Power Stocks Rally on Data-Center Capex as AI Software Faces a Valuation Reckoning

On Thursday, November 5, 2026, the clearest number of the session came from Goldman Sachs, which raised its forecast for global data center capacity to 273 gigawatts by 2030. The estimate landed the same day two regulated utilities, PPL Corporation and Ameren, told investors on their third-quarter earnings calls that data center demand had forced them to rewrite their multi-year spending plans, committing to more power lines, substations and generation capacity than they had budgeted months earlier. The mechanism linking that spending to stock prices is simple. A regulated utility earns a set return on the capital it invests in its grid; when it commits new money to serve data center contracts, the asset base it earns that return on grows, and utilities typically translate that into higher earnings-growth guidance, which investors pay up for today. That trade showed directly in the newsroom's Buy List 2026 model portfolio, €120,000 invested and valued at €125,132 after the session, a total return of 4.28% (price gains alone were 3.59%, the rest from dividends and currency). Its three best-placed holdings were all exposed to that exact dynamic: Danish offshore wind developer Orsted (ORSTED.CO) was up 15.90% from its purchase price, Danish turbine maker Vestas (VWS.CO) was up 17.22%, and Spanish utility Iberdrola (IBE.MC) was up 21.58%. All three sell the power, turbines or grid capacity that the 273-gigawatt forecast assumes will keep being built. Not every part of the AI trade got the same treatment. A separate line of reporting showed short sellers targeting Oracle and JFrog just as Anthropic weighs the timing of a possible initial public offering, a listing that would put a public market price on a leading AI developer's finances for the first time and test whether investors believe the spending behind it will turn into profit. The same unease showed up in Palantir, down for an eighth straight session, and in the market-cap-to-GDP ratio, the gauge Warren Buffett has long cited as his preferred measure of whether share prices have run ahead of the economy underneath them, which kept climbing. Tech stocks rebounded during the session, but the Nasdaq Composite remained in correction territory, commonly defined as a decline of 10% or more from a recent high, meaning the bounce did not resolve the doubt. That doubt showed up in the Buy List too: semiconductor equipment maker ASML (ASML.AS) was down 14.37% from its purchase price, the portfolio's second-weakest position after property group Vonovia (VNA.DE), down 29.76%. ASML builds the machines chipmakers use to produce AI processors, so its shares are a direct bet on the same capital spending utilities are now underwriting, and the same spending Oracle and JFrog's skeptics are questioning. A third strand of the day's wire had nothing to do with AI directly but still read as a sentiment signal: a wide cluster of insider stock sales across sectors. O'Reilly Automotive's chief financial officer, a company director and its chairman all sold shares in the same window. Clear Secure's chief executive and her personal investment entity each separately reported selling exactly $10.7 million of stock. Mondelez chief executive Dirk Van de Put sold $8.8 million of stock in one filing and $8.5 million in another. Aeva Technologies' chief executive sold $372,826 and its chief technology officer sold $248,536. Adaptive Biotechnologies' president sold $954,000, Sprouts Farmers Market's chief executive sold $1.14 million, and a Remitly director sold $239,965. None of those sales moved their stocks much on the day, but the breadth, spanning retail, food, biotech, health tech and sensor technology, described a market where insiders are converting paper gains into cash. The exception was Kinder Morgan, where executive chairman Richard Kinder bought $15 million of stock, a rare and sizeable insider purchase set against a day of selling elsewhere, in a pipeline company whose gas-fired generation customers stand to benefit from the same rising electricity demand behind PPL and Ameren's higher spending plans. What the session left unresolved was whether the physical side of the AI trade, contracted power demand lifting Orsted, Vestas and Iberdrola and prompting PPL and Ameren's higher budgets, can keep diverging from the financial side, where Oracle, JFrog, Palantir and a prospective Anthropic listing are being questioned on valuation. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said during the day that any slowdown in AI-driven growth would be a factor central banks have to weigh, which is the link between the two: if investors stop funding richly valued AI software companies, the capital spending behind Goldman's 273-gigawatt forecast could slow, and with it the earnings growth utilities are now promising. The next test is whether Anthropic actually files for its IPO, and whether the Nasdaq's rebound holds or the index, still in correction territory, resumes falling.