Nuclear Renaissance
Nuclear as the scarce clean-firm answer to AI power demand: hyperscaler PPAs and restarts repricing the operating fleet, SMR developers racing to first concrete, and a fuel cycle being onshored after decades of Russian dependence. Overlap with power-grid is deliberate — this basket isolates the nuclear-specific leg: merchant fleet operators, reactor OEMs, enrichment and uranium, and instrumentation.
Performance
Follow the theme against the wider market.
Series before each basket's creation date are a backtest of the membership as of creation; live tracking starts at creation.
| Return | 1 day | 5 days | 20 days | 60 days | MTD | YTD | 1 year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basket | +2.1% | +5.2% | +2.4% | +9.1% | +5.7% | +4.5% | +6.7% |
| vs S&P 500 | +2.5% | +5.1% | +2.7% | +2.6% | +5.2% | -7.7% | -10.7% |
Inside the basket · 4 stocks
Current members and the reasoning behind each inclusion. Returns are for individual stocks.
| Why it’s included | Added | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CEG | Largest US fleet; the Microsoft Crane restart PPA is the sector's repricing event | +4.9% | +8.0% | +10.9% | -15.0% | 2026-07-21 |
| VST | Second-largest competitive fleet (Energy Harbor deal) levered to data-center PPAs | +3.5% | +8.9% | +6.2% | -7.2% | 2026-07-21 |
| PEG | The regulated exception: PSEG's merchant generation is essentially the Salem/Hope Creek nuclear fleet | -0.2% | +0.7% | -2.6% | -6.7% | 2026-07-21 |
| GEV | BWRX-300 SMR order book via GE Hitachi on top of the grid-equipment franchise | +0.0% | +3.3% | -4.9% | +44.4% | 2026-07-21 |
Partial price histories: CEG from 2022-01-19, GEV from 2024-03-27.
How this basket is built
Equal-weighted, monthly-rebalanced, buy-and-hold between rebalances; dated membership changes take effect same-day.
Tracked since 2026-07-21. Membership decisions are documented below.
Read the methodology →Reading the returns
Basket returns include dividends. “vs S&P 500” compares the basket’s compounded growth with the benchmark’s. Green means positive; red means negative.
Cross-checked against NLR. Daily return correlation: 0.62 across 1153 sessions. operators, OEMs and fuel in one fund; includes foreign listings (Cameco, Kepco) outside our US-only universes
Membership history & changes
- create
Initial composition: 13 names — merchant fleets (CEG, VST, TLN, plus PEG as the nuclear-concentrated regulated exception), OEM and developers (GEV, BWXT, OKLO, SMR, NNE), fuel cycle (LEU, UEC, UUUU) and instrumentation (MIR). Reference pinned to NLR. Considered and excluded: CCJ and the foreign fuel majors (non-US-domiciled, outside the FW 3000), the private developers everyone actually watches (X-energy, TerraPower, Kairos, Westinghouse), regulated utilities with fleets buried in rate base (D, DUK, SO, ETR — no merchant leverage to nuclear scarcity), and pre-revenue fuel tech (LTBR, ASPI — NNE already carries the speculative leg).