How to Trade the Market Resilience. The Investment Committee Shares their Strategy 8/14/26

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**Scott Wapner** (1:00)
I'm Scott Wapner and you're listening to CNBC's Halftime Report, the podcast, the most profitable hour of the trading day. We record this live weekdays at 12 Eastern. Listen in.

**Jon Fortt** (1:16)
Welcome to The Halftime Report. I'm Jon Fortt. In for Scott Wapner. Front and center this hour. What's the market's next move in this record-setting rally? The Investment Committee is standing by with how they're positioned right now and joining me for the hour, Jim Weaventhal, Kevin Simpson and Steve Weiss. Let's get a quick check on the market. All the major averages are just fractionally lower right now, but near record highs. The Russell, I consider that a major sometimes, sometimes not. It's also up fractionally this time, but it's been a heck of a week of data, guys. Jim, especially when I look at the retail sales data today, which came in a bit under, but after we had kind of an encouraging read on CPI, I wonder how all of that feeds through into how you position with your investments.

**Jim Weaventhal** (2:04)
Yeah, so let's talk about that, but first, welcome, Jon. I've been doing this now 13 years, and I think this is the first time we've had the opportunity.

**Jon Fortt** (2:11)
Long time viewer, first time anchor.

**Jim Weaventhal** (2:13)
Okay, well, it's good to have you. Welcome. So, interesting figures today on retail sales, I think even though they disappointed, there's a very cogent explanation, which is online sales was the culprit as far as where the disappointment was. Amazon Prime Day was in June this year. It was in July last year. So that is probably the reason why there was probably some pull forward of online sales into June from July. Further buttressing that argument is Red Book Sales, which measures in-store sales on a weekly basis has been really quite strong for quite some time. So I'm not really worried about retail sales. The CPI, PPI figures, you put this all together and what it says from a macro point of view to me is that the Fed doesn't have to go in September. Now maybe they will. There's still a 30% chance as measured by the Fed Fund's futures market. But I think they're likely to wait.
And I think we can all wait for that matter because we've got Jackson Hole coming up. We've got another round of CPI, PPI. So it's too early to make the call. Nonetheless, I think they're going to wait.

**Jon Fortt** (3:15)
Kevin?
Yeah, I think it's early enough to make the call. I agree that there's very little chance that the Fed's going to be moving at all for the rest of the summer. And I think that the inflation data was really the catalyst for it. And I said last week that if there was no rate hike, that was almost like a rate cut by proxy. And I think the markets responded to that. So if we look at where we are today, we've got the equal weight making new highs. The S&P pushing up against new highs from the broader standpoint. Earnings have been completely off the chart. Inflation is working for us. So I think it's a good setup for the rest of the summer. I don't think the Fed is going to ruin the party, Jon. Now, Steve, I watched it on Halftime to know if anybody is going to disagree, it's going to be you. That's why I saved you for last. So what do you say on this? And I think my question is, is this showing any signs that that working class consumer might be ready to crack? And so do you have to be positioned for that?