How Coherent turned a $10,000 AI Portfolio bet into $35,080 in two years
As seen on the 24/7 Wall St. homepage on September 14, 2026.
Two years into Eric Bleeker's AI Portfolio pick, Coherent has turned $10,000 into roughly $35,080, and it survived a 30% drawdown in spring 2025 to get there. Anyone who sold during that slump missed the optical transceiver demand wave that followed.
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Eric Bleeker added Coherent to his AI Portfolio exactly two years ago, and the position has turned a $10,000 stake into roughly $35,080. That kind of compounding is rare in any market environment, let alone one that included a severe mid-journey selloff.
The path was anything but smooth, with the position sinking well below the entry price in spring 2025. Investors who treated that drawdown as a broken thesis and sold would have exited just before the recovery that drove the bulk of the eventual gains.
What followed that low point was a sustained climb to a 250.8% return. The optical transceiver demand wave cited as the catalyst reflects the broader buildout of high-bandwidth data center interconnects that AI infrastructure requires, an area where Coherent is a key supplier.
With the two-year mark now passed, the question any holder faces is whether the demand backdrop that powered the post-2025 recovery remains intact, or whether the stock's sharp run from those lows has already priced in much of the opportunity. The anniversary is a natural point to reassess the thesis.
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Mentioned: COHR