The stock market just wrapped up one of its best first halves in years. The S&P 500 closed June 30, 2026 at 7,440.43, marking its best first-half performance since 2021. The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit an all-time high of 52,182.74 on June 30. Alphabet joined the Dow that same day, a fitting capstone to a remarkable six months for markets.
Now Wall Street is shifting its attention to what comes next. UBS published its third-quarter playbook on July 2, 2026, naming Nvidia (NVDA) and Vertiv Holdings (VRT) among its top picks heading into the second half of the year. With markets closed Friday, July 4 for Independence Day, investors have a moment to step back and think about positioning. These two names deserve a close look.
A soft June jobs report released Thursday, July 3 added another layer of intrigue to the setup. The U.S. economy added just 57,000 jobs in June, well below the 113,000 economists expected. The unemployment rate held at 4.2%. That kind of softness keeps pressure on the Federal Reserve to consider rate cuts, which would be a meaningful tailwind for growth stocks — exactly the kind of names UBS is recommending.
Nvidia: The AI Infrastructure Juggernaut
Nvidia trades at $193.28 per share with a market capitalization of $4.68 trillion. The stock has pulled back 18.3% from its 52-week high of $236.54, giving investors an entry point that many on Wall Street consider attractive relative to where the company's fundamentals stand.
And those fundamentals are hard to argue with. In fiscal Q1 2027, the quarter ended April 26, 2026, Nvidia posted revenue of $81.61 billion. That represents 19.8% sequential growth from fiscal Q4 2026 revenue of $68.13 billion. Net income for fiscal Q1 2027 came in at $58.32 billion on diluted earnings per share of $2.39. Gross margin reached 74.9% and net margin hit 71.5% — numbers that are essentially unmatched at this scale in the semiconductor industry.
Nvidia's trailing twelve-month EPS stands at $5.84, putting the stock's P/E ratio at 33.10. For a company growing revenue at nearly 20% per quarter, that multiple looks reasonable to many analysts. The current stock price sits well above the 52-week low of $157.34, though the pullback from the high creates the kind of setup that historically attracts institutional buyers.
The analyst community is as unified as it gets. All 23 of 23 analysts covering Nvidia carry a bullish rating — a 100.0% consensus. The average price target sits at $324.04, implying 67.7% upside from the current price. Tigress Financial has a $425.00 target on the stock. Keybanc rates it Overweight with a $300.00 target. The high target across all analysts is $500.00.
UBS's endorsement fits a broader narrative: Nvidia supplies the GPUs that power the AI data centers being built at a historic pace. As hyperscalers continue to invest aggressively in AI infrastructure, Nvidia remains the primary beneficiary of that spending cycle.
Vertiv: The Power Behind the AI Buildout
While Nvidia gets most of the headlines, Vertiv Holdings operates in a part of the AI infrastructure stack that investors sometimes overlook — until the numbers force them to pay attention.
Vertiv makes the thermal management systems, power distribution equipment, and cooling infrastructure that keep AI data centers running. Every GPU cluster Nvidia sells needs a data center to live in, and every data center needs what Vertiv makes. That positioning has made VRT one of the defining infrastructure plays of the AI era.
Vertiv shares trade at $303.40 with a market cap of $116.54 billion. The stock is down 20.1% from its 52-week high of $379.94, with a 52-week low of $110.06. In Q1 2026, Vertiv reported revenue of $2.65 billion, compared to $2.88 billion in Q4 2025. Net income came in at $0.39 billion, with diluted EPS of $0.99. Gross margin was 37.7% and net margin was 14.7%. Trailing twelve-month EPS is $4.72, and the stock carries a P/E ratio of 64.28.
The analyst community remains firmly in Vertiv's corner. Of 14 analysts covering the stock, 92.9% carry bullish ratings. The average price target is $344.50, representing 13.5% upside from current levels. The high target is $440.00. Bank of America set a $440.00 price target on May 15, 2026. TD Cowen has a $387.00 target issued May 20, 2026. Oppenheimer set a $353.00 target on May 21, 2026.
With AI capital expenditure commitments from the major cloud providers running into the hundreds of billions of dollars through the end of the decade, Vertiv's order book is expected to remain full for years. UBS's inclusion of VRT in its Q3 2026 top picks reflects confidence that the infrastructure build is nowhere near complete.
Found this helpful? Share it with others.