American Wolf Future 40 + Watch 10 (2026 Second Half Edition)

For several years, I have been publishing what I call corporate rankings at the start of the new year on X.

At the beginning of this year, I created a list called “40 Companies with Essential Value (Expansion of Irreversible Moats) in the Future 5 Years Ahead”.
This year, although I put the term 'irreversible moat' at the forefront and created it relatively seriously, it was still just a ranking that could not completely escape a sense of entertainment.

This is because I did not verbalize the ranking and intentionally left it to intuition.

However, I realized that this corporate ranking could become a very important investment map, so I spent half a year brushing it up and was able to transform it into a high-precision map.

Every time I re-examined it, I understood things more important than the rankings themselves.Whether I can explain why I chose that company and why I did not, using the same criteria.

Once those criteria were solidified, this became a 'filter' rather than a ranking.

There is no clear difference between 30th and 40th place; it is ultimately just my own discretion. However, between 10th and 30th place, there is an explainable filter.

The value of this list lies not in the order of the 40 companies, but in the reasons for choosing them. Therefore, this time, I will not provide commentary on individual stocks, but will present the filter and place only the seal of judgment.

If necessary, the reader should think deeply.

And there is value in updating this ranking every six months. I need to confirm later how my filter evolves. The goal is to continue correcting my thinking and processes through the discipline of disclosure.

When in doubt, return to this map.


[Future 40] 2026 Second Half Edition

■ Purpose
Future 40 is not a ranking that selects the 'currently best companies.' It is not an investment stock ranking because valuation is not taken into account.
It is a ranking that evaluates companies most likely to continue expanding their 'profit pool' five years from now, based on current evidence.

■ Four Questions
[Question 1] In five years, will this company hold the bottleneck of value creation?
[Question 2] Can it capture a sufficient proportion of the future profit pool?(Just passing through is not enough. Companies that only pass through thinly will fall.)
[Question 3] Does it have a structure to maintain that profit without it leaking to others?(Will it not be collapsed by increased supply, substitution, state intervention, price competition, or open source?)
[Question 4] Will that defensive structure expand further over the next five years?(A moat that is only deep will fall. A moat that does not expand will fall.)

Holding the bottleneck → Profit pool gathers → Creating a structure to defend that profit → Only then does it become an irreversible moat

For answers to the four questions, only 'evidence' observed to date is accepted.I will not include companies in this list based solely on unverified stories. Answers based on future stories are grounds for sending the company to the Watch list, not grounds for inclusion in this list.


1 NVIDIA
2 ASML
3 Alphabet
4 Microsoft
5 TSMC
6 Amazon
7 Synopsys
8 SpaceX
9 Broadcom
10 Cadence

11 Anthropic
12 Meta
13 Intuitive Surgical
14 KLA
15 Visa
16 Huawei
17 OpenAI
18 Apple
19 Palantir
20 ARM

21 RELX
22 Axon
23 Deere
24 Samsara
25 Rubrik
26 Veeva
27 Palo Alto Networks
28 Marvell
29 Tencent
30 Tesla

31 ServiceNow
32 Thomson Reuters
33 Oracle
34 Eli Lilly
35 TempusAI
36 Databricks
37 ByteDance
38 GE Vernova
39 Cloudflare
40 AMD

[Watch 10] With promotion conditions (no ranking, parallel)
One step away from Future 40. Companies where a structure that passes the four questions will emerge if conditions are met.

Mastercard
Wolters Kluwer
Vertiv
CrowdStrike
Alibaba
Lam Research
Caterpillar
Samsung
AppLovin
Anduril

The part of this list that took the most time was not the work of adding, but the work of dropping.
Even if conditions are met, companies that remain dependent on subsidies or have too many competitors do not even make it to the Watch list.

[Bench] One step away from Watch. Audits are complete, but evidence is still forming, or they are rivals to Future 40 stocks. Promotion from here is possible, as is demotion to exclusion.

Advantest
Symbotic
SAP
Snowflake
Cohesity
Xometry
Roblox

[Excluded] Companies that could not satisfy the four questions and lack an irreversible moat

Micron / SK Hynix
Intel / Rapidus
Qualcomm / MediaTek
Teradyne
SMIC / Hua Hong
Coherent / Lumentum
Corning / Fujikura
Nebius / CoreWeave
SoftBank
Unitree / Figure AI / Hyundai
FANUC / Yasukawa / Daifuku
Salesforce / Adobe
Zscaler / OKTA / Datadog / Akamai
BYD / Toyota
Uber
Kubota / Komatsu
Boeing / Lockheed Martin / RTX / Rheinmetall
Planet Labs / Rocket Lab
JPMorgan
PayPal / SoFi / Upstart / Root
Novo Nordisk / Hims & Hers Health
IONQ
OKLO

(Note)
※ This list is not a recommendation for specific stocks. The ranking is an evaluation of corporate structure and is a different layer from investment judgment. Having a high ranking and whether one should buy now are completely different issues.

(Disclaimer)The content of this writing is published for the purpose of organizing and recording the author's personal decision-making, and involves hesitation, reconsideration, revision, and hypothesis updating. Furthermore, the information provided by this writing does not guarantee accuracy, etc. Therefore, as it may not necessarily be appropriate for all readers, when investing, please recognize that investing in stocks involves significant risk and make investments based on your own judgment and responsibility. Note that this does not constitute an solicitation to invest in any financial products or individual stocks, nor does it recommend any investment methods.

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