Halftime Report (CNBC) · Oct 12, 2026 · 10m
With Jenny Harrington, CEO, Gilman Hill Asset Management · Jim Lebenthal, CIO, Lebenthal Asset Management · Steve Weiss, Founder & CIO, Short Hills Capital Partners
Photo via Pan Macmillan
The S&P 500's third-quarter total return came in at 2.3% — and Jenny Harrington, CEO of Gilman Hill Asset Management, told CNBC's Investment Committee that number is badly misleading.
A Barclays statistic the host cited put more than half of S&P 500 members down at least 20% from their highs, among the weakest market-breadth divergence on record going back to the 1990s. Most coverage of Q3 earnings season frames the index as near record highs; Jenny and fellow panelists Jim Lebenthal and Steve Weiss spent the segment arguing about what's actually hiding underneath that number.
"You're up 2.3%. And holy moly, was that misleading." — Jenny Harrington
Jenny has run Gilman Hill's income-focused portfolio since 2009; Jim Lebenthal and Steve Weiss round out the panel, each having managed money through every earnings season this cycle has thrown at them.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 5 arguments that matter.
Key Takeaways
Jenny Harrington doesn't expect Q3 EPS to disappoint — the real risk, she says, sits in guidance and the pace of earnings growth
Consensus expects S&P earnings up another 15% in 2027, and she's unsure that holds
Jim Lebenthal says hyperscaler capex plans remain intact, "maybe even" higher, despite political blowback over data centers
Steve Weiss calls "market" a misleading word when most individual stocks trade below their 50-day and 200-day averages
The S&P's headline 2.3% Q3 total return is "misleading," Jenny says, pointing to a Barclays stat that more than half of index members are down at least 20% from their highs
Weiss compares AI compute demand to Ferrari demand — plenty of people want one, but financing, not demand, is the real constraint ahead
1. Is the Bar Too High?
The host opens with a market check — the Dow up about 0.4%, the S&P roughly flat, the Nasdaq down about 0.2% — and asks the panel whether expectations for Q3 earnings are too elevated heading into the reporting season.
The risk isn't the headline number, it's the guidance
"Where the rubber will hit the road will be in what the guidance is, and what the forecasts are, and what the pace of earnings growth is going to be." — Jenny Harrington
Jenny says she doesn't expect the actual earnings prints to disappoint, but she's been waiting two months to see how the trajectory of earnings growth holds up.
"I've been waiting in no man's land for about two months now to see what these numbers are." — Jenny Harrington
She also flags a pattern she expects to repeat: Nvidia delivering blowout numbers only to see its stock react tepidly afterward.
"The behavior will be more telling than the actual data." — Jenny Harrington
