Wall Street’s opening weeks of September have been choppy, with triple-digit oil prices and unstable Treasury yields leaving the S&P 500 roughly flat to slightly lower since the month began. Despite that backdrop, a subset of AI-driven strategies has pulled meaningfully ahead of the benchmark in the month-to-date period.
Across the 11 U.S.-focused quant portfolios re-ranked monthly by a strategies engine that applies AI scoring to thousands of global equities, three models are outpacing the S&P 500 by more than two full percentage points as of the tenth trading day of September.
Top performer: Tech Titans
The leading model, Tech Titans, which constructs a monthly basket of 15 technology leaders identified algorithmically, has produced the largest gap versus the index. Since the September 1 rebalance the model’s book is up 3.92% compared with a 0.52% dip in the S&P 500, a 4.44 percentage-point advantage.
Twelve of the strategy’s 15 positions registered gains over the month-to-date stretch. Intel stands out, advancing 12.76% as momentum around its turnaround narrative continued and it received a fresh buy-side bullish initiation. Advanced Micro Devices added 9.57% for the period. Enterprise software and cloud-related names also contributed: Oracle rose 8.22% after an exceptionally strong fiscal Q1 report that showed adjusted EPS of $1.92 versus $1.74 expected, cloud infrastructure revenue up 121% year-over-year to $7.4 billion, and a record $664 billion revenue backlog. The lone clear laggard within Tech Titans was ON Semiconductor, down 3.41%.
Members with access to the full model output can view the complete set of September picks via the platform’s subscriber tools.
Other notable outperformers
Quality Compounders, a newer, sector-agnostic 15-stock model, has gained 2.04% month-to-date — a 2.57-point edge over the S&P 500. That strategy benefited from a 6.74% monthly rise in Qualcomm, which continued to trade on momentum from a recently announced custom-silicon and optical-networking partnership with a major cloud provider that included warrants for up to 25 million Qualcomm shares. Marvell added 7.88% and Arm climbed 8.24% for the month, both contributing to the outperformance.
Beat the S&P 500, a 20-stock, all-cap sibling strategy that overlaps many semiconductor holdings with Quality Compounders, is up 1.81% month-to-date, representing a 2.33-point advantage versus the benchmark.
Realized gains and portfolio turnover
At the most recent monthly rebalance, two positions with strong cumulative returns were sold out. Haemonetics, which had been held across the Mid-Cap Movers and Healthcare Heroes books for a full year, was exited with a total return of 88.98%. Molina Healthcare, a five-month holding inside Healthcare Heroes, was closed out at a 46.35% gain.
Stragglers and sector divergence
Not all U.S.-focused strategies performed well. Financial Fortresses, the 15-stock portfolio focused on financial-sector names, was the group laggard, down 2.69% against a 0.61% decline in the S&P 500 Financials index — a 2.08-point underperformance. That strategy was weighed down by sizable drops in FactSet (-13.92%) and Moody’s (-5.53%). Other strategies trailing the benchmark this month include Dominate the Dow, down 1.58% versus its benchmark, and Small-Cap Sprinters, down 0.33% — both within typical month-to-month volatility ranges but lagging the leaders.
Common theme: AI infrastructure exposure
Collectively, the outperformers share concentrated exposure to companies tied to AI infrastructure — from chipmakers to firms benefiting from cloud demand and expanding cloud revenue backlogs. That positioning has helped these models register gains even as the broader index has stalled amid oil and rates-related headwinds.
Data for the performance figures in this report are current as of September 11, 2026 (month-to-date since the September 1 rebalance).
Past performance does not guarantee future results.