The Best Quarter for Stocks in 6 Years 6/30/26

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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.
Carl, thank you very much. Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner. Front and center this hour, the best quarter for stocks in six years.
What the second half of 2026 is likely to deliver now. Well, that's the committee joining me for the hour today. Joe Terranova, Jim Labanthal, Jason Snife, Josh Brown take you to the markets. Got a pretty nice day. The final one of the month of the quarter. And you can see we are green NASDAQ's leading the way today in what has been, as we say, a great quarter for stocks. Dow up 12%, S&P up 14, NASDAQ up near 20, the Russell 2000 up a little more than 20 What does it mean for, if anything, for what you think the second half might hold?

**Joe Terranova** (1:53)
I think you forgot the most important statistic, and that's Momentum's up greater than 40%.

**Scott Wapner** (1:58)
On track for its best quarter ever. That is- I was gonna bring that up next.

**Joe Terranova** (2:01)
That is my compass for 2026 and for the second half of the year.

**Scott Wapner** (2:04)
Should have brought that up first before I went to you.

**Joe Terranova** (2:07)
I run a strategy that's 50% quality, 50% momentum.
I'm asking myself the question, I'll address it in the second half of the year. Does that relationship need to change? Does it need to be more weighted towards momentum than quality? Because in fact, so far year to date, that's been the case. I think momentum is your guide. I think if you're looking at the S&P equal weight, S&P market cap, and you're trying to pick a winner, I think that's a foolish endeavor. Each of those indexes are rewarding you so far year to date. It's vacillating between which one steps forward and takes the leadership. It's been about semiconductors for sure. Software has struggled, but there are areas of software that have worked like Datadog.

**Scott Wapner** (2:46)
Hang on two second. Let's do... So we got the broader view of momentum for the quarter, which as we said, is best quarter ever. But throw up now a one month for the MTUM, because I feel like this is a pretty good debate to have on what you think is going to happen in the second half, because we've been questioning what moment... Look at that, a little more choppy.

**Joe Terranova** (3:06)
Little more choppy.

**Scott Wapner** (3:07)
A little more volatile. Leaves the open question of, is it going to be a momentum led market in the second half or not? I think, man, that matters a lot for people's investment strategies over the next handful of months.

**Joe Terranova** (3:20)
So I still believe that it will be.
I think a lot of the reasoning why momentum has trailed in the month of June is related to the MAG-7. Keep in mind, you're looking at the MAG-7 for the month of June. Each one of those is down. But yet, collectively, when you look at them on the year, only Meta is really the name that's down. Alphabet, Nvidia, Apple, all rivaling the performance that we're seeing in S&P.

**Scott Wapner** (3:45)
They're all down over one month.

**Joe Terranova** (3:47)
One month.

**Scott Wapner** (3:47)
It mirrors what we're seeing here.

**Joe Terranova** (3:49)
Correct.

**Scott Wapner** (3:49)
That's the reasoning. An unraveling or unwinding of momentum.

**Joe Terranova** (3:53)
Or maybe.

**Scott Wapner** (3:55)
In some respects.

**Joe Terranova** (3:56)
Or maybe just a-

**Scott Wapner** (3:57)
Questioning of.

**Joe Terranova** (3:58)
Maybe a correction that kind of alleviates some of the extreme bullishness and positioning.

**Scott Wapner** (4:04)
Okay. What do you think?