Trading Ahead of the Apple iPhone Event & the CPI Report 9/8/26

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Scott Wapner (1:01)

Carl, thank you. Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner. Front and center this hour, the big week for stocks and key inflation data is looming. Apple's iPhone event is taking place tomorrow. We discuss and debate the markets with the Investment Committee. Joining me for the hour, Joe Terranova, Jim Laventhal, Brian Felsky. We're read across the board. You know the story by now. Oil's up WTI highest since June. The global energy ETF is at an all-time high. Goldman's talking about $120 a barrel if things intensify in the Middle East. Labor Day talk dominated by a record high for gasoline above four bucks.

Yields are up.

CPI is looming. We'll get to Apple in a moment. 60% chance in the market of a 25 basis point hike. So that's kind of the stuff that's gonna be in your face this week, right?

Joe Terranova (1:48)

It is. Pushing up against very strong, very strong tailwinds. And those are the earnings, right? The earnings really have been spectacular. I don't know, I feel pretty good today.

The momentum factor, which we identified last week, is kind of being washed out. It's actually rebounding today. I've got the semis up. I have optical up. I've got the infrastructure higher. The weakness today, to me, it's attributable to Amgen. Amgen's 5% of the Dow.

Amgen's down 9%. We'll get into the reasoning behind that later. But I feel pretty good about the fact that momentum seems to have found a little bit of a temporary bottom. And if the market wants to rotate here, wants to move away from where we kind of held serve and financials and healthcare, and go back into that momentum AI trade, I think the market will be comfortable with that.

Scott Wapner (2:37)

Comfortable unless, you know, unless oil gets away from you.

Less yields get away from you. 10 days from the Fed meeting, unless that sort of gets away from you. And what is a 60% chance in the market, I don't know that people really believe that it's that high. I'm sure you probably don't, nor does probably anybody sitting on this desk today, but that's gonna be dominating the narrative as we figure out what to do from here to there and see what happens in the markets, Middle East and everywhere else.

Brian Belsky (3:08)

I like the term that Joe said about holding serve, not just because of the US Open, but it really makes a lot of sense because we're in this vacuum of no news from a fundamental perspective. Earnings clearly are the key. We don't know what the Fed's gonna do, but we kind of know what the Fed's gonna do. They're not gonna cut. And we'll see what happens.

They're definitely not gonna cut. Thank you. They're not gonna hike.

Scott Wapner (3:32)

You're wrong, but you're right.

Brian Belsky (3:36)

You know what's really interesting? You take two steps back, and you look at all the macro stuff throwing your way. You get higher oil prices, you get higher bond yields.

Why are small caps still doing so well? You would have never thought that. Well, I think it's because of fundamentals, because of earnings. They were really the first earnings driver in the price of free cash flow driver that has really been the fundamental backing of these small caps. And now, the revival of the MAG-7 and we're going into Apple tomorrow. It's set up perfectly to again outperform. And so we're very positive on the market near term.

Scott Wapner (4:04)

That's a good point that, you know, Brian brings up what we were discussing last week quite heavily, the resurgence of the MAG-7.

We'll show you the chart again over the last six months to make the point that Mike Santoli was making on Friday morning, which set up our entire conversation jump off. The fact that the MAG-7 had underperformed the S&P by a fairly good amount over June and July. You can see the blue dip low, right? And the orange line is the S&P 500 That gap narrowing and then to the point where they're basically even. MAG-7 doesn't have to outperform the S&P 500 to make this point. It's merely the fact that was a very uneven trade for a good period of time has corrected itself. And these stocks have come back, the biggest in the market. We'll get to Apple in a minute, but that's been a trend worth watching.