Trading the Major Week Ahead: The Investment Committee's Strategy 8/21/26

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
With the Discover Cash Back card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:26)
Trading at Schwab is now powered by Ameritrade, bringing you an expanding library of education with even more ways to sharpen your trading skills. Access new online courses, insightful webcasts, articles, engaging videos, and more. All curated just for traders. Plus, guided learning paths with content designed to fit your unique interests. And no sifting to find exactly what you need so you can spend your time learning to trade brilliantly. Learn more at schwab.com/trading.

**Scott Wapner** (0:54)
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, thanks so much. Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner. Front and center this hour, a down week for stocks, but a very big week ahead as NVIDIA reports. The Fed Chair speaks in Jackson Hole. We game it all out with the Investment Committee. Joining me for the hour, Jenny Harrington, Amy Raskin, Rob Seach, and Josh Brown. Take you to the markets here. Once again, the focus, yes, is on stocks. We are green, but the focus is on rates as well. And we are green, as they say, there too, because yields are back up again. But really, we're turning our eyes towards next week as it plays into everything, how we just started the show, NVIDIA earnings, the Fed Chair speaking, the NASDAQ 100, trying to avoid its sixth straight down day today.
By the way, NVIDIA is having its best month since April. Rob, it's leading the mega caps this year now as well. It's up 16%.
That is the best performance. It has woken up, as they've been saying. And now we head into a really critical week. How do you see it?

**Rob Seach** (2:07)
I mean, to me, NVIDIA is always important, right? And they've continued to deliver again and again and again. But the more important story, at least in the very short run, is the Fed meeting. And in my mind, they really have only a couple choices to do what they want, which is in control of the long end of the curve, neither of which I think are particularly palatable.
They can obviously raise rates to deal with the inflation problem that we see out there. Alternatively, they can control the long end, because they're limited right now in terms of borrowing short, just because of the size of short-term borrowing to buy at the long end. So they can engage in QE, which would also bring that down.

**Scott Wapner** (2:52)
They aren't doing it. There's no Fed meeting next week. It's the speech.

**Rob Seach** (2:55)
I mean, but they can indicate, right? They can indicate, kind of tip their hand is what they're going to do. Oh, hear me out one second. The thing that would save everything is opening the straight, because it relieves the inflationary.

**Scott Wapner** (3:08)
Yeah, of course. Good luck with that. Like in the near term, though, now that you have rates backing up, does the speech, does that form want to put more pressure?

**Rob Seach** (3:19)
100%.

**Scott Wapner** (3:20)
On what happens next week for the near term direction of the market, maybe even more so than NVIDIA or no?

**Rob Seach** (3:26)
I think in the near term direction, yes. But listen, you need both these. This is a two headed monster next week. I fully expect with what's going on in the AI complex, NVIDIA to deliver strong results as they've always have. The question is, where do they indicate the kind of forward expectations are? And they've continued to raise that bar. So I think NVIDIA is a safe bet. I think the Fed communication is something that's uncertain thus far. We're still digesting a new communication style from our new Fed chair.
But it's clear that the administration is wanting to control long term rates.

**Scott Wapner** (4:05)
Yeah, of course. It's as much political as anything else, I think, at this point. So what's, Amy, the bigger event in your mind next week? The speech or the earnings? Because the earnings are Wednesday, the speech is Friday.

**Amy Raskin** (4:16)
They're both big.
I expect, I mean, Nvidia will be huge if it doesn't deliver exactly what people expected to deliver. But I'm not in that camp. I think they're going to say great things. I think they're going to have great numbers. We'll see what the stock, actually, in some ways, I'm more interested in what the stock does rather than what the numbers are. Because that will tell you what people are expecting and how optimistic people are. And that's what we really don't know. The numbers are going to be great.