In this article, we will discuss: 15 Best Stocks to Buy for the Second Half of 2026.
On June 30, Reuters reported that US stocks will face many tests in the second half of 2026, even though the S&P 500 has increased more than 8% and the Nasdaq has gained 11% this year. According to Reuters, investors will be closely watching whether AI infrastructure spending is sustainable. JPMorgan forecasts that five businesses will spend approximately $730 billion on capital expenditures this year. Nicolas Janvier of Columbia Threadneedle Investments says markets have already priced in continued AI spending. Meanwhile, Garrett Melson of Natixis Investment Managers Solutions warns that crowded positioning may amplify any disappointment.
Reuters noted investors anticipate solid corporate profitability, with LSEG IBES expecting S&P 500 earnings growth of more than 26% in 2026. According to David Bianco of DWS, markets want companies to deliver those expectations without excuses. Reuters added that investors will watch Federal Reserve policy under Chairman Kevin Warsh, anticipate major IPOs, and the November midterm elections. CFRA noted an average 18% intra-year S&P 500 drop during midterm years.
With that said, here are the 15 Best Stocks to Buy for the Second Half of 2026.
Photo by osamu nakazawa on Unsplash
Methodology:
We used the stock screeners to identify the Stocks to Buy for the Second Half of 2026 that have reported earnings beats and have a YTD return of over 50% as of 1 July 2026. We limited our final selection to companies that have recently reported noteworthy developments likely to impact investor sentiment. We then identified those with the highest number of hedge fund holders, which we assessed using Insider Monkey’s database of hedge funds as of Q1 2026. The stocks are ranked in ascending order of the number of hedge fund holders.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Insider Monkey’s quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 599.2% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 372 percentage points (see more details here).
15. MaxLinear, Inc. (NASDAQ:MXL)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 27
Year-to-date return: 507.19%
MaxLinear, Inc. (NASDAQ:MXL) is among the Best Stocks To Buy.
On June 3, MaxLinear, Inc. (NASDAQ:MXL) and Los Alamos National Laboratory announced a collaboration to develop OpenZFS storage for large-scale high-performance computing environments. The firm said the architecture is designed to improve performance and storage capacity for next-generation NVMe flash infrastructure.
Senior director for Computing Technologies at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Gary Grider, said MaxLinear, Inc. (NASDAQ:MXL) showed hardware-offloaded ZFS operations delivering about 39 times faster writes and 7 times faster reads, reducing host CPU involvement. It preserves ZFS data protection.
Vikas Choudhary, MaxLinear, Inc. (NASDAQ:MXL)’s executive vice president of Connectivity and Storage, said the firm’s Panther storage accelerators provide data compression, protection services, and multi-hundred-gigabit scalability. It also maintains ZFS data integrity. The companies said the platform achieved 57 GB/s read and 47 GB/s write bandwidth using GZIP L9 compression and supports further scaling.
As of July 1, the stock is up by 507.19% year-to-date.
MaxLinear, Inc. (NASDAQ:MXL) works in the provision of communications systems-on-chip solutions used in broadband, mobile, and wireline infrastructure, data center, and industrial and multi-market applications.
14. Generac Holdings Inc. (NYSE:GNRC)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 66
Year-to-date return: 91.51%
On June 30, Barclays raised its price target on Generac Holdings Inc. (NYSE:GNRC) to $285 from $228. The firm maintained an “Equal Weight” rating. The analyst Christine Cho said the corporation has moved from validation to execution following its first hyperscaler contract. Cho told investors Generac has $1 billion in expected 2027 data center revenue and has turned its focus toward securing more contracts and expanding production capacity.
On June 15, Generac Holdings Inc. (NYSE: GNRC) announced the acquisition of a facility in Belvidere, Illinois. The firm reported the investment will scale up packaging capacity for large megawatt generators as demand rises from data centers and other mission-critical applications. Executive vice president and president of Domestic C&I Erik Wilde said expanding capacity is essential as demand for backup power continues to grow. Generac said the site will complement its Enercon Engineering acquisition. It will create more than 100 jobs and begin operations in Q1 of 2027.
Generac Holdings Inc. (NYSE:GNRC) works in the business of designing and manufacturing energy technology solutions. It works under the Domestic and International segments.
