling a long-duration bet on AI as the core growth engine for GOOG. Cloud backlog just surged 55% sequentially to $240 billion giving insight into why management is spending the way they are. Josh — This chart sucks. We don’t buy setups like these for trades because it’s basically directionless and below its short-term moving average. The trend is intact longer-term, but short-term damage is real. This is a broken short-term setup. The stock is below the 50-day at $318 and now trying to hold the recent $298–299 area. If that fails, there’s room down toward the $260 200-day. But just because the chart’s not giving us anything, that doesn’t mean you can’t make money on the long side. Something could be announced that completely changes sentiment around the stock and a rally could come out of nowhere. Guessing at something like that is not technical analysis. So if you have a fundamental reason to buy, I would just point out that risk management becomes very important in case you’re wrong or early. For investors, the 200-day is the big level. For traders, this is below broken intermediate-term support until it can reclaim the 50-day. Nothing would make me happier than to come back here and tell you that Google has reset and is ready to head higher. I just can’t right now based on the evidence we have. DISCLOSURES: (None) All opinions expressed by the CNBC Pro contributors are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC, or its parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by them on television, radio, internet or another medium. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE FINANCIAL, INVESTMENT, TAX OR LEGAL ADVICE OR A RECOMMENDATION TO BUY ANY SECURITY OR OTHER FINANCIAL ASSET. THE CONTENT IS GENERAL IN NATURE AND DOES NOT REFLECT ANY INDIVIDUAL’S UNIQUE PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES. THE ABOVE CONTENT MIGHT NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUR PARTICULAR CIRCUMSTANCES. BEFORE MAKING ANY FINANCIAL DECISIONS, YOU SHOULD STRONGLY CONSIDER SEEKING ADVICE FROM YOUR OWN FINANCIAL OR INVESTMENT ADVISOR. Click here for the full disclaimer.
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