Wall Street opened Thursday, June 19 in recovery mode. After the S&P 500 dropped 1.2% and the Nasdaq fell 1.3% on June 18 following the Fed's hawkish pause, futures snapped back sharply — S&P 500 contracts up 1%, Nasdaq 100 futures up more than 2% — as markets recalibrated and investors decided the selloff had gone too far. That kind of reversal is worth paying attention to. When the market bounces this aggressively off a Fed-driven dip, it often signals where the real conviction is. Right now, that conviction is in AI infrastructure. Dell Technologies (DELL) and Applied Materials (AMAT) are two names leading the charge.
Dell Technologies (DELL): AI Servers Are the New Revenue Engine
Dell is trading at $425.85, up 1.56% on June 18 as the recovery took hold, with a market cap of $282.9B and a P/E of 33.88. The stock has a 52-week range of $110.22 to $469.47 — it has staged one of the most remarkable runs of any large-cap over the past year, and it's still operating well below its 52-week peak.
The most recent earnings report tells the story clearly. For the fiscal quarter ended May 1, 2026 — Dell's Q1 of fiscal year 2027 — the company posted revenue of $43.84B, a 31.3% jump from the $33.38B it reported in the prior quarter. Diluted EPS came in at $5.24, up 55.5% from $3.37 the quarter before. Net income hit $3.44B for the quarter. These are not incremental improvements — they reflect a fundamental reshaping of Dell's revenue mix as AI server demand floods in.
Dell's Infrastructure Solutions Group, which includes its AI-optimized server and storage products, has become the company's primary growth driver. The company has disclosed a backlog of approximately $51 billion in AI server orders — demand that is locked in and working its way through production. Hyperscalers including Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are all deploying Dell hardware at scale to build out their AI data center capacity. Gross margin came in at 18%, which is thin for a hardware company but consistent with the high-volume, lower-margin nature of server infrastructure — and improving sequentially as the product mix evolves toward higher-value AI configurations.
Goldman Sachs, Mizuho, and Bernstein all maintain Buy or Outperform ratings with a price target of $500, reiterated as recently as June 1, 2026. The consensus average target stands at $482.67, the high target reaches $700, and 77.8% of analysts covering the stock are bullish. At current prices, Dell trades at a meaningful discount to the average Street target.
Applied Materials (AMAT): Every AI Chip Needs the Equipment to Make It
If Dell sits at the infrastructure layer of the AI boom, Applied Materials operates one layer below — supplying the semiconductor fabrication equipment that makes AI chips possible in the first place. Every leading-edge chip from Nvidia, AMD, TSMC, and Intel runs through manufacturing processes that require Applied Materials' deposition, etching, and inspection systems. There is no AI without the tools to build AI chips, and AMAT effectively owns that chokepoint.
The stock is trading at $615.98, up 3.89% on June 18, with a market cap of $489.1B and a P/E of 57.95. Its 52-week range of $154.47 to $638.90 shows just how aggressively the market has repriced this business over the past year — and it's near the top of that range for good reason.
Applied Materials' fiscal Q2 2026, reported for the quarter ended April 26, 2026, was the company's strongest in recent history. Revenue came in at $7.91B, up 12.8% from the $7.01B posted in Q1. Diluted EPS surged 38.2% to $3.51 from $2.54 the prior quarter. Net income for the quarter was $2.81B, net profit margin hit 35%, and gross margin expanded to 50% — software-like profitability from a hardware-intensive business.
The analyst community is unanimous. 100% of the 22 analysts covering AMAT carry a bullish rating — a rare and meaningful signal. The consensus price target is $541.23, and Citigroup's Atif Malik raised his target to $710 on June 17, 2026, just one day before the market selloff. Barclays reiterated Overweight with a $590 target on June 11. At the current price near $616, AMAT has already surpassed the consensus average, but the bull case from Citigroup suggests the market is still pricing in a discount to fair value at the high end.
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