Four Most Interesting Flyover Stocks Right Now
How to prioritize your research list amidst the market shakeup so far in 2026
There’s an old saying that “Still waters run deep,” suggesting that things which appear placid on the surface may conceal turbulence underneath.
Year-to-date, the S&P 500 (measured by SPY) is up 1.1% - seemingly placid - but that’s not because companies and sectors are uniformly inching higher.
Michael Batnick of Ritholz Wealth Management recently shared this chart, which showed that over eight recent trading days, over 115 S&P 500 stocks lost more than 7% of their value. Historically when this has happened, it’s driven the S&P much lower (down 34% on average), but it’s barely registered a blip so far in 2026.
That’s due in part to the fact that while software and data providers have been crushed (accounting for many of the aforementioned drawdowns), other sectors like energy, industrials, and materials have rallied.
When COVID hit the US in March 2020, the team I was on had multi-day late-night sessions reviewing the potential impact on each one of our portfolio holdings. We asked, for example, how long a company could last without revenue before it would be impaired. This was a real possibility, however temporary, for some companies during COVID.
I think many investment teams around the globe have been conducting similar stress-testing exercises related to the rapid advances in AI.
How real is the terminal value threat to each of our holdings?
Is the company’s pricing power permanently impaired?
Will this company be as relevant in 10 years as it is today?
Judging by some of the drawdowns we’ve seen in software this year, it seems many investors might even be selling first and asking these questions later.
But what do you do with the capital you’ve raised from selling perceived AI-losers? The natural answer is to move it to companies with little to no AI risk - energy, materials, industrials.
This type of sector rotation has opened up some buying opportunities. While most of the 30 Flyover Stock company profiles were not from the technology sector, here are four that I think are most worth your research time right now.