Today's Top US Stock Picks by Category — August 26, 2026
A category-by-category look at what actually moved US stocks today: Moderna led the S&P 500 on melanoma-vaccine data, Nvidia and AMD rebounded into Nvidia's after-the-bell earnings, and Rezolve AI jumped on a Google Cloud deal.
Covered here: MRNA, NVDA, AMD, TRMD, SMR, SOFI, RZLV.
US markets rose for a third straight session on Wednesday, August 26, 2026, with chip stocks leading a Nasdaq rebound as Treasury yields and oil prices pulled back. The day's real story was positioning: Nvidia reports earnings after today's close, and several of the session's biggest moves were investors taking a view on that result before it lands.
Overall market mover: Moderna (MRNA) was the largest S&P 500 gainer, up roughly 14%, after positive Phase 3 results for a personalized melanoma vaccine developed with Merck, plus favorable analyst commentary that followed the data.
AI and tech: Nvidia (NVDA) rebounded about 2.2%, snapping a seven-session slide, as investors positioned ahead of its earnings release — widely treated as the key read-through on AI capital-expenditure demand for the rest of the year.
Semiconductors: AMD rose roughly 4.9% in the same chip-sector rebound, carried by renewed AI-demand optimism and positioning ahead of Nvidia's numbers rather than any AMD-specific news today.
Dividend and income: Tanker operator TORM plc (TRMD) reported second-quarter net profit up 489% year over year to $338 million on exceptionally high freight rates, and declared a $2.40 per-share interim dividend. TORM is not in our tracked US-listed universe; treat this as a market note, not a covered profile.
Growth: Moderna's melanoma-vaccine Phase 3 data doubles as the day's clearest growth catalyst in healthcare — a concrete pipeline result rather than a macro-driven move.
Energy and clean energy: NuScale Power (SMR) gained about 8.3% and was among the day's most-active US shares. No company-specific announcement was identified alongside the move — this looks like sector momentum riding the broader small-modular-reactor and data-center-power theme, not a discrete catalyst, and should be treated accordingly.
Financials: SoFi Technologies (SOFI) rose about 4.2% on a disclosed new position from Bank of New York Mellon. A single institutional 13F-type filing is a data point, not an operating catalyst — SoFi is not yet in our tracked universe.
Speculative: Rezolve AI (RZLV) jumped roughly 20–22% after Google selected its distributed-database technology for Google Cloud's Web3 blockchain-data indexing and pipeline infrastructure — a genuine commercial-validation event for a micro-cap. RZLV is not in our tracked universe and sits well outside it on risk grounds even if added; size any exposure to speculative single-stock news like this accordingly.
None of this is a recommendation to buy or sell anything. It is a same-day record of what moved and why.
Tickers in this brief
| Ticker | Company | Price | 1D |
|---|---|---|---|
| MRNA | Moderna | — | — |
| NVDA | NVIDIA | — | — |
| AMD | Advanced Micro Devices | — | — |
| TRMD | — | — | — |
| SMR | NuScale Power | — | — |
| SOFI | — | — | — |
| RZLV | — | — | — |
Published 2026-08-26. Market commentary, not investment advice. Prices are delayed end-of-day data.