Buy Hold Sell: A mega Mag 7 special

It's fair to say the world's biggest stocks are quietly putting the "magnificent" back in their Mag 7 moniker.

Against the backdrop of an ever-escalating AI arms race, the Mag 7 are posting record revenues and record capex, but which ones are well-placed for this brave new world, and which could fall behind?

In this bumper Mag 7 special of Buy Hold Sell, I'm joined by Alan Pullen from Magellan Investment Partners and Joseph Ziller from Ziller Funds Management to give big calls on the biggest companies in the world. 

Please note this video was filmed on 20 August 2026.

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Episode Summary

Here's a summary of all the stock calls, key verdicts and choice quotes. If you want the full transcript, you can download it via the link at the bottom of the wire. 

1 - Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL)

Joe Ziller's rating: SELL

His verdict: Done well despite refusing to play on AI, but now a bit too expensive

What he said: "Apple pays Google about a billion a year to use their models in Apple's Siri. Google's spending 10 to 100X that in building their AI. So to date, you've had the experience where you've had a little bit of a capital light AI play there with Apple, but at 30 times earnings and high teens growth compared to that, it's a little bit high for us."

Alan Pullen's rating: HOLD

His verdict: A fantastic company priced accordingly

What he said: "Apple is not going anywhere. As we move to on-app intelligence, they'll be a fast follower. As they always are, they adapt the technology. Once it's ready, they implement it. People aren't replacing their phones. So there's a future growth path for them, but it's priced in At 35 times earnings, it's priced in to be successful down the track." 

2 - Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)

Alan Pullen's rating: BUY

His verdict: An attractive valuation alongside huge revenue growth 

What he said: "Microsoft is one of the best positioned companies in AI. Notwithstanding really strong performance recently after its earnings, it upgraded the public cloud growth rates well into the 40%, predicting more growth ahead, accelerating to 45% into Q3. So they are benefiting today from the adoption of AI by enterprises and they're best placed going forward to continue to drive revenue growth from that adoption phase of AI."

Joe Ziller's rating: HOLD

His verdict: Great numbers but no longer much value on offer

What he said: "Microsoft just has extremely strong distribution and is extremely well placed for the world of AI. You've got Azure with the compute, Microsoft 365 with the seat, and then CoPilot, the AI, just adding value to each seat. A great reinforcing situation there. In terms of price, we just would've loved to own it in the SaaSpocalypse lows when there was a lot more fear around these software businesses." 

3 - Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA)

Joe Ziller's rating: BUY

His verdict: A brilliant founder and chips well suited for the next era of AI

What he said: "With the custom chips, we think the market's got it a little bit wrong here. The next wave of compute of AI is agentic - do this, get that, then do this, then do that. The custom chips are really good at single model, single tasks. NVIDIA chips are fantastic at messy, unpredictable tasks. So they're really well suited for this next era of AI."

"Jensen, the founder, he's just had a fantastic track record of, if you will, skating to where the puck is going with compute and building the system that is required for the next wave of each compute. He's done it again and again and again. So it's someone that we love to align with here and on 20 times earnings growing above 40% per annum. It's as cheap as it's been for quite a while."

Alan Pullen's rating: SELL

His verdict: Gone from monopoly position to stiff competition

What he said: "Going from a monopoly position or near-monopoly to a really crowded field, there's going to be plenty of demand, but their share of it's highly uncertain. And the margins - they're going down. So just a wide range of outcomes one would have to avoid."

4 - Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN)

Alan Pullen's rating: BUY

His verdict: Making big strides on cloud and AI growth

What he said: "They're really well placed as we see adoption again continue to accelerate revenue growth further. 30% revenue growth, mid-20s, slightly higher than that PE - very acceptable for that kind of growth. And the retail business is kicking goals as well."

Joe Ziller's rating: BUY

His verdict: Great compounding revenue drivers

What he said: "Three great compounding machines with retail, that repetition of consumer habit and logistics density, advertising, just monetising that at high margin. And then the AI data centre infrastructure play with AWS."

5 - Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL)

Joe Ziller's rating: HOLD

His verdict: A misunderstood AI incumbent but losing talent

What he said: "Google started with what seemed like an insurmountable lead of AI talent. Over the years, there's been a worrying amount of outflow of talent. Sergei, the co-founder, came back to help with this, to help improve the models. His commute to work looks a bit different now, but he's back, which is the important thing. So if we see more signs that he can stem this loss, then we'd be more interested than a hold."

Alan Pullen's rating: BUY

His verdict: Strong businesses and well-placed in the AI arms race ebb and flow 

What he said: "We think they've got the full stack approach to remain right at that leading edge. When you think about the TPU chips, some of the best chips for AI inferencing and workloads going forward. You've got the Google Cloud platform, which is accelerating. You've got the search business."

"They're the incumbent. They're going to be able to lead that change and take people along that journey.

6 - Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META)

Alan Pullen's rating: BUY

His verdict: A value play that has room to improve on AI monetisation

What he said: "This is outright cheap. It's like 17-18 times forward earnings as the market is concerned by their AI spending effectively. Either they get some good earnings off it, either by renting it out or building products themselves, or they stop spending the money. And you're actually looking at a company that's on a low teens multiple that did almost 30% revenue growth in their core business last year."

Joe Ziller's rating: HOLD

His verdict: Effectively monetising AI through its ad platform, but concerns on capex

What he said: "What we really like about Meta is it's one of the few very visible now AI use cases that are happening. Meta's monetising it now, essentially through their ad recommendation engine on Instagram, Facebook. There is a huge use case here in improving that, improving targeting, improving tools for advertisers. So we really like that aspect to Meta. What we're maybe a little bit more concerned about than Alan is the amount of CapEx being spent in excess of that."

7 - Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA)

Joe Ziller's rating: BUY

His verdict: A contrarian long-term bet on automated taxis 

What he said: "Elon Musk - one of the great builders of our time, what we've found with these founders is that they go through periods where they make large, active, long-term bets where it pays as shareholders to be patient."

"Who will win this physical AI market? We think you need to be good at AI. So Google with Waymo, Tesla with theirs. You need to have the data, the real world miles data. Tesla has an advantage - 50 times the data versus Waymo, and you have to be good at manufacturing. You need a low cost base for this platform. Tesla has the advantage there. The net of all that is that we estimate Tesla's taxi network will be running at a 50 cent per mile cost, about half their main competitor, Waymo, and significantly less than the $2 per ride share from Uber."

"So when you stitch together those economics with a bit of patience over maybe a five-year period, we think it goes from looking expensive headline now to looking cheap quite quickly."

Alan Pullen's rating: SELL

His verdict: Too much that could go wrong long-term 

What he said: "It's just too uncertain for us. They are behind in autonomy. They're behind the Chinese. So they're definitely behind Waymo in the US. They've got a CEO who's done some amazing things. So I absolutely acknowledge that, but he's currently pretty distracted focusing on rockets and putting data centres in space." 

"And you've got more than a hundred times current earnings and your current earnings are being taken out by the Chinese in terms of EVs flooding the market. So you could rely on Musk to pull a rabbit out of the hat, but that's not what we're doing."