Why the Summer Slump is Setting Up Wall Street's Next Rally

Choppy summer trading is nothing new on Wall Street, so it’s no surprise to seasoned investors that it once again occurred in 2026. However, three strong signals are emerging that the bull market is set to begin its second half advance, including:

QQQ Bullish Open/Close Historical Data

X user OddStats (@OddStats) just revealed an “odd stat” about the Nasdaq 100 Index ETF (QQQ). QQQ just registered its 8^th consecutive session closing below where it opened. While this may sound like a market ready to continue a bearish downtrend, the historical data suggests otherwise. In fact, in such instances in the past, the one-month, six-month, and one-year forward returns were positive 100% of the time. Additionally, forward returns were much higher than the average returns. For instance, the median one-year forward return was a juicy 30.59%.

AAII Sentiment Survey: A Contrarian Indicator

The American Association of Individual Investors has conducted the AAII Sentiment Survey since 1987. The survey asks individual investors where they think the market is heading over the next six months and has done so since 1987. Bearish sentiment has now outweighed bullish sentiment for six consecutive weeks. The last time bearish sentiment outweighed bullish sentiment was in April, just before equities enjoyed a multi-week run.

NVIDIA Crushes Wall Street Expectations

NVIDIA (NVDA) is not only the largest company on the planet; it is also a bellwether for the most important and fastest-growing industry – artificial intelligence. Last night, NVIDIA smashed Wall Street estimates despite lofty expectations. Revenue of $96.2B beat Wall Street estimates of $91.9B while EPS of $2.22 beat estimates of $2.09. Meanwhile, NVIDIA announced that Neocloud partners are expected to scale from ~3GW to 8GW of installed capacity this year. CoreWeave (CRWV), Nebius Group (NBIS), TeraWulf (WULF), Cipher Digital (CIFR), and IREN (IREN) jumped on the news.

Bottom Line

Despite the seasonal summer volatility, underlying technical trends, sentiment metrics, and tech fundamentals continue to build a strong foundation for equities.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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