What are the best stocks to buy right now? It's that time of the year when everyone is sick of the "1btc = 1btc!" posts. Markets crash, portfolios bleed, and suddenly everyone online rediscovers the ancient wisdom of "cash is king."
But while retail investors are doom-scrolling their brokerage apps, a small group of politicians, ex-OpenAI researchers, and infrastructure cowboys are quietly printing money.
Trump's rare earth bet is up triple digits and a 24-year-old former AI researcher just deployed $13 billion on the thesis that the real play isn't semiconductor chips but the electricity those chips run on. Here are three portfolios actually performing during the crash, and what they're telling you about where money is moving.
1. Trump Turned a Geopolitical Crisis Into a 167% Return. Here's How.
The best-performing disclosed portfolio right now belongs to Donald Trump, and it's stacked with dirt. Specifically, rare earth minerals, or the unglamorous inputs that make semiconductors, EV motors, and defense systems run.
Trump's Project Vault, launched in February 2026, marks a fundamental shift in the role of the federal government: from regulator to shareholder.
The flagship play is USA Rare Earth (USAR).
The Commerce Department issued a letter of intent to provide USA Rare Earth with a $1.3 billion loan and $277 million in federal funding. In exchange, the U.S. government received 16.1 million shares of common stock and warrants, giving Washington an 8% to 16% stake in the company.
USAR reported its first earnings since becoming a Trump administration policy vehicle in Q1 2026, posting $5.7 million in revenue against $1.75 billion in cash on hand. The strategic rationale is hard to argue with. The US still imports roughly 80% of its rare earth supply from China, and this structural dependence creates a policy floor for valuations, with inelastic defense demand and surging requirements from EVs and AI reinforcing the case for domestic producers.
Dips are getting bought. There's a reason for that.
2. Dan Crenshaw Is Accused of Insider Trading and He's Up Big on Apple and Google
Texas Representative Dan Crenshaw bought Alphabet around $98 in late 2022 and has delivered roughly 194% in unrealized gains as cloud margins expanded and AI monetization kicked in. His Apple position has run nearly 180% since entry.
The optics are predictably ugly. Crenshaw voted against congressional trading bans while critics, tracked by watchdog accounts, point to patterns that look less like luck and more like structure. He denies any wrongdoing.
Strip the politics and the trade reads simply: buy dominant platforms during advertising-cycle troughs. That's it. Alphabet owns search, YouTube, and the fastest-growing cloud division in the world. Apple owns the premium consumer hardware market and a services business most banks would envy. Neither of those facts changed because valuations dipped.
The playbook is dull but the returns aren't.
3. The Ex-OpenAI Researcher Who Thinks Electricity Is the New Oil Is Buying IREN
Leopold Aschenbrenner, the former OpenAI researcher known for warning about China and advanced AI development, grew his disclosed equity exposure from $5.5 billion at end of 2025 to $13.67 billion as of March 31, 2026. His fund, Situational Awareness LP, has a framework that cuts against the obvious AI trade: rather than buying semiconductor companies supplying AI hardware, the fund holds $8.47 billion in put exposure against them, while going long crypto miners as infrastructure proxies.
Aschenbrenner increased positions in power and infrastructure companies including IREN, Applied Digital, RIOT, and CleanSpark, continuing his thesis that "electricity is the new oil."
IREN (Iris Energy) is the clearest expression of that bet. The company has managed to monetize its physical data center footprint through long-term, high-margin hyperscaler partnerships, including a landmark $9.7 billion, five-year AI cloud contract with Microsoft. It also secured a five-year, $3.4 billion AI infrastructure contract with Nvidia, anchored at its Childress, Texas data centers, and is now targeting around $3.7 billion in annual recurring revenue in 2026 as it ramps a 5GW global data center pipeline.
The stock is up 666% over the past year. Eleven analysts currently hold a Buy consensus on IREN, with a median price target around $76.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, you could lose everything, and Isaiah McCall is not your financial advisor.
