Retail investors talked up five hot stocks this week (April 27 to May 1) on X and Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets, driven by retail hype, Iran war, earnings, AI buzz, and corporate news flow.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Robinhood Markets Inc. (NASDAQ:HOOD), Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META), and Eli Lilly And Co. (NYSE:LLY), hardware, semiconductors, cloud, fintech, social media, AI, and pharmaceutical, reflected diverse investor interests.
Apple
- Apple reported strong second-quarter fiscal 2026 earnings on April 30, posting record March-quarter revenue of $111.2 billion and EPS of $2.01. iPhone revenue showed solid growth, Mac and Services hit highs, while gross margins expanded; the company also authorized another $100B in buybacks and raised its dividend 4% to $0.27/share. This marked Tim Cook‘s final earnings call as CEO before transitioning to executive chairman, with John Ternus taking over as CEO later in 2026.
- Some retail investors were appreciating AAPL’s approach of not investing heavily in AI as compared to its Magnificent 7 peers.
- The stock had a 52-week range of $193.25 to $288.62, trading around $270 to $279 per share, as of the publication of this article. It rose 27.69% over the year, but declined by 0.02% and 0.19% over the last six months and year-to-date, respectively.
- AAPL had a strong price trend in the medium, short and long term, with a poor value ranking, as per Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings.
Alphabet
- Alphabet reported strong first-quarter 2026 earnings, with consolidated revenue rising 22% YoY to $109.9 billion, driven by robust Google Search/YouTube ads and especially Google Cloud revenue surging 63% to over $20 billion for the first time. Net income jumped 81% to $62.6 billion, aided by operating margin expansion to 36.1% and unrealized gains on equity …