The Trend Is Your Friend, But This Is Your Bodyguard

By Michael Salvatore, Editor, TradeSmith Daily

Imagine you’re out late at a bar one night. You’ve had a lot of fun – okay, maybe a little too much – and it’s time to go home.

You’re in no state to drive. But… your phone’s dead. It’s the middle of the night, and the streets are empty. No Uber or taxi is coming your way.

Looks like you’re walking.

Then a thought crosses your mind: You can be home in five minutes… if you’re brave enough to cut through that sketchy alleyway.

It’s a high-risk move. Maybe nothing will happen, and you’ll come out the other side just fine. Or maybe you’ll come out missing your wallet, watch… or your life.

You’d be a lot more comfortable walking through that alley if you had some backup. A bodyguard of some kind… someone who can keep an eye out and prevent calamity.

Here’s why I’m telling you this…

There are a lot of hot themes in the market right now that investors are piling into.

Humanoid robots – which could revolutionize industry, businesses, and even homes.
Quantum computing – which may usher in a whole new realm of computing power and burn the rulebook on cybersecurity.
Cryptocurrency – everything from Bitcoin miners, to trading platforms, even some companies whose entire business model is to just acquire and own certain coins, have been a big theme this year.

And connecting all these big trends is artificial intelligence (AI) – the key reason why the tech sector has been on fire lately.

All of these themes have tremendous potential.

Some stocks from each of these categories have already seen huge performance in 2025, like robotics company Symbotic (SYM), up more than 113% this year… quantum firm Rigetti Computing (RGTI), down on the year but up more than 139% from the lows… Strategy (MSTR), up more than 24%… Constellation Energy ( CEG), up 34%… and AI stock king Nvidia (NVDA ), up 31% this year.

Chances are, as the bull market continues, certain stocks in these areas will continue to see huge buying interest.

But with big potential comes big risks. A lot of stocks in these areas will be losers, too.

And walking down that sketchy alley to get home in five minutes is a lot like investing in these red-hot sectors right now. There’s a potentially massive reward on offer… but there’s a heck of a lot of risk, too.

And we don’t have to look far for examples of when investors’ expectations about technology didn’t match reality.

The dot-com bubble burst saw countless internet companies crash, burn, and disappear. Only the strongest survived and thrived as the value of the internet was truly discovered.

The present-day trading environment feels something like the dot-com bubble… with lots of promise about how AI is going to change the world, and tech companies running circles around nearly every other sector.

At the very least, we can say for certain we’re in a Mega Melt-Up.

This is a rare period of extreme upside moves that we’ve only seen twice before – in the 1920s and the 1990s.

The most recent Melt-Up signal has been live since early 2021 for the Nasdaq 100 – persisting even through the 2022 bear market.

Most of the companies playing in these areas today likely will not survive the long term.

Don’t get me wrong. A lot of companies in these areas are great… but just as many, if not more, could go the way of the companies on the losing end of the dot-com bust.

Knowing how to tell the difference is critical. It’s the difference between walking through that sketchy alley with wrestling superstar Brock Lesnar… or with a blinking sign that reads “SUCKER.”

How do you tell the difference?

By following TradeSmith’s software tools… including our biggest breakthrough to date.

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TradeSmith: Supercharging Research to Optimize Market Moves

How can you tell a good stock from bad?

Is it the founder? The price-to-earnings multiple? The chart?

All of these things can have an impact.

But from what we see, they’re downstream of what really matters.

We employ dozens of software engineers, analysts, and computer programmers to delve into the data-driven truth of the market. We put millions of dollars to work finding ways to help you beat the market. And we’ve put our blood, sweat, and tears into this process over many years.

This year, it’s all paid off. We’ve come up with several new strategies designed to help you make the most out of every trading session.

It started with our new Seasonality software and the Seasonal Edge strategy in January.

It continued with our Snapback strategy and our proven call for a Mega Melt-Up in February. Once it got rolling again after “Liberation Day,” the indexes started breaking out to new highs, one by one.

And it kept rolling with TradeSmithGPT in June, our newest way to trade our AI-based Predictive Alpha model with smart options strategies.

With each passing day, we discover new ways to optimize the market’s moves and better service our customers.

And with each new breakthrough, TradeSmith cements itself as a financial technology leader whose accomplishments are only accelerating.

But we also have a way to easily quantify the characteristics of any stock, helping you discover the highest-quality names… with Jason Bodner’s Quantum Score.

His methodology crunches all the variables that matter across fundamental strength, technical momentum, and institutional-level buying pressure.

On a scale of 0-100, this score quickly separates the wheat from the chaff… leaving you with no doubt of where to place your bets in any big investment theme.

And that’s exactly what we’ll aim to do today.

We’re going to examine all those big themes we talked about… and show whether the biggest stocks in those themes have the Quantum Scores to back them up.

The Quantum Scores Behind Robots, Quantum, and Crypto

First on our list is robotics.

Robots have been around for quite a long time in factory and commercial settings. But in 2025 with Tesla’s (TSLA) plans to produce a “legion” of its Optimus robots, the focus has shifted to AI-powered humanlike robots.

Along with this new form comes the promise of a robot that may be helpful for everyday, household tasks as soon as next year… and more robust industrial applications perhaps even sooner. Your Amazon packages may one day be delivered by a bipedal robot. Perhaps that’s just the start.

No one would fault you for investing in the trend.

But not all robotics stocks are created equal.

Few pure-play robotics companies are publicly traded. You have TSLA, which arguably kickstarted the trend and is working directly on its robot Optimus. Here’s its score:

That’s not terrible – and we can see it’s the Technical score that really drags it down.

But what about one of those recent big winning robotics firms, like Symbotic?

This is the kind of Quantum Score I like to see – a 90.5.

Where SYM lags TSLA on its fundamental measures, the Technical score – which measures things like price momentum and heavy buying pressure – is as high as it gets.

Let’s move right into our next theme, quantum computing.

Here, there are a lot more pure plays. We have D-Wave Quantum (QBTS), Rigetti, IonQ (IONQ), and Quantum Computing Inc.(QUBT) just off the top of my head.

Bad news, though… None of these have especially great Quantum Scores:

The best of these is RGTI, but just like the others, it has a pretty lousy Fundamental score and is largely being held up by recent price action.

If you’re looking for a quantum play of high quality, you have to accept that the smaller-cap names just aren’t cutting it right now.

You know who is cutting it, and announced its own quantum chip in December? Alphabet (GOOGL):

GOOGL gets an 86.4 Quantum Score, and its Fundamentals are leagues ahead of any of the upstarts.

Not only that, but we also can see that its Technical score (the blue line on the right) and Quantum Score (green line) have both improved recently. The Fundamentals have stayed pretty steady in the mid-90s. Moving on to cryptocurrency, the crypto companies had a big moment this year. This was the year of the Bitcoin and Ethereum treasury model, where companies sprang up with the promise of simply buying these two cryptos… along a huge resurgence in crypto trading and payments platforms Coinbase (COIN), PayPal (PYPL), and Robinhood ( HOOD ).

What does the Quantum Score say about these stocks? Let’s take a look…

Let’s start with the company that started the Bitcoin treasury trend, Strategy:

Here, we don’t get a really strong read on fundamentals, but solid technicals are there. Same with the biggest Ethereum treasury company, Bitmine:

These companies are playing in brand-new business models that revolve around holding a high-performing asset on the balance sheet. That’s largely untested, and I don’t especially love being a guinea pig.

A low fundamental score indicates poor revenue, earnings, and profit margin growth. Maybe these companies have stumbled onto something here, but it’s a high-risk gambit.

Let’s look at some more traditional companies in the crypto space, like Coinbase.

Here, the dynamic is flipped – with supreme fundamentals and lagging technicals. Here, however, technicals aren’t a dealbreaker. COIN is still at a respectable 74.5.

Another name that might be worth looking at is payment processor PayPal.

Here, too, we see strong fundamentals but very weak technicals. A low second measure might indicate a lack of institutional buying pressure keeping this stock afloat.

Finally, let’s take a quick look at Robinhood – a brokerage app that serves all sorts of financial needs, including crypto…

Here we have a stock to get excited about, with an 88.5 Quantum Score bolstered by strong technical strength.

Of the crypto companies we looked at today, it turns out the one with the highest Quantum Score is the one not putting all its eggs in one basket. There’s wisdom in that.

Keep in mind, not all of the technical factors that keep some stocks riding high – while others crash – are actually visible on the price chart.

That’s exactly why Jason provides you with an overall Technical Score. His unique way of gauging momentum relies heavily on those institutional investors. Jason used to be one himself, and to this day their trades still control about 80% of the U.S. stock market.

So, rather than wasting any of your precious time poring through SEC forms to see what Wall Street is up to… you can just check out Keith Kaplan’s latest webinar to see this “Big Money Index” in action.

See how these signals can forecast enormous breakouts by watching the replay.

To building wealth beyond measure,

Michael Salvatore signature