The first half of 2026 in the US markets confirmed that investors are willing to see geopolitical uncertainty and the aggressive stance of the new Fed boss Kevin Warsh if corporate profits show strong growth. While the market has undergone a rotation from the big technology names to the hardware manufacturers, the overall balance of the main indexes remains strongly positive. Performance index: Mal companies take a surprising turn The most surprising thing of the summer half-year was the return of a small title. Russell 2000: This index of small companies became the absolute leader with a gain of 22%, which signals strong interest in this market segment. Nasdaq 100: The technology barometer recorded a whopping 20%, confirming the unceasing dominance of innovative companies. The Nasdaq Composite alone rose by 12.8%. S&P 500: The index of the largest companies rose 14% in just two quarters, its best second-quarter performance in six years. He thus erased the losses of the year, scoring 9.5% this year. DJIA: The Preston index saw Alphabet share a new len at the end of the six months. Every day in the first half of the year, it rose by 8.9%, which was the best year since 2021. Five years ago, the index even jumped by 12.7%. Q&A: ipy drt software Investing in the AI industry will be a major change this year. While two large platforms (so-called Mag 7) dominated the market, now they invest more heavily in the forks and shovels of the entire ecosystem, i.e. in hardware and infrastructure. Half-year stars: The best-performing stocks in the S&P 500 were the companies swapped for ipy and loit. SanDisk dominated (for the second year in a row), this time with an extreme year-on-year shift of 858%, followed by Micron (+304%), Intel (+278%) and Western Digital (+271%). According to Seagate and Marvell, profits of up to 250% were made. Poraen: On the other side, there are companies that could replace AI. Intuit (-61%) fared the worst. Software giants such as Adobe, Salesforce and Workday also suffered heavy losses, around 40%. Historic record on the Nasdaq: transactions worth 7 billion crowns in about half an hour Friday, June 26, 2026, when the half-yearly rebalancing of the Russell index took place, was absolutely unique. In the so-called Nasdaq Closing Cross, a new historical trading record was created. In just 1.63 seconds, a record 4.59 billion shares worth 334.027 billion USD (dog 7 billion K) were traded. This massive capital increase went smoothly and confirmed the resilience of the American market infrastructure even in the face of extreme liquidity. The transaction completely broke the Polish record, when only 2.5 billion shares were traded for barely 102.5 billion USD. SpaceX’s entry into the Nasdaq-100 index As a symbolic departure from the end of the first half of the year, it was announced on Friday that Wall Street will soon become part of the prestigious Nasdaq-100 index. Prior to the opening of the market on Tuesday, January 7, 2026, the company Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) will replace the pharmaceutical company Moderna. The entry of SpaceX (SPCX), which recently supercharged the markets with its voluminous record IPO, is seen as a confirmation of a new era of investment, where the global industry and the development of technology will be at the forefront. The first half of the year showed that the market has become a selective investment, not paying for the mere promise of AI, but looking for real profits in infrastructure and hardware. The second half of the year will thus be a critical test of whether this new group of leaders will be able to beat the pace of the entire market. The result session will start the tradition on Wall Street with bank reports on Tuesday, the 14th.
Ji Zendulka
In the field of finance, he has been active since the purchase of privatization, i.e. 30 years. He worked in various positions at a trading company with valuable peppers, in order to subsequently establish himself as an analyst. He presents the long-term vision of the world in social media. It professes the traditional values of capitalism, or on the contrary, he is a critic of non-standard interventions in the economy by governments and central banks.