In this article, we present the Top 10 Stock Picks of 2026 from Kevin O’Leary’s Portfolio.
Kevin O’Leary’s public investing persona has long leaned toward businesses with cash generation, shareholder returns, and financial discipline rather than high-risk growth stories. That focus is relevant in 2026, as investors continue to balance enthusiasm around artificial intelligence and resilient U.S. corporate earnings against uncertainty tied to interest rates, tariffs, geopolitics, and valuation risk. S&P Global Market Intelligence noted that U.S. dividends are expected to continue expanding in 2026, even as market conditions remain shaped by Federal Reserve policy, trade tensions, the AI investment cycle, and broader macroeconomic uncertainty.
The clearest public window into O’Leary’s stock-investing framework comes through the O’Shares-linked ETF universe rather than a fully disclosed personal brokerage account. O’Shares says it provides indexes for several U.S.-listed ETFs, while ALPS describes the O’Shares U.S. Quality Dividend ETF as a portfolio built around large- and mid-cap U.S. companies with quality, low-volatility, and dividend-growth characteristics. That makes the portfolio a useful proxy for investors looking at the kind of mature, cash-generating companies associated with O’Leary’s style.
Bornfree / Shutterstock.com
Methodology
For this article, we used the O’Shares U.S. Quality Dividend ETF as a public proxy for Kevin O’Leary’s stock-investing framework and selected the ETF’s top holdings by portfolio weight as of June 17, 2026.
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).
10. Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK)
Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) is one of Kevin O’Leary’s top stock picks for 2026 through the O’Shares U.S. Quality Dividend ETF. The stock made up 2.91% of the ETF as of June 17, 2026. On June 12, 2026, Merck said the US FDA approved KEYTRUDA and the easier-to-administer KEYTRUDA QLEX, each with WELIREG, for certain kidney cancer patients who have undergone surgery and still face a higher risk of the cancer returning.
For investors, the approval gives Merck another approved use around KEYTRUDA, its flagship cancer drug, while also building WELIREG beyond later-stage treatment. The decision was supported by a late-stage trial of 1,841 patients. In other terms, patients receiving WELIREG with KEYTRUDA were less likely to see their cancer come back, spread, or lead to death than patients receiving KEYTRUDA with a placebo. Merck said the combination reduced that risk by 28%, with 81% of patients alive without disease recurrence at 24 months, compared with 74% in the control group.
Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) is a global pharmaceutical company known as MSD outside the United States and Canada. The company develops medicines and vaccines across oncology, infectious diseases, cardiometabolic disease, immunology, neuroscience, and animal health.
9. McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE:MCD)
McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE:MCD) is one of Kevin O’Leary’s top stock picks for 2026 through the O’Shares U.S. Quality Dividend ETF. The stock made up 3.53% of the ETF as of June 17, 2026. On June 1, 2026, McDonald’s introduced McDonald’s > NEXT, a new systemwide strategy aimed at driving growth and restaurant productivity. The company said the plan is built around making McDonald’s the customer’s first choice more often, with a focus on better taste and quality, co-creating with fans, improving restaurant experiences, and raising hospitality standards as more of the ordering process becomes automated.
Reuters reported that the strategy also includes more automation, stronger social media marketing, and an effort to make stores easier to run, with more financial details expected at a September investor event. The update fits McDonald’s push to protect traffic and franchise economics while customers remain sensitive to value after several years of higher food prices globally.
McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE:MCD) is a global foodservice company with restaurants in more than 100 countries. The company operates through a heavily franchised model, with most restaurants owned and operated by independent local business owners.
Hedge Fund Resource Center