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Investing.com -- Leading investment firm BTIG released its top financial stock picks for the first half of 2026, highlighting companies positioned for growth despite market uncertainties.

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BTIG analysts have identified several standout performers across large-cap and mid-cap financial sectors, with particular emphasis on companies executing strategic acquisitions and leveraging technology to drive growth.

Here’s a closer look at BTIG’s top financial stock recommendations:

1. Capital One Financial Corp. (COF)

BTIG’s large-cap top pick for 1H26 with a price target of $308, representing significant upside from its current $242.36 trading price. Analyst Vincent Caintic believes Capital One is poised to benefit from its Discover acquisition, with rapid revenue synergies expected from shifting debit volume to the Discover Network.

The firm is steadily gaining market share in the premium card space while maintaining advantages in auto lending. BTIG expects Capital One to become more aggressive with share repurchases as the Discover integration progresses.

Capital One Financial reported mixed fourth-quarter 2025 results, with revenue slightly beating forecasts while earnings per share fell short of expectations. Following its acquisition of Brex, several firms, including Evercore ISI and Wolfe Research, lowered their price targets on the company.

2. Enova International, Inc. (ENVA)

Selected as BTIG’s SMID-cap top pick for 1H26 with a $199 price target against its current $157.20 share price. Analyst Vincent Caintic views Enova’s acquisition of Grasshopper Bancorp as transformational, positioning the company to become a leading neobank and fintech.

Despite market skepticism around deal synergies, BTIG expects shares to move higher once the acquisition completes in mid-2026 and as synergies materialize through 2027.

Enova International announced stronger-than-expected earnings for the fourth quarter of 2025, with both its earnings per share and revenue surpassing analyst forecasts.

3. Rocket Companies, Inc. (RKT)

BTIG’s favorite large-cap originator/servicer with a $25 price target compared to its current $19.36 share price. Analyst Eric Hagen cites Rocket’s dominant borrower connectivity, industry-leading origination/servicing alignment, and tech-forward platform as key advantages.

The Mr. Cooper acquisition creates meaningful scale synergies, making Rocket the largest servicer nationally while deepening franchise value.

JPMorgan recently reinstated coverage on Rocket Companies with a Neutral rating, citing the company’s recent acquisitions and expanded strategy as key factors in its analysis.

4. Rithm Capital Corp. (RITM)

BTIG’s SMID-cap top pick with a $16 price target versus its current $10.90 share price. Analyst Eric Hagen highlights Rithm’s diversified earnings drivers, strategic push into asset management, and multiple catalysts that could drive valuation higher.

Recent acquisitions (Paramount Group, Sculptor, Crestline) lay groundwork for significant fee generation and AUM growth, while its 9.2% dividend yield provides income support.

Rithm Capital has expanded its partnership with mortgage technology firm Valon and announced a strategic investment by its subsidiary Newrez into an AI-powered underwriting platform. Additionally, UBS resumed coverage on the company with a Buy rating following its acquisition of Paramount Group.

5. Block, Inc. (XYZ)

BTIG’s large-cap top pick with a $90 price target against its current $65.09 share price. Analyst Andrew Harte sees Block as compelling based on its profitable mid-teens growth driven by Cash App and Square’s deeper penetrations with existing customers.

Management’s 2026 gross profit growth targets were ahead of consensus, and Harte has conviction in Block’s ability to achieve its mid-teens growth targets driven by product innovation and banking product adoption.

In recent developments, Cantor Fitzgerald initiated coverage on Block Inc. with an Overweight rating, while the company announced its Chief Accounting Officer will step down in February 2026.

6. Shift4 Payments, Inc. (FOUR)

Selected as BTIG’s SMID-cap top pick with a $105 price target compared to its current $62.97 share price. Analyst Andrew Harte views Shift4’s current approximately 11% FY26E FCF yield as a compelling entry point given expectations for 15%+ organic growth over the next few years.

Growth is expected from annualization of FY25 wins, net-new customers, cross-sell opportunities, and the Global Blue integration.

Shift4 Payments has launched a stablecoin settlement platform for merchants and received a downgrade to Hold from Buy by Deutsche Bank, which cited concerns about organic growth.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

Investing.com -- Micron Technology Inc (NASDAQ:MU) is benefitting from a severe shortage in memory chips that is pushing DRAM prices to their highest levels since 2019. Phillip Capital initiated coverage on the stock with a Buy rating.

Demand for Micron’s high-bandwidth memory products remains strong, with HBM chips sold out for 2026 alongside those of market leader SK Hynix.

Industry supply constraints, combined with sustained investment in AI infrastructure, are driving pricing upside across DRAM, which should rise sharply in fiscal 2026.

Micron’s HBM3E products are already designed into Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs and AMD’s MI355 GPUs, supporting strong revenue growth.

Phillip Capital highlighted Micron’s next-generation HBM4 as a potential inflection point. The product is expected to ramp in the second quarter of 2026 and offers per-pin speeds of more than 11 gigabits per second, above estimates for competing products. The firm said this could allow Micron to gain share from SK Hynix once volumes scale.

The broader memory market remains tight. DRAM prices have risen for eight consecutive quarters, and both Micron and SK Hynix have said their HBM output is fully committed for next year. While combined capital spending by the two companies rose in late 2025, Phillip Capital expects capex intensity to ease in 2026, particularly for Micron ahead of new fab construction planned for 2027. That dynamic is expected to keep supply constrained and support higher pricing.

Phillip Capital also pointed to strong demand visibility from hyperscalers. Meta and Microsoft have guided to sharp increases in 2026 capital spending to support AI workloads, reinforcing demand for advanced memory.

Micron’s large U.S. manufacturing footprint is seen as an advantage. The company has secured funding and tax incentives under the CHIPS Act, which Phillip Capital said should meaningfully lower long-term costs as new fabs are built.

Phillip Capital set a $500 price target on Micron, based on its fiscal 2026 earnings, citing DRAM pricing strength, tight supply and Micron’s improving position in high-bandwidth memory.

Investing.com -- Wall Street pushed higher on Monday, helped by gains in defensive consumer staple stocks. Market participants shook off a continued selloff in gold and silver and shifted their focus to trade developments after President Donald Trump said he had reached a deal with India. 

At 12:51 ET (17:51 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1% to 49,392.54 points, the S&P 500 index had gained 0.7% to 6,986.15 points, and the NASDAQ Composite had added 0.8% to 23,649.81 points. 

India will stop buying Russian oil

Trump on his Truth Social service said he spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about "many things" including trade and ending the war between Russia and Ukraine.

"He agreed to stop buying Russian Oil, and to buy much more from the United States and, potentially, Venezuela," Trump said, referring to Modi. India’s purchase of Russian oil had been a major sticking point in trade negotiations with the U.S.

Trump also said the two leaders had agreed upon a trade deal under which the U.S. would lower its reciprocal tariff rate to 18% from 25%. In return, India has committed to buy over $500 billion in American products. 

Oil prices did not show much reaction to the news. They were sharply lower on Monday after de-escalation between the U.S. and Iran, as Trump said the Middle East crude producer was "seriously talking" with Washington.

Brent futures dropped 4.4% to $66.28 a barrel and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures fell 4.5% to $62.30 a barrel. 

Meanwhile, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, a group known as OPEC+, left production unchanged during a weekend meeting, as broadly expected. 

No January jobs report

Media reports on Monday said the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics had delayed the January employment report due on Friday, due to the partial government shutdown.

Federal government services were suspended over the weekend after the U.S. Senate passed a temporary five-bill funding package on Friday, but lawmakers in the House are only set to return today.

The shutdown is not expected to be anything like the record one last year, as the House is expected to pass the package.     

Sentiment recovers as February kicks off

Sentiment was hit hard at the end of last week by a steep decline in gold and silver prices, with the precious metals hit by a combination of a firmer dollar and mass profit-taking in the wake of a sharp climb in recent months. 

Spot gold notched its worst day on Friday in decades, while spot silver recorded its worst day on record. 

The nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed chair weighed heavily as it resulted in a sharp rise in the U.S. dollar. While Warsh -- who formerly served as a Fed governor -- has aligned with Trump’s calls for sharply lower interest rates, he has also balked at the Fed’s asset buying operations. 

"During his first go-around as a Fed governor, Warsh was generally a close ally of then-Chair Bernanke and maintained a mostly centrist position heading into the GFC. While he backed the Fed’s move to implement quantitative easing at the time, he was an early skeptic and often leaned more hawkish during the latter part of his time on the Board," JPMorgan analysts led by Michael Feroli said on Friday. 

"After he left, he emerged as a frequent and vocal critic of the Fed, particularly on balance sheet policy. More recently, however, his public remarks have been dovish and broadly aligned with the administration’s monetary policy preferences," the analysts added.

Wall Street ended January with a gain of more than 1%, a solid performance considering the concerns sparked by the Trump administration’s trade and geopolitical moves.

"Markets put in a strong performance in January, as positive data surprises continued to power risk assets, with the S&P 500 briefly poking above 7,000 for the first time. But just as we saw in 2025, those headline gains masked significant volatility under the surface, as geopolitical risk rose significantly, including over Venezuela, Iran and Greenland," Deutsche Bank’s Henry Allen said.  

Walt Disney leads earnings parade

The quarterly earnings season is set to continue in full flow this week, with  entertainment giant Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) earlier Monday beating revenue and earnings estimates for the holiday quarter ended in December, helped by strong results from its theme parks and cruise operations. 

The media and entertainment giant is expected to name a new chief executive to replace Bob Iger early this year. Hollywood executives believe Josh D’Amaro, the chairman of the experiences division, is the front-runner.

More than 100 S&P 500 companies are due to report this week, including tech giants Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL).

Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) earnings update last week, which, while showing continued revenue growth, failed to fully reassure markets about the near-term payoff from heavy investment in AI infrastructure.

Amplifying concerns, a Wall Street Journal report over the weekend said that Nvidia’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) proposed investment of up to $100 billion in OpenAI has stalled after internal concerns were raised at the chipmaker.

Elsewhere, Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) outlined its plans to raise fresh funds in 2026 that it will deploy towards building out its AI and cloud infrastructure, amid growing demand for more computing capacity.

The company said it expects to raise between $45 billion and $50 billion of gross cash proceeds in 2026, through a mix of debt and equity financing.

Ayushman Ojha and Peter Nurse contributed to this article

Investing.com - European stocks closed higher Monday, reversing an earlier decline, even as a selloff in precious metals unnerved investors at the start of a week packed with corporate earnings, central bank meetings and economic data. 

The DAX index in Germany gained 1%, the CAC 40 in France rose 0.7% and the FTSE 100 in the U.K. jumped 1.2%. 

Sentiment hit as precious metals fall further  

Sentiment was initially hard hit Monday by gold and silver extending their sell-off, deepening losses from Friday’s rout as the nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed chair resulted in a sharp rise in the U.S. dollar, prompting investors to take profits, ending a rally that had propelled the precious metals to record highs just days earlier. 

Spot gold has lost just under 4% to $4,701 per ounce on Monday, climbing off its earlier lows. The yellow metal crashed nearly 10% on Friday, the steepest one-day drop in spot gold since 1983. 

Silver, which had surged alongside gold on safe haven demand and speculative inflows, also remained under pressure after last Friday’s 30% slump that saw the metal log its worst day since March 1980.

Adding to the concerns, CME announced it was raising margins on several metals contracts with effect from Monday’s market close, implying some investors are having trouble meeting margin calls and may need to dipose of liquid assets.

Intesa Sanpaolo impresses with 2025 profit

Turning back to the corporate sector, this is set to be another busy week for quarterly earnings, with around 30% of the EuroSTOXX index’s market capitalization scheduled to report results.

Earlier Monday, Intesa Sanpaolo (BIT:ISP) reported a 7.6% rise in 2025 net profit to €9.3 billion, and the Italian bank announced plans to return €8.8 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks, cementing its position as one of Europe’s most profitable lenders.

Swiss bank Julius Baer (SIX:BAER) reported a net profit of CHF764 million for 2025, down 25% from 2024, but slightly above a consensus expectation of CHF679 million francs.

On Wall Street, all eyes this week will be on tech majors Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), particularly as sentiment toward AI-linked shares has deteriorated following results from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), which highlighted rising costs tied to heavy AI investment and raised questions about near-term returns.

German retail sales inch higher 

Data released earlier in the session indicated that German retail sales rose 0.1% in December compared with the previous month, an improvement from the drop of 0.5% seen in the previous month.

Manufacturing activity data for January are expected for the eurozone later in the session, and are expected to show a slight improvement from the previous month while remaining in contraction territory.

Data released on Saturday showed that China’s official manufacturing PMI slipped further below the 50 mark in January, pointing to a contraction in factory activity and highlighting persistent weakness in domestic demand.

Both the European Central Bank and the Bank of England are scheduled to hold policy-setting meetings this week, and both are expected to keep interest rates unchanged.

Crude falls as risk premium retreats

Oil prices fell sharply on Monday as concerns of a U.S. strike on Iran eased, after U.S. President Donald Trump said the Middle East crude producer was "seriously talking" with Washington.

Brent futures dropped 4.7% to $66.06 a barrel and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures fell 5.% to $61.83 a barrel.

Crude prices had risen sharply last week as markets priced in a greater risk of supply disruptions from this key region after Trump had repeatedly threatened Iran with military action over a nuclear deal and ongoing protests in the country. 

However, risks of a military strike receded after Trump’s weekend comments.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, a group known as OPEC+, left production unchanged during a weekend meeting, as broadly expected. 

Investing.com -- Wave Life Sciences Ltd (NASDAQ:WVE) stock rose 2.1% Monday after the clinical-stage biotechnology company announced it has regained full rights to WVE-006, its investigational RNA editing therapy for alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD).

The company said it reached an agreement with GSK to take back control of the AATD program, as Wave is "well placed to efficiently advance" the therapy for this rare condition. Following this development, Wave plans to accelerate its registrational strategy for WVE-006 and engage with the FDA on a potential accelerated approval pathway, with regulatory feedback expected by mid-2026.

WVE-006 is designed as a first-in-class RNA editing therapeutic to correct the root cause of AATD, which affects approximately 200,000 individuals in the U.S. and Europe. The therapy aims to address both lung and liver manifestations of the disease, which currently has limited treatment options.

"We have been eager to accelerate our registrational strategy for WVE-006 since reporting our interim data that achieved key AATD treatment goals in recapitulating the healthier MZ phenotype, including dynamic AAT production of over 20 micromolar during an acute phase response," said Paul Bolno, President and CEO at Wave Life Sciences.

Data from the 400 mg multidose cohort of the ongoing RestorAATion-2 clinical trial are expected in the first quarter of 2026, with additional data from the 600 mg cohort anticipated later in 2026.

Despite this change, Wave’s research collaboration with GSK continues, with GSK selecting a fourth program to advance to development candidate in January 2026. The company maintains its cash runway projection into the third quarter of 2028.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

Investing.com -- Stoneridge, Inc. (NYSE:SRI) stock surged 18% Monday after the company announced it has completed the sale of its Control Devices segment to an affiliate of Center Rock Capital Partners for a base purchase price of $59 million.

The transaction, which closed on January 30, is part of Stoneridge’s strategic initiative to focus on its core growth platforms. The company plans to use the net proceeds to repay debt and strengthen its balance sheet.

"This transaction is a critical step in our long-term strategy," said Jim Zizelman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Stoneridge. "As a result of this transaction, Stoneridge will be more focused and less complex, which in turn, is expected to create stronger shareholder returns and significantly de-risk our overall business profile."

Following the divestiture, Stoneridge will concentrate on technology solutions primarily for global commercial vehicle and off-highway markets across three product categories: Vision and Safety, Connectivity, and Vehicle Intelligence and Electronic Controls.

The company highlighted its plans to expand its Vision and Safety systems, including MirrorEye and adjacent products. Stoneridge also intends to leverage its position within commercial vehicle cockpits to deliver advanced technologies that improve vehicle safety and efficiency.

The company expects to amend its existing credit facility by the time it files its full-year 2025 financial results, which will be discussed in detail during a conference call scheduled for March 12, 2026.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.