Trading the Tech Surge: Your Next Move 8/7/26

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**Scott Wapner** (1:00)
All right, guys, thanks so much. Welcome to the Halftime Report. I'm Scott Wapner, front and center of this hour. The tech surge, NASDAQ pacing for its best week since mid-April. Big gains from the mega cabs, semis, and some software blowouts to talk about today. We'll trade all of it with the Investment Committee. Joining me for the hour, Stephanie Link, Jenny Harrington, Kevin Simpson, and Brent Talkington. Take you to the markets, show you exactly what we're doing 12 noon.
In the east, there's the NASDAQ, one and a quarter percent leading the way today on this nice tech rebound. Stocks up, jobs miss, doesn't matter. Yields down, market feeling okay with, I think, where things currently are. Another firm, Steph, has turned bullish even more so on stocks. CFRA goes to 80.50. They were at 7,400. Target got blown by, obviously. They see 86.5 next year. Tom Lee says could get 8,000 in August. Stephanie Link's been, I think, pretty bullish too.
So, what do you think?

**Stephanie Link** (1:55)
I think we're kind of close to Goldilocks. I know, kind of close. We're not there, exactly. The non-farm payroll report wasn't great.

**Scott Wapner** (2:03)
Nor was last month's, right?

**SPEAKER_2** (2:04)
I mean, keep this into perspective.

**Stephanie Link** (2:06)
Nor were the last three. The three-month average is now at 20,000 jobs per month versus 77,000 before. So, mainly though, it is the public side, not the private side. Number one, the Goldilocks piece of this is that the inflation report, the average hourly earnings, is actually slowing. 3.2% this go-round versus 3.4% last. But when you add that with yesterday's unit labor costs that were much lower than expected, in addition to higher productivity, which was higher than expected, that's good overall for inflation, good overall for the Fed, probably good for Warsh and why he didn't raise. And I don't think they're going to raise between now and the end of the year because I think productivity is the story.
And if we get a resolution on the war, that's icing on the cake. But the productivity is the important part. And Scott, the productivity grew last quarter 1.7%, but we're not even close to the peaks of productivity that we saw in the 50s and the 60s, which was closer to four to 5%.

**Scott Wapner** (3:08)
Spin that to the market then.

**Stephanie Link** (3:09)
Productivity helps on the inflation front.

**Scott Wapner** (3:11)
80,000, I mean 80,000. 8,000 on the S&P, higher than that, sounds all reasonable.
Let me finish, let me finish.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:19)
I want to get away from the macro jobs stuff.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:21)
I want to get to the stock market.

**Stephanie Link** (3:22)
I'm talking about the inflation because we've all been obsessed about inflation and jobs and everything else. So then you fast forward to the growth in the economy that we saw this week, ISM services, manufacturing, four-year highs, Chicago Fed, et cetera. So you have growth, and maybe inflation getting an improvement, and that is leading to 48% earnings growth, 15% revenue growth, 250 basis points of gross margin expansion year over year for the S&P 500 And the equal weight is actually outperforming the market weight. We've been talking about that all year long. So it is broadening out, and that's why it's kind of like Goldilocks.

**Jenny Harrington** (3:57)
Okay.

**Scott Wapner** (3:59)
Jenny Harrington.

**Jenny Harrington** (4:00)
Yeah. What do you think? So I think- What do you think? I like the way Steph said that we're near Goldilocks, but we're not quite there yet. And my struggle continues to be flushing out the near term and the longer term. Because to your point, productivity is extraordinary. It's extraordinary for corporate earnings, and we aren't even seeing the best of it yet, probably. What if productivity becomes so great, and maybe these jobs numbers that we just saw are just the beginning of something? And what if there is ultimately job loss? And what if there is pressure on the consumer? And what if that ultimately pressures consumer spending, which is a huge percent of GDP?