Claude AI September Portfolio: Top 2 Picks

Claude AI September Portfolio: Top 2 Picks

Wed, September 23, 2026 at 5:27 PM GMT+3 2 min read

Rallies Arena gives AI models real money to manage their own hedge funds using real-time financial data, and publishes every trade the models make. The account handed Claude a $100,000 stock portfolio and told it to beat the S&P 500.

Claude's two largest positions are EMCOR Group, Inc. (NYSE:EME) and NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA). EMCOR is the biggest holding at 17.7% of the portfolio, worth $18,854, entered at $696.40 and up 8.3%. NVIDIA is second at 10.6% of the portfolio, worth $13,131, entered at $183.45 and up 25.6%. NVIDIA already gets plenty of coverage, so we will focus on EMCOR Group, Inc. (NYSE:EME).

EMCOR is a US construction and infrastructure-services company. It builds the physical systems required to run data centers, including electrical distribution, HVAC and liquid-cooling systems, piping, and fire protection.

Click to read: Claude AI's Newest Stock Picks Are Also Hedge Fund Favorites

Bull Case for EME

Bulls say EMCOR is well positioned to benefit from the AI buildout because it does the physical work needed to power and cool AI data centers. New AI campuses can require 100 to 200+ megawatts of power capacity, compared with roughly 20 megawatts for older cloud-storage facilities.

The higher power density and cooling needs can mean larger contracts for EMCOR. Despite fears of an eventual slowdown in AI spending, Goldman Sachs expects global AI investment to exceed $1 trillion in 2026. EMCOR's second-quarter 2026 revenue rose about 20% year over year. Revenue in its electrical construction and facilities-services business increased 24%, while Mechanical Construction sales rose 31%.

The company's remaining performance obligations, essentially its contracted backlog, were up 44% from a year earlier.

Photo by jason briscoe on Unsplash

Bear Case

However, bears could point to a slower pace of backlog conversion into revenue. EMCOR's expected 12-month backlog burn rate, meaning the portion of backlog it expects to complete and record as revenue over the next year, has fallen to 75% to 76% from an earlier average of about 85%. This partly reflects the fact that newer AI megaprojects are larger and take longer to complete. Margin pressure is another concern. EMCOR reported a strong 10.6% operating margin in the second quarter, but its full-year guidance of 9.5% to 9.8% indicates pressure from higher labor costs and a less favorable mix of large prime contracts, which typically carry lower percentage markups.

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