Dell is back on Josh Brown’s Best Stocks list. Why more gains are ahead
(This is The Best Stocks in the Market , brought to you by Josh Brown and Sean Russo of Ritholtz Wealth Management.) Josh — The headline news is that Dell (DELL) has just broken out again. I say again because we wrote this name up on Sept. 29 and then watched as it rolled over two months later, falling below its 200-day moving average before Thanksgiving. It ended up being removed from the Best Stocks in the Market list and it stayed off for three months. The stock stopped falling and began a consolidation period from November through the first half of March. Dell shareholders sat patiently while concerns about the capex boom for AI rippled through the markets. Once we heard from all the hyperscalers in their Q4 earnings reports and then Nvidia came out with their trillion-dollar backlog news, the wait was over and this stock got moving again. There are not a lot of stocks making 52-week highs right now with 3% of the S & P 500 making new highs (15 stocks), but Dell is one of them. I want to point out that this sort of thing happens all the time. You find a great setup in a promising stock idea, but the trend fails or something market-related happens and it just doesn’t work. At this point, many traders would take the ticker off their screen and forget about it (pretend it never happened). “I hate that stock, never again.” I have found that some of the best trades in the biggest winners are situations that require more than one entry. Sometimes the second time’s the charm. Sometimes it’s the third attempt. Taking a small loss and then revisiting a fresh breakout in the same stock takes emotional maturity. Buying at $10, selling out at $9 and then buying back in at $11 is the thing most people can’t bring themselves to do. Which is why most people aren’t cut out for this and should hand their money over to someone else. Sean’s going to tell you how Dell landed on our list — again — and why it deserves our attention. Best Stock Spotlight: Dell Technologies, Inc. (DELL) Sean — Dell was instrumental in bringing computers to a wider audience by pioneering the direct-to-consumer model in the 1980s and 90s, offering custom built PCs. Unfortunately, that era didn’t last long and in the 2010s hardware became unpopular unless you had the logo of an apple on it. This culminated with a take-private deal in 2013 to refocus the business. Well things are changing quickly and Dell is back in fashion, now as an essential “shovel” for the proverbial AI goldmine. Dell now offers customizable AI and data center infrastructure and service supporting any platform, cooling method, and rack configuration through their Integrated Rack Scalable Systems (IRSS). In other words, DELL is offering an end-to-end solution for data centers. Their offering includes what management calls “forward deployed engineers” where engineers work upfront with customers on data center design, power, cooling and density optimization before any hardware is delivered. This is the full suite of service – deployment, ongoing support, storage and even financing. The explosion of this business is wild. It essentially went from $0 in revenue a few years ago to $24.7B in revenue as of FY2026. Dell closed $64.1B in AI-related orders during FY26, entered the year with a record $43B backlog, and saw its 5-quarter forward pipeline continue growing sequentially. Looking ahead, management guided FY27 AI server revenue of roughly $50B — a 103% increase, making it the primary driver of Dell’s overall FY27 revenue guide of $138–142B. DELL expects 23% EPS growth this year and 15% growth next year. You’re getting all of that expected growth at a forward 12x earnings, equating to a .7 peg. Not bad for an old PC manufacturer! Now here’s Josh on the technicals… Risk management Josh — This is a clean breakout to new highs after a year of churn, and you’re now seeing price extend well above prior resistance in the $150–$155 zone. That level flips from ceiling to floor. The move is getting stretched short-term with RSI pushing into the high 70s, so chasing strength up here comes with risk of a shakeout or sideways digestion. Maybe give it a couple of days to cool off. For traders, the line in the sand is the breakout zone around $150. If this is real, it shouldn’t spend much time back below that area. A tighter stop could key off a loss of near-term momentum on a break back under $160, but $150 is the real test. For investors, the trend is intact as long as the stock is holding above the rising 200-day around $130. That’s your longer-term risk level, and it gives the stock room to consolidate without breaking the bigger uptrend. Even if this stock pulls back, we have some room to allow for it. I’m seeing a golden cross develop in the chart above with the 50-day breaking above the 200-day — which is really just confirmation of the recent rally — and I like it. 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