By Beth Kindig
Publication Date: 2026-05-22 00:00:00
April 2026 was a historically strong period for the stock market. The S&P 500 rose by 10.43%—its best monthly return since April 2020, when the market rebounded from COVID-era lows. The Nasdaq-100 achieved the same feat, rising over 15%.
Against this backdrop, I/O Fund performed exceptionally well, as we owned 4 of the market’s 10 best-performing large caps in April. This includes the market’s top large cap gainer, Bloom Energy, which soared 112.81%. In February, my firm called out Bloom as our Top AI Stock Pick for 2026.
Adding to AI energy’s strong performance was networking stocks, a subsector that most investors shy away from due to the complexity of the products, in addition to the supply chain moving lightning fast with immense volatility in both directions. The reason networking sees immense volatility is straightforward: much of the market is tied to a single customer, Nvidia; and Nvidia is rolling out new architectural iterations at an unusually fast pace these days.
AI networking stock Lumentum is among the key I/O Fund winners in 2026. We allocated heavily to LITE in January—a month before Nvidia backed the company. While most investors couldn’t stomach taking a stake in this stock that soared 339% in 2025, I/O Fund built a 9% position that has since paid off in spades. Overall, in just five brief months, our Lumentum position delivered a return of 135.4%, or 6.8X higher than Nvidia’s 19.9% return since the end of January.
For investors new to…