4 Stocks With Demand So Sticky That the AI Sell-Off Barely Touched Them at All

Key Points

• Midterm-year history points to a mid-October market low, and Palantir and ServiceNow are rebounding as hard-to-replace software platforms.
• CrowdStrike's recent pullback comes as AI agents on personal and corporate devices widen cybersecurity risks.
• Advanced Micro Devices, Marc Chaikin's top stock for 2027, recently fell about 18% from its high in a single week.

Artificial intelligence (AI) stocks just took a punch, and the damage spread fast. CoreWeave NASDAQ: CRWV was hammered on fears that demand may not show up, while Dell Technologies NYSE: DELL, Hewlett Packard Enterprise NYSE: HPE, and Micron Technology NASDAQ: MU slid right along with it.

Software is telling a different story. The group that spent much of the first half of the year sinking on fears that AI could make it obsolete has turned higher, and several names are holding firm while AI hardware wobbles.

That split matters because of the calendar. Midterm election years have a long record of bottoming in the fall and rallying into the following year, and the latest AI scare landed right inside that window. The stocks holding up best share one trait: customers would have a hard time ripping them out.

Midterm-Year History Points to a Mid-October Buying Window

Marc Chaikin, founder of Chaikin Analytics, has been flagging this stretch of the calendar for months. Over the last 24 midterm elections, the market has tended to bottom around mid-October, rally into the vote, dip briefly and then climb into year-end and the following year, per Chaikin.

By his count, the median gain from the midterm low to the peak the next summer has been 22%. His read is that this year's low is likely already in, which makes pullbacks on geopolitical or AI scare headlines buying opportunities rather than warnings.

The latest scare fits that pattern. Chaikin traces it to confusion over OpenAI's financial figures, which sent investors out of downstream AI beneficiaries. Leverage in South Korea, home to two major memory chipmakers, amplified the selling before strong growth figures from Anthropic helped stocks stabilize.

Valuations are clearly high. In Chaikin's view, they're still headed higher.

Embedded Software Platforms Shrug off AI Disruption Fears

Software's slump dragged down exchange-traded funds (ETFs) like the SPDR S&P Software & Services ETF NYSEARCA: XSW and the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF BATS: IGV on worries that ChatGPT and Claude could let companies build their own software, sidelining incumbents like Adobe NASDAQ: ADBE and Salesforce NYSE: CRM.

That sell-off wasn't a verdict on software—it was a stress test, and the companies woven deepest into customer workflows passed it.

Palantir Technologies NASDAQ: PLTR is the disruptor in the group, at the forefront of defense information processing for the government and major companies.

After a recent new high and a sector pullback, Chaikin sees it as a stock to own for the next six to 12 months.

Its government exposure raises an obvious election question. Chaikin's view is that existing contracts are largely baked in, and even a Democratic-controlled Congress couldn't immediately undo agreements already in place. Commercial sales are a growing part of the business as well.

Earnings are due Nov. 2, the day before the midterm election, and Chaikin expects Palantir to beat again. The stock jumped from roughly $120 to $160 the day after its prior report, though he isn't counting on a repeat after a big three-month run.

ServiceNow NYSE: NOW is the corporate counterweight. Its platform consolidates customer support systems inside large companies, and most of its business is corporate rather than government.

It fell with the group, though less sharply, because it's hard to replace.

The stock hasn't reclaimed its December-January high, but a recent analyst upgrade helped push it to a new six-month high.

The irony, per Chaikin, is that ServiceNow is using AI rather than losing to it, and the next few earnings reports could make that integration visible to investors.

AI Agents Turn Cybersecurity Into a Must-Have Expense

The more AI spreads into corporate networks and personal computers, the bigger the attack surface. That's the case for CrowdStrike Holdings NASDAQ: CRWD.

Chaikin points to the Muse agent recently launched by Meta Platforms NASDAQ: META, which drew a tidal wave of downloads. Agentic software on one computer can put every device on a home network at risk.

CrowdStrike has roughly doubled since the start of the year and recently pulled back a little more than 10%, a dip Chaikin considers worth buying.

Budgets are the swing factor. Cybersecurity sales lean on corporate and government capital expenditure (CapEx), and peers like Palo Alto Networks NASDAQ: PANW and Fortinet NASDAQ: FTNT occasionally miss. Once the midterms pass, Chaikin expects purchasing teams to start signing contracts they've held back. A split government could help, since corporations love gridlock and hate uncertainty.

High-Precision Chips Anchor a Top Semiconductor Pick for 2027

Not every AI name in the sell-off looks broken. Advanced Micro Devices NASDAQ: AMD, Chaikin's favorite stock for 2027, recently fell about 18% from its high in a single week.

His case rests on two fronts. AMD's 64-bit floating-point (FP64) chips handle the high-precision math that medical, energy and defense research demands, work that lower-precision chips behind most AI models handle poorly.

They power El Capitan at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which Chaikin calls the world's largest supercomputer. In the personal computer (PC) market, he sees AMD overtaking Intel NASDAQ: INTC as the innovator.

If the market rallies by 20% or more into a peak next summer, Chaikin expects AMD to lead the rally.

Sticky Demand and Post-Election Clarity Could Fuel a Year-End Rally

Palantir, ServiceNow, CrowdStrike, and AMD share a thread. Each is tied to work customers can't easily walk away from, whether that's defense contracts, corporate workflows, network security or research computing.

The upside is timing. A historically strong seasonal window, fresh pullbacks and reopening corporate budgets could all line up at once.

The risk is that seasonality is a tendency, not a rule. Valuations are already stretched, AI headlines can flip sentiment in a day, and a disappointing quarter from any of these companies could challenge the idea that sticky demand protects them.

The setup doesn't depend on nailing the bottom, since Chaikin expects dips within this window to last only one to three days. It does depend on spending resuming once the election is settled. Stay focused on post-midterm corporate budgets, because that's what moves software from recovery to leadership.

For Chaikin Analytics' approach to capturing AI growth while dialing down the sector's volatility, get Marc Chaikin's 401 AI report.