Key Points
Before the end of its first trading day on the Nasdaq, Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX), or SpaceX, had joined an elite club: stocks with at least $2 trillion in market capitalization.
The club is so exclusive that only six other stocks belong to it. And unlike SpaceX, most of them underperformed in June. Here’s my pick for the best one to buy in July.
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Image source: Getty Images.
Biggest of the big
The seven largest stocks in the world are currently:
*Data as of market close on 6/29/2026. **SpaceX performance since Nasdaq debut at $150/share on 6/12/2026.
Aside from TSMC and, of course, SpaceX, all of these huge companies saw big share price declines over the past month. One big reason? Ongoing concerns about how they might be impacted by the current memory shortage.
Memory loss
High-end memory chips for dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and N-AND flash memory (NAND) are in very short supply, and as a result, they’ve gotten much more expensive. Yet DRAM and NAND are critical for AI applications and for many consumer devices, such as smartphones and laptops.
For Apple, more expensive DRAM and NAND chips mean the company has to accept thinner product margins for its devices that include DRAM and NAND, like iPhones and MacBooks, or pass that cost along to consumers. It had been absorbing the costs, but this month announced it would have to pass the costs on and raised prices on many of its products. Investors punished the stock, concerned that higher costs would hurt sales.
For Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon, the memory shortage means they’ll have to pay more for memory chips for their AI data center build-outs. These “hyperscalers” are already incurring massive AI capital expenditures, which are likely to increase even further in the short term as memory gets more expensive. The market is worried the costs won’t justify the eventual benefits.
I think these concerns are likely to persist in the short term, which is why I’m not picking any of these stocks as my top July pick.
My top choice for July
Image source: Getty Images.
Although TSMC and SpaceX actually outperformed in June, TSMC’s stock has already almost doubled over the past year, while SpaceX just looks ridiculously overvalued.
Nvidia’s stock, on the other hand, is up only 23.6% over the past year, and its forward price-to-earnings ratio is surprisingly the lowest of the bunch. As a chipmaker, Nvidia is a beneficiary of the AI spending boom, not a spender, and while its AI systems rely on memory chips, it doesn’t need to purchase them itself.
Even though it’s already the biggest company in the world by market cap, Nvidia edges out the other $2-trillion-plus companies in July. But over the long term, I think all six of the largest companies — except SpaceX — have excellent prospects for success and could all turn out to be long-term winners.
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John Bromels has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
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