What the bands actually show

As of 2026-07-28, seven of the nine core names in the cohort — AEP, D, DUK, SO, ETR, SRE and PCG — sit in strongly bullish bands, several with multi-week-to-multi-month streaks intact. The two bear-band members, NextEra (NEE) and PPL, aren't fresh cracks: NEE has been mild-to-strong bear continuously since mid-June, and PPL has been bear-banded since the same window, including a strongly bearish stretch in early July. That reframes the original downgrade narrative — this is persistent underperformance, not a last-week inflection. NEE's weakness traces to a specific catalyst: its $67B all-stock acquisition of Dominion Energy announced May 18, 2026, which creates the largest US regulated utility around AI-datacenter demand but added dilution and integration risk, sending NEE down roughly 5% in the following week. Dominion itself, the acquisition target, has re-rated up 12.3% over 90 days on its Virginia "Data Center Alley" exposure — the opposite of a shared-thesis failure.

The merchant/IPP leg is where the crack is real and fast. Vistra shares fell 3.3% on July 27 as AI-power names weakened broadly with no fresh company catalyst, though its band has been choppy rather than a clean single break, and VST is down 24% over the trailing year — it is not propping up the cohort's annual return as the hypothesis worried. Clearway is unambiguous: added to a Zacks Strong Sell list after a 112% downward EPS revision, trading near 52-week lows with an RSI near 28.

The load-growth case still has substance

Five-year capex plans keep getting revised up on datacenter demand: AEP's rose to $78B with contracted load doubling to 63 GW, Dominion's to $65B with 10.4 GW under signed energy service agreements in Virginia, and Entergy's from $43B to $57B after a new Meta Louisiana contract. Regulatory structure is de-risking these forecasts — Virginia's GS-5 tariff requires 14-year contracts and $1.5M/MW collateral, while Ohio's PUCO-approved AEP large-load tariff mandates 85% minimum-take over 12 years, part of 24 states now with approved large-load tariffs.

The counterweight: cost allocation and cheap grid

Valuations aren't uniformly cheap anymore (SRE ~34x, ETR ~27-30x versus PCG ~12.6x), and political backlash is intensifying: PJM's board is weighing backstop auctions and data-center curtailment after a supply-short capacity auction, FERC issued show-cause orders to six grid operators over large-load interconnection rules, and a federal Ratepayer Protection Act advanced out of committee amid polling showing 7 in 10 Americans oppose new data-center construction. Virginia has also enacted the first state tax on datacenter electricity use. The load-growth thesis remains structurally sound at the wires level, but the flat month reflects a cohort splitting along regulated-versus-merchant lines rather than one uniformly holding.