On CNBC’s Halftime Report Tuesday, September 22, 2026, Ritholtz Wealth Management CEO Josh Brown flipped the script on the AI trade‘s marquee name. “The narrative shift on Nvidia is it’s boring. 98% earnings growth is boring, according to CNBC. That’s back now at the highs probably about to break out,” Brown told the Investment Committee, pointing to how routine NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction)’s blowout quarters have become for the market.
The fundamentals back him up. NVIDIA’s fiscal Q2 2027, reported August 26, 2026, delivered revenue of $96.22 billion, up 105.85% year over year, with non-GAAP EPS of $2.22 against a $2.09 estimate. Net income reached $59.69 billion and Data Center revenue hit $89.02 billion, up 117%, according to CNBC. Details sit in NVIDIA’s Q2 FY27 8-K.
CEO Jensen Huang framed the setup this way on the call: “AI is now doing productive and useful work. AI is generating profitable tokens.” The company guided Q3 revenue to $108 billion and offered a preliminary fiscal 2028 outlook of roughly 70% growth, which management called supply-constrained.
Meta’s $200 Billion Bet, Reappraised, according to CNBC
Brown paired the NVIDIA point with a shot at consensus on Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META): “The narrative on Meta is they spent 200 billion with a b on AI with nothing to show for it. Not so much anymore.” Meta’s Q2 2026 revenue rose 28% to $60.80 billion, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors “these AI investments are paying off.” Full-year capex guidance was lifted to $130 to $145 billion.
Rent Versus Own on the Mega Caps
Panelist Brian Belski framed the surge as tactical. “This is a rent to own situation within the big cap areas, according to CNBC. They’re renting these names into the end of the quarter. This is a very important quarter. A lot of people have underperformed this quarter. So they’re going to chase up the mag-7 because of the liquidity. The ownership side of it, we still think is the broadening out of the market,” Belski said. Jim Lebenthal added a laggard call: “What about Microsoft? What about Alphabet? Those are two names that, frankly, have not performed well recently. If those get in gear, and I think they will, both based on the fundamentals and their valuation, I think this is setting up for a nice crescendo into year end.”, according to CNBC
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) closed fiscal 2026 with Azure crossing $100 billion in annual revenue and Microsoft 365 Copilot passing 30 million paid seats. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) posted Q2 revenue of $119.80 billion, with Google Cloud accelerating to 82% growth. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) delivered fiscal Q3 revenue of $109.42 billion.
Brown’s Caveat on Concentration
Brown offered the more sobering read on how much index earnings power now sits with the cohort. “The mag-7 blended expected operating earnings as a percentage of everything that we think is coming is so big that it’s almost become the entire story. The s&p 500 is blended forward operating margin is 17%, and nearly half of that is going to come from the mag sevens, according to CNBC. If you strip that out, it goes to 14.5%,” Brown said. That concentration is also why the power, cooling, and networking suppliers feeding the AI buildout keep pulling weight of their own (we profiled seven of them in a free report here).
Where Things Stand This Morning
The Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) traded at $747.41 as of 6:30 AM Eastern on September 23, 2026, down 0.01% premarket, after climbing 6.08% over the past week. The Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF traded at $72.93, up 0.5% premarket and 4.79% on the week. That fund’s price record begins April 2023 at $23.82, a 206.21% run since.
The counterweight is rates. The 10-year Treasury yield sat at 4.96% on September 21, 2026, up 0.22 percentage points from a month earlier and in the 97.6th percentile of its one-year range. The yield touched 5.01% on September 18, 2026 against a February low of 3.97%. Per our editor’s segment, the committee expects yields and WTI to move lower over the next six to twelve months. Their constructive case rests partly on yields easing from near the top of the range, an assumption embedded in the outlook.