Steven Cress' Top 2 Stocks H2 2026

Market volatility in H1 2026, driven by inflation, geopolitical risk, and AI CapEx, has created compelling buy-the-dip opportunities for fundamentally strong stocks. The Quant system's Top 10 Strong Buy stocks outperformed, delivering 70% YTD versus S&P 500's 8.3%, with robust historical returns and sector diversification. Steven Cress provides his top 2 stocks for H2 '26.

Steve Cress , Seeking Alpha's Head of Quant, discusses the economic and geopolitical shocks that have shaped the 1st half of 2026, and why it's created buy the dip opportunities (1:30) Why quant? (16:40) Top 2 stocks for H2 '26 (34:00)

Daniel Snyder : Hey, everyone. Welcome to Top Stocks for H2 of 2026. I'm Daniel Snyder from Seeking Alpha, and you're in for a treat today. Now, if you joined us last week for last week's webinar about the review of the Top 10 from January, we know that we had one word, and that was outperformance. Well, hopefully, the word from today on is continuation, and we're going to dive into conversation and get those picks from Steven Cress here in just a moment. But before we do, let's get a quick legal disclaimer out of the way. Past performance is no guarantee for future results. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. The accuracy and completeness of content shared during the event cannot be guaranteed. Content is offered for information purposes only. Analysts, Investing Group leaders, and other third parties participating in the event include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body. Seeking Alpha does not take account of your objectives or financial situation and does not offer any personalized investment advice. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed security dealer, broker, US investment adviser, or investment bank.

And now with that out of the way, this is the best part. I get to introduce you to Steven Cress for all of you that know who he is. Well, he is back. He is the Quant Titan here at Seeking Alpha. So, obviously, we love to pick your brain on the knowledge and see what your thoughts are on the macroeconomic things that are unfolding in the market, how that's affecting the market, what you're seeing within the Quant system because you designed and built it. You know it best, and you can help guide us through these proprietary models that we've created the weighting and how we rate the stocks here today. So, obviously, we have stocks that we're going to get into here in a little bit in the presentation, but I'd love to start off. Can you walk us through what do you see in the macroeconomic world right now?

Steven Cress : Yeah. Well, first and foremost, Daniel, thank you for organizing this event. It's one of my favorite of the year. This event and Top Stocks of January , and we've got a great track record, and I appreciate you organizing it. I think that's a great idea. We'll cover a little bit what we see in the market, the macroeconomic world, what we see with the equity market, and what we have seen, and I'm sure many people have witnessed it and felt it in their own portfolios, is a lot of volatility during the first half of 2026. And it is amazing that the market has hit near all-time highs in June. You could see on this chart, on the right hand side that both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones are near record highs. The Nasdaq hit their record highs in early June, and then technology really did come off sharply. And this is amidst just a lot of uncertainty. We have a war that's going on with Iran. We have inflation that's been very sticky, and that was a result post-pandemic and then tariffs. And then, obviously, wit...