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Beer’s Big Comeback? 2 Stocks Poised to Benefit in 2026

Written by Chris Markoch

After several years of slipping consumption trends and competition from ready-to-drink (RTD) cocktails and hard seltzers, 2026 could be the year when beer comes back into favor. Goldman Sachs analysts believe 2026 offers a rare blend of tailwinds for brewers: the FIFA World Cup, the Summer Olympics, and the 250th anniversary of the United States.

Major events like these create more reasons for people to gather, which increases the likelihood of beer consumption. Historically, major sporting and cultural events have boosted beer sales, giving some of the top stocks a temporary but meaningful lift in volume.

For investors, it presents an opportunity to participate in a potential cyclical upswing in demand for alcoholic beverages. Two stocks stand out as well-positioned to benefit: Constellation Brands (NYSE: STZ), the powerhouse behind Modelo and Corona, and Molson Coors (NYSE: TAP), a legacy brewer with renewed momentum and diversification beyond traditional beer. Both offer distinct ways to capitalize on what could be a reason why these brewers lead consumer staples stocksout of their doldrums.

Why Beer Sales May Still Go Flat

By now, investors are probably growing weary of hearing about the bifurcated economy. But it’s impossible to make a forecast for 2026 without acknowledging that there’s more that we don’t know about the economy than what we know.

Inflation is trending lower, but it remains comfortably above the Federal Reserve’s preferred target rate of 2%. Several analysts believe a new round of inflation is a near certainty if the Fed continues to lower interest rates and reverts to its policy of quantitative easing (QE).

The job market is also a concern. When consumers are concerned about their jobs, discretionary purchases, such as beer, are often the first line items to get cut.

Brewers also need to find a way to reach the Gen-Z consumer who is buying less alcohol for both affordability and health reasons. The industry is also competing with cannabis, which has become legal in many states and has become the vice of choice for this generation.

Constellation Brands: Premium Beer Leadership With Margin Strength

Premium beers have done slightly better in the last few years. That’s a good reason to consider Constellation Brands, which is a leader in the ongoing premiumization trend within the beer category. In fact, over 94% of the company’s sales come from beer.

The company has steadily gained U.S. market share through its Modelo Especial and Corona Extra imports, which dominate shelves and draft lines nationwide. Constellation’s pricing power and operational efficiency have enabled it to maintain strong margins despite fluctuating input costs over the past two years.

Looking ahead to 2026, the brand portfolio appears particularly well-aligned with the celebratory tone anticipated around global events. Increased on-premise consumption, cross-promotions during the World Cup and Olympics, and marketing synergy with U.S. celebrations could all drive higher volume growth.

Constellation Brands is a contrarian bet on growth, but it’s one that comes with an increasingly low risk. Analysts are forecasting approximately 30% upside for STZ stock. One reason for that could be the company’s growing free cash flow, which is happening despite lower sales year-over-year. That means the company’s dividend, which yields 2.93%, as of this writing, is safe.

Molson Coors: A Volume Play on Major Events and Core Brands

Molson Coors has spent the past several years reinventing itself after long stagnation. The company has pivoted toward modernization. This means focusing on brand refreshes, better marketing, and expansion into “beyond beer” categories like hard seltzers, spirits, and non-alcoholic beverages.

However, that hasn’t been reflected in the TAP stock price, which is down nearly 20% in 2025. However, 2026 may be the year when the company may benefit by focusing on its roots.

The company’s core portfolio, anchored by Coors Light and Miller Lite, stands to benefit most from a volume rebound tied to next year’s surge of global and national events. TAP also has a strong logistics footprint and deep relationships with retailers, positioning it to capture incremental on-premise sales as major sports and anniversary celebrations unfold.

Molson Coors is another company with a strong free cash flow story. Recent cost discipline and debt reduction efforts have improved margins and enhanced financial flexibility, setting the stage for potential shareholder returns through dividend growth or buybacks. READ THIS STORY ONLINE

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Forget The Chips: Oracle Wins Phase 2 of AI

Written by Jeffrey Neal Johnson

Investors watched Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) surge to a closing price of $198.38 on Dec. 22, marking a gain of over 3% on heavy trading volume. While the broader technology sector has spent the last two years obsessing over which company manufactures the best artificial intelligence (AI) chips, the market is beginning to shift its focus.

Two developments—a massive U.S. joint venture and a critical infrastructure project in Michigan—suggest that the AI trade is moving into a new phase.

Phase one of the AI boom was about hardware procurement. During this time, companies spent billions buying processors from designers like NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA). Phase two, however, is all about deployment.

These powerful chips require a place to live—massive, secure data centers with immense power capacity.

Based on recent strategic moves, Oracle has emerged not as a competitor to the chipmakers but as the essential utility provider required to run them.

For investors, this distinction is critical: Oracle doesn’t need to win the chip war; it just needs to rent the space where the winner lives.

The Infrastructure Engine: Building the AI Factory

Oracle’s transition from a legacy software company to a cloud infrastructure giant is no longer a projection; it is evident in the hard numbers. In the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, the company reported growth metrics that outpaced many of its hyperscale competitors.

• Cloud Infrastructure Growth:Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) revenue grew by 68% year-over-year.
• AI Demand: Revenue specifically related to graphics processing units (GPUs), the chips that power AI, jumped 177%.
• Capacity Delivery: The company delivered nearly 400 megawatts of capacity in the quarter to meet this surging demand.

A key driver of this success is the company’s strategic pivot to Chip Neutrality. Oracle recently sold its stake in Ampere, a proprietary chipmaker, netting a $2.7 billion pre-tax gain. This move signals that Oracle is no longer interested in fighting a hardware war. Instead, it is deepening partnerships with Nvidia and AMD (NASDAQ: AMD)to become the most flexible distributor of computing power. By focusing on infrastructure rather than silicon, Oracle reduces manufacturing risk while still capturing the upside of the AI boom.

This strategy faced a real-world test recently regarding a planned $10 billion AI supercluster in Michigan. Last week, financing partner Blue Owl Capital (NYSE: OWL) withdrew from the project, raising fears that Oracle might struggle to fund its ambitious buildout. However, on Dec. 22, Oracle confirmed that the project is proceeding “on schedule,” and the developer said it has chosen a new equity partner, though the firm was not named. This rapid resolution demonstrates that capital markets remain eager to fund Oracle’s expansion, effectively removing an execution risk for the company.

Security as a Strategy: Validating the Sovereign Cloud

The most headline-grabbing news of the day is the confirmation of the TikTok U.S. joint venture. A consortium led by Oracle, Silver Lake, and investment firm MGX has agreed to acquire a 45% stake in TikTok’s U.S. operations. While the headlines focus on the app, the deal’s details reveal a much bigger story for Oracle shareholders.

The deal structure breaks down as follows:

• Oracle: 15% Ownership Stake.
• Silver Lake: 15% Ownership Stake.
• MGX: 15% Ownership Stake.
• Operational Role: Oracle will serve as the platform’s exclusive cloud provider.

For investors, the value of this deal goes far beyond owning a piece of a popular social media app. This transaction validates Oracle’s Sovereign Cloud strategy. Sovereign cloud involves physically separating and ring-fencing data so that it remains within a specific national jurisdiction and adheres to strict security protocols.

By meeting the U.S. government’s demanding national security requirements for TikTok, Oracle is demonstrating its capabilities to the rest of the market. If Oracle is trusted to secure the data for one of the most scrutinized apps in the world, it becomes a logical default choice for other highly regulated sectors. Industries such as defense, healthcare, and financeoften cannot use public clouds due to privacy concerns. The TikTok deal acts as a proof of concept that Oracle can deliver the Sovereign AI security these industries require.

Revenue Visibility: The $523 Billion Safety Net

To support these massive contracts, Oracle is spending heavily. Capital expenditures (CapEx) hit $12 billion in the second quarter, and the company raised its full-year spending forecast by approximately $15 billion. Typically, such high spending might worry investors about cash flow and debt levels. However, this spending is backed by a massive safety net that changes the investment calculus.

Oracle reported Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) of $523.3 billion, an increase of 438% year-over-year.

In plain English, RPO represents a backlog of signed contracts that have not yet been fulfilled. Customers have already committed to paying this money; Oracle just needs to build the data centers to service them. This creates a unique dynamic for the stock:

• Success-Based Capital: Oracle is not building data centers on speculation or hype. It is deploying capital to fulfill invoices that are already waiting.
• Revenue Visibility: This level of backlog provides a floor for the stock price. Even if the economy slows, Oracle has half a trillion dollars’ worth of work to do.
• Future Growth: Management raised its fiscal year 2027 revenue outlook by roughly $4 billion, signaling that it expects to convert this backlog into cash faster than anticipated.

The Value Play in a Hype Market

As the artificial intelligence market matures, capital is rotating. Investors are moving funds from companies that build the hardware to those that provide the critical infrastructure. Oracle successfully transitioned from a traditional database firm to a modern cloud leader, and the market is rewarding that shift.

Trading at a price-to-earnings ratio(P/E) of approximately 37x, Oracle offers exposure to the AI sector at a valuation that is often more reasonable than pure-play hardware manufacturers.

With the TikTok deal securing a massive anchor tenant and the Michigan project back on track, the company has cleared significant hurdles that were previously holding the stock back.

Furthermore, Oracle is looking ahead to Phase Three of AI: Reasoning.

The company recently launched its AI Data Platform, which allows customers to use models like GPT-5 to reason across data stored in Oracle and non-Oracle databases alike.

As the demand for data security and capacity increases, Oracle’s unique combination of physical infrastructure, sovereign security, and enterprise software positions it to capture long-term value.

For investors seeking the next logical step in the AI trade, Oracle presents a compelling case for growth, backed by hundreds of billions in committed revenue. READ THIS STORY ONLINE

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3 Mining Companies to Fill Stockings With More Than Just Coal

Written by Nathan Reiff

As 2025 comes to a close, the precious metals surge appears poised to continue well into the new year, despite some bumps in the fall. Gold and silver hit fresh all-time highs again in December after having already done so many times previously in recent months. A perfect storm of geopolitical uncertainty, falling interest rates and bond market volatility, and investor reticence about the equities space has driven precious metals ever higher.

Besides the precious metals landscape, base metals like copper are also surging in price amid a widening gap between demand and supply, while critical minerals like lithium and cobalt are increasingly required for popular applications like electric vehicles and clean energy. Together, these factors make mining companies as a group a desirable and potentially growth-oriented corner of the market. Add to that the appeal of miners as a possible hedge against inflation, and it’s easy to see why they could be a top choice among investors in the new year. The three stocks below may be a good place to start.

Agnico Reaches Record Results, Fueling Additional Exploration and Efficiency Efforts

The largest Canadian mining company in the world by market capitalization, Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. (NYSE: AEM)is primarily focused on gold production, with some additional metals included as byproducts. Like many other mining firms, Agnico’s stock price is often closely linked to the price of its target metal—unsurprisingly, then, shares of AEM staged a massive rally in 2025, rising by 121% year-to-date (YTD).

Agnico’s scale and the stellar performance of gold helped it to soar to record results in the latest quarter, including a whopping 867,000 ounces produced and $3.1 billion in revenue, topping analyst predictions. Earnings per share (EPS) of $2.16 came close to doubling year-over-year (YOY) and beat estimates by 40 cents. While the higher cost of gold does mean increased royalty expenses, Agnico’s efforts to boost productivity have been fruitful, with lower unit costs thanks to unattended drilling and improved fleet management.

Agnico’s size also allows it to pump money back into exploration, with 120 drill rigs launched in the first three quarters of 2025, unlocking up to 1.5 million ounces of additional potential production. The company’s margins remain strong, it has healthy free cash flow, and it is rewarding shareholders (returning some $350 million in the last quarter alone). All of these factors make AEM a solid Buy among most analysts, despite its already-impressive rally.

Barrick’s Divestment, IPO Potential, and Dispute Resolution Could Drive Additional Gains

Barrick Gold Corp. (NYSE: B) is right behind Agnico in the list of the largest Canadian mining firms, and the gold and copper producer has had an even stronger performance recently, rising by about 187% this year alone. In addition to growing cash flow and margins, the company is engaging in strategic repositioning that will allow it to improve efficiencies into the new year, supporting a strongly bullish appraisal by analysts even in spite of its major rally in 2025.

Two additional catalysts make Barrick an attractive choice at the start of the year. First, the company announced in early December 2025 that it is exploring a potential IPO of its North American gold assets.

On top of a recent $305-million sale of its Côte d’lvoire assets, this development would continue to facilitate a streamlining of Barrick’s assets and production while boosting its cash on hand. Second, Barrick recently reached a resolution with the government of Mali surrounding its Loulo and Gounkoto mines, restoring a major asset and removing a good deal of uncertainty for the company.

Newmont Is Another Gold Miner With Major Returns and Compelling Fundamentals

A top-six publicly traded miner globally by market value, Newmont Corp. (NYSE: NEM) is also primarily focused on gold.

With gains of 174% this year, Newmont has a compelling combination of top-of-the-line mining assets, supercharged cash flow of $4.5 billion in the first three quarters of 2025, an improving balance sheet, and production ramp-ups in its operations in Ghana.

While the company’s third-quarter earnings were strong and analysts continue to call NEM shares a Buy, Newmont has modest downside potential based on price estimates and after its recent rally.

Given that, investors may be further enticed by Newmont’s dividend and healthy, sustainable payout ratio. READ THIS STORY ONLINE

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