20 hottest tech stocks of the week: Tesla, Alphabet, Super Micro, Microsoft

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Tesla/Alphabet   

While no company managed to dethrone Space Exploration Technologies Corp Class A (NASDAQ:SPCX) from the number one spot this week, Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) have shot up the list of most-bought tech stocks, landing in third and fourth place respectively. Interactive investor customers have been trading both stocks with abundance amid Q2 tech sector earnings season providing the catalyst for this week’s flurry of activity.

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However, shares in Alphabet and Tesla both fell after-hours on Wednesday. The two tech giants reported negative free cash flow, boosted spending on AI infrastructure and reported earnings which missed analysts’ expectations.

Tesla reported capital expenditure of $5.8 billion (£4.4 billion) in Q2, resulting in a negative free cash flow of $1.1 billion. Elon Musk has been trying to shift Tesla away from the highly competitive electric vehicle market towards robotics and AI, requiring heavy levels of spending to support the pivot. Alphabet raised its full-year capex forecast by $15 billion to between $195 billion and $205 billion, and reported the first negative free cash flow figure in its history.

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Super Micro Computer

Shares in Super Micro Computer Inc (NASDAQ:SMCI) surged by almost 20% on Wednesday on the back of a strong outlook. It expects quarterly gross margins of between 15% and 17%, a sharp jump from its previous forecast for between 8.2% and 8.4% thanks to a favourable “customer and product mix”. It also achieved over $60 billion in new orders in its fiscal fourth quarter, sending shares soaring after hours on Tuesday. The company designs and builds computers that power data centres and has seen strong demand for its servers that contain NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA)’s graphics processing units (GPUs), powering AI models. Super Micro has also been working with SpaceX to build a new Gigawatt AI data centre.

Shares in Super Micro fell sharply towards the start of June after it announced plans to raise $7 billion to fund hardware purchases to support the rise in demand for its AI servers.

According to Refinitiv, there is a consensus ‘hold’ recommendation on Super Micro from the analyst community with an average price target of $41.50, up 34% from the current share price. Shares are now flat year-to-date but remain lower by around 40% over the last year.

20 most-bought tech stocks on the ii platform

Source: interactive investor, 20-22 July 2026.

Week ahead

Microsoft

Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) is the sixth-most bought stock so far this week on the ii platform, up two places versus last year. The tech giant takes the spotlight next week when it reports its fiscal fourth-quarter results.

It comes at a pivotal time for the group, after a painful slide of nearly 20% for its share price in June. This sell-off was on the back of concerns about how AI might hurt demand for its traditional suite of software such as Office programmes like Excel, Word and PowerPoint, as well as worries about the high levels of AI infrastructure spending it is carrying out. Capex is therefore likely to be a closely watched number in its results next week, a figure which spooked investors last quarter. Microsoft said it expects 2026 capex of $190 billion, up 61% year-on-year.

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Expectations are for Microsoft to report Q4 revenue of around $87.7 billion and adjusted earnings per share of around $4.21 versus $82.89 billion and $4.27 in Q3 respectively. The company said last quarter that it expects Azure cloud growth (a key figure to watch) of around 39%-40% in Q4.

Microsoft has been cutting costs by reducing jobs. Earlier this month it announced plans to lay off 4,800 staff including 1,600 immediate job reductions at Xbox.

Shares in Microsoft are down almost 20% so far this year and nearly 23% year-on-year. However, according to Refinitiv, there is a consensus ‘buy’ recommendation on the stock with an average price target of $561.57, up 47% from the current share price.