Halftime Report · Nov 6, 2026 · 44m · 39m saved
With Jim Lebenthal, Chief Market Strategist at Cerity Partners · Brian Belski, Founder, CEO & CIO of Humilis Investment Strategies
Photo via humilisinvestmentstrategies.com
Halftime Report anchor Scott Wapner opened the Investment Committee segment by citing a Charles Schwab note showing the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index's 2026 gain cut from 106.6% in mid-June to 27.2% by Thursday's close, with Micron and AMD both down more than 17% in a single session and Nvidia down 9.5%, briefly negative for the year.
Three cautious strategist notes were already circulating that morning, from Wells Fargo's Chris Harvey, from Mike Wilson and from UBS, all arguing the selloff wasn't finished. Jim Lebenthal, chief market strategist at Cerity Partners, told Scott the bigger story had already played out.
"Yesterday's declines in Micron and in Nvidia were breathtaking, certainly, but they were — and may be — the final throes of a correction, more than a correction, a bear market in those semiconductors." — Jim Lebenthal
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it. 44 minutes of audio, 5 minutes of reading.
Here are the 4 calls that matter.
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Key Takeaways
Forced hedge-fund deleveraging, not fear, drove Thursday's selloff, Jim Lebenthal says
Well-known funds down big since October unwound positions or shut down, producing "a deluge of selling"
New Democratic state governments will slow the AI data-center buildout, Jim says, but won't stop it
Halting it outright would risk recession and job losses
Nvidia trades near 14 times forward earnings and Micron near 4 times, multiples Jim calls "far too negative"
Brian Belski says Thursday's "catch-down" may not be finished
Downside-to-upside volume ran 5-to-1, short of the 8-to-1 or 10-to-1 ratio that typically signals exhaustion
1. Political Risk Won't Stop It
Jim split Thursday's selloff into two distinct problems. The first is political.
New Democratic state governments will slow the AI buildout, Jim says, not stop it
"There were legitimate concerns — I'm not going to call them fears — about what new Democratic governors and state legislatures will do to slow down the AI data center buildout, and they will slow it down." — Jim Lebenthal
Stopping construction outright is unlikely, Jim said, since doing so would risk pushing the economy into recession, costing jobs and gutting the tax base of the same newly elected officials. That calculus hands hyperscalers political cover to slow capital spending without admitting doubt about the buildout themselves, curing what he called their "prisoner's dilemma" over who blinks first.
