These Are the Four Signs a Company Is About to Destroyed by AI
I found all of them in 12 major stocks. Here’s what to avoid — and where the money is going instead.
Listen to the audio version of this article (generated by AI).
I did some research recently that I can’t stop thinking about.
I went back and studied the companies that AI has already destroyed:
- Chegg Inc. (CHGG)
- Fiverr International Ltd. (FVRR)
- Teleperformance SE (TLPFY)
I looked at what they all had in common — not after the AI trend has destroyed them, but before. When the stock was still holding up and nobody was really worried yet.
I found four specific tells. Four characteristics that showed up, in some combination, in every single company before the fall.
Once I had the framework, I started running it forward and applied it to companies that by most measures look fine today. I found 12 names with multiple tells stacking up right now.
Some of them will upset you. You might own a few of them. Someone you respect probably recommended them.
But here’s the important point.
The same four signals that show me where smart money is quietly leaving also show me where it’s quietly arriving.
Institutional capital doesn’t sit in cash. When it rotates out of one place, it shows up somewhere else. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance.
And right now, the somewhere else that smart money is flowing is getting very interesting.
In today’s piece, let’s take a walk through these three things:
The four tells – the warning signs I found in every AI casualty before the market caught on – and the 12 stocks those signals are flashing on right now.
Where the big money rotation is going right now, with some proof from our own track record to back it up.
A stock that sits directly in the path of that rotation. It’s one of the names where both a big trend and the smart money activity are pointing in the same direction at the same time.
Let’s get into it.
The Four Tells — and the 12 Names
I want to be clear: I didn’t start this research by looking for specific companies. I started by asking what the pattern was. Then I let the pattern find the names.
Here’s what I found.
Tell #1: Coordinated insider selling. Not one executive trimming a position for tax reasons. Multiple senior people selling at the same time, across different titles, in size. When the people who know the business best are quietly getting out together, that’s not a coincidence.
Tell #2: Senior talent leaving for AI companies. Top engineers. Product leads. Salespeople who know where the customers are going. When they start moving to OpenAI, Anthropic, or the hyperscalers, they’re not leaving for the money alone. They’re leaving because they can see the trajectory from the inside.
Tell #3: Pricing model changes. When a software company suddenly pivots from per-seat to consumption-based pricing, they’ll call it “innovation.” It isn’t. It’s a response to AI undercutting their model. Companies that are genuinely winning don’t restructure their pricing under pressure.
Tell #4: CEO denial. This one is almost a perfect inverse signal. The earnings call where the CEO says, “AI cannot disrupt our business — our moat is too wide.” Real moats don’t require that kind of reassurance. When you hear it, pay attention to what’s happening underneath the surface.
The 12 names where I’m seeing multiple tells stack up:
- Salesforce Inc. (CRM)
- Adobe Inc. (ADBE)
- Workday Inc. (WDAY)
- Gartner Inc. (IT)
- Atlassian Corp. (TEAM)
- HubSpot Inc. (HUBS)
- EPAM Systems Inc. (EPAM)
- DXC Technology Co. (DXC)
- Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR)
- ServiceNow Inc. (NOW)
- Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. (CTSH)
- CoStar Group Inc. (CSGP)
I’m not saying they all collapse tomorrow. I’m saying the smart money is repositioning out of them – and historically, price follows positioning. These are names I’m watching carefully, not holding.
The Other Side of the Rotation
The flip side is more interesting.
Everything that AI is dismantling in software is simultaneously creating demand somewhere else. The infrastructure has to exist before the disruption can happen. The hardware. The computing power. The specialized applications that replace what’s being disrupted.
That’s where the smart money is building right now. And one of the clearest areas of concentration I’m tracking is quantum computing.
I know what you’re thinking: Isn’t quantum just the next hype cycle?
Fair question. But let me tell you what the data actually shows—not the hype narrative, but the smart money activity.
The stock I want to share with you today is Quantum Computing Inc. (QUBT).
This is a small-cap company working on quantum hardware, photonics, and cybersecurity applications. It’s speculative. I’ll say that plainly. But there’s a significant difference between speculation with a defined opinion and proof of big money moving in… and speculation on a story alone.
What’s catching my attention in QUBT isn’t the quantum narrative — it’s the activity. Unusual, concentrated positioning building around this ticker at a time when money is rotating hard out of legacy software and into the infrastructure layer underneath it.
QUBT recently reported a sharp jump in revenue following acquisitions tied to photonics and cybersecurity technologies. And the positioning we’re seeing has the same character as names we’ve caught early before.
We saw similar activity in Rigetti Computing Inc. (RGTI) before our trade on it ran 234% in five days . In MP Materials Corp. (MP) before a 700%-plus gain on our bullish trade. In Albemarle Corp. (ALB) before a 959% gain on a lithium trade.
None of those came from following a story or making a prediction. They came from watching where serious money was moving — and following it before the broader market figured out why.
That’s the setup in QUBT today.
Which brings me to what Marc Chaikin and I are doing on May 28.
Marc has spent 60 years in markets. He created the Money Flow indicator — it’s now in Bloomberg terminals and virtually every major trading platform on the planet. For decades he built research tools for the world’s biggest hedge funds, then walked away to give regular investors access to the same analysis.
Marc can tell you where institutional money is flowing. I can tell you where the highest-conviction positioning is building. We both thought those two things were built to work together.
And so, we’ve spent that last few months putting them together to see what happens.
We backtested the combination against nearly 200 of my real trade recommendations. The results surprised even me. Confirmed setups produced 45% higher average gains than unconfirmed ones. Win rate jumped 17 percentage points . And the filter would have kept us out of two-thirds of losing trades .
We’re calling it the Convergence Trigger. And we’re showing it off for the first time ever at a free event on May 28 at 8 p.m. Eastern (save your seat now).
QUBT is one of five stocks where that Convergence Trigger is flashing right now. You’ll get all five when you sign up for the event’s VIP list.
Click here to reserve your spot for our free event.
The rotation is already underway. The question is which side of it you’re on.
The creative trader always wins,
Jonathan Rose
Founder, Masters in Trading
P.S. One thing I appreciate about Jonathan’s approach is that he spends less time trying to predict the future and more time tracking where institutional money is actually moving right now. In markets this volatile, that distinction matters. He and Marc Chaikin are breaking down that process — along with five stocks where their new “Convergence Trigger” is flashing — during a free live event on May 28. You can reserve your seat here.
