Jersace's Juice List - Vol. 3
"Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze?" In Short, Yes.
Hello,
What a year it has been.
Welcome back to the Juice List! To those who have followed me for quite some time or chat with me regularly, you know this list has become something of a tradition. Vol. 1 helped set the stage back in January 2024, and Vol. 2 published at the tail end of 2024 absolutely delivered. Now, as we close out another incredible year, it’s time for Vol. 3.
The 2025 Juice List wasn’t just about picking stocks that would go up. It was about identifying a structural shift so profound that it would revalue entire sectors. 2025 was a phenomenal year for markets.
The big themes of 2025 were clear: AI infrastructure remained king, nuclear energy emerged as a legitimate growth story, memory and storage stocks exploded, and the “picks and shovels” trade expanded beyond semiconductors into power generation and grid infrastructure. Gold hit all-time highs above $4,500, silver broke $70, and commodities broadly rallied as inflation concerns persisted into the first half before easing.
The remarkable thing isn’t that these stocks from Vol. 2 went up as much as they did. The remarkable thing is how few people understood why they went up. Most investors saw “AI stocks” and chased semiconductor names. The real trade was understanding that silicon without electricity is worthless, and that we’d created an energy constraint that would take a decade to solve.
As we position for 2026, I want to be crystal clear about what we’re doing and why. This isn’t a momentum portfolio. This isn’t a collection of “AI plays” because AI is trendy. This is a calculated bet on the largest coordinated infrastructure build-out since the interstate highway system of the 1950s (in other words, the best thing since sliced bread), and we’re positioning ourselves in front of every bottleneck, every capacity constraint, and every material shortage that build-out will create.
Now let's see how the Vol. 2 basket performed and get into what I'm watching for 2026.
Vol. 2 Performance Recap
The Vol. 2 list published in late December 2024 absolutely crushed it. Let me break down how each name performed throughout 2025:
The Big Winners
GOOGL (+66% YTD): The undisputed champion of the basket. The Willow quantum chip announcement we highlighted delivered, Google Cloud continued to dominate, and Waymo expanded its robotaxi footprint. Alphabet emerged as one of the Magnificent Seven’s top performers alongside NVIDIA.
JOBY (+75% YTD): The eVTOL thesis played out beautifully. Joby entered TIA testing (the final stage of FAA certification), acquired Blade’s passenger business, and secured major international deals in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. The company is positioned to potentially launch commercial operations in 2026.
UBER (+51% YTD): Our risk/reward play from Vol. 2 nailed it. Goldman Sachs’s $97 target was hit and exceeded as UBER reached all-time highs above $100 in September 2025. The autonomous vehicle concerns we noted ultimately didn’t derail the stock - Uber partnered with multiple robotaxi companies instead of being disrupted by them.
GEV/VST/CEG (Energy Trifecta): These names crushed it. GEV nearly tripled since its April 2024 IPO. CEG gained roughly 45-60% as Meta, Amazon, and Google signed massive nuclear power deals. The AI power demand thesis we outlined became THE story of 2025.
TLN (Talen Energy): Another nuclear winner. The Amazon partnership we highlighted expanded to 1,920 megawatts through 2042. Earnings projections soared, with 2026 EPS expected to jump over 300%.
HIMS (+36% YTD, hit $73 ATH): The GLP-1 weight loss play delivered early in the year, with shares surging to all-time highs near $73 in February before pulling back. Volatile but profitable for those who caught the move.
TSLA (+18% YTD): Solid gains, though not the explosive move some hoped for. The robotaxi narrative continued building, and the Musk-Trump relationship remained a tailwind.
IONQ: Hit all-time highs above $84 in October 2025 during the quantum computing frenzy, though it’s pulled back since. Those who caught the momentum play banked serious gains.
The Misses
LCID (-65% YTD): The speculative turnaround play didn’t work out. Production scalability issues persisted, and the EV market remained brutally competitive. Risk/reward cuts both ways.
GTLB (-15% YTD): Underperformed despite the DevOps theme. Microsoft’s GitHub integration and broader software compression hurt.
ACHR: More volatile than JOBY, with execution concerns emerging late in the year. Still up significantly from 2023 lows but lagging its peer.
AUR (-38% YTD): This one was interesting because while it didn’t perform well throughout the year, we actually booked a gain on this for over 70% within the first two months of the year.
Each of these names had their moment of green and if executed the trade perfectly, you wouldn’t own any of these at the moment unless you’re still interested in the previous thesis at a lower entry.
The Verdict
Overall, the Vol. 2 basket significantly outperformed the S&P 500’s ~17% return. The energy and autonomous mobility themes we identified were spot-on. Even accounting for the LCID and GTLB misses, a diversified allocation across these names would have generated strong alpha. The juice was absolutely worth the squeeze.
The Broader Market
The S&P 500 returned approximately 17-19%, marking its third consecutive year of double-digit gains. The Nasdaq Composite climbed over 21%, and the Dow added around 14%. We came within striking distance of the historic 7,000 milestone on the S&P 500, hitting an all-time intraday high of 6,945 during the Christmas rally. The market proved resilient, muscling past the April tariff chaos, rate cut speculation, and concerns about an AI bubble bursting.
The Copper Supercycle
I want to spend time on copper because I believe this is the single most underappreciated macro trade for the next three to five years.
Copper demand from AI data centers alone will grow 6x by 2050 according to BHP’s research division, from around half a million tonnes annually today to approximately three million tonnes by mid-century. But here’s the key insight: that growth won’t be linear. It will be front-loaded into the next five years as the massive data center construction boom happens now, not in 2045.
Here’s what makes copper different from other commodities. When you’re building a data center, copper represents less than half of 1% of total project costs. Developers are completely price insensitive. If copper goes from $4 to $6 per pound, it doesn’t change anyone’s decision to build. This inelastic demand in a supply-constrained market is the recipe for explosive price appreciation.
On the supply side, the picture is bleak. The US averages 29 years to permit and build a copper mine. Chile’s state miner Codelco faces stagnation. First Quantum’s Cobre Panama mine closure removed substantial supply. BHP and Freeport-McMoRan both face rising capital requirements for new production. The industry has been underinvesting for fifteen years, and you can’t fix a decade of underinvestment overnight.
Wood Mackenzie warns that insufficient mine investment could drive sustained shortages and price volatility, with demand potentially surging 24% to 42.7 tonnes per annum by 2035. Goldman Sachs slashed its supply forecasts, now projecting deficits of 160K tonnes in 2025 and 200K tonnes in 2026 even before accounting for recent mining disasters at major facilities.
The investment playbook here is straightforward. We want to own copper producers with low all-in sustaining costs, mines in politically stable jurisdictions, and near-term production growth. We want to avoid development-stage stories with 5+ year timelines because we’re trying to capture the 2026-2028 price spike, not the 2030s. And we want to complement direct mining exposure with copper-intensive infrastructure plays like utilities and cable manufacturers that will benefit from higher throughput volumes even if margins compress slightly. Moving on…
The 2026 Juice List
Before we dive into the list, I’d like to point out that in the past two weeks, I have nearly re-done the entire letter. A few ideas you will find missing as I have already mentioned them in chat and others on hold for the time being with the intention of writing them up in another letter in its entirety focusing on the memory/data storage angle paired with batteries. I was taking the angle of a full blown weighted portfolio structured letter here, however switched gears back into flat-out idea generation built for investing & trading alike.
Now let’s dive into what I’m watching for 2026. The themes have evolved - AI infrastructure is entering its “maturity phase,” healthcare is setting up for a rebound, and the power generation trade has legs left to run. Here are my picks across various sectors and themes: