JPMorgan Names 2 ‘Strong Buy’ Stocks as Top Picks for the Second Half of 2026

As the first half of 2026 draws to a close, U.S. equities have delivered a solid performance, with the S&P 500 up about 8% for the year. Despite periodic volatility caused by geopolitical tensions, inflation worries, and swings in the bond market, the index moved back toward record highs as corporate earnings exceeded expectations and continued investment in AI infrastructure kept investors focused on long-term growth.

As the second half begins, the question naturally shifts from what has already happened to what comes next. According to JPMorgan Global Investment Strategist Kriti Gupta, the outlook remains encouraging.

“Near all-time highs and a ~17% rally from the March pullback, the S&P 500 has staged a historic rally driven by an earnings supercycle and pricing in an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. For investors who’ve enjoyed the returns, it’s natural to wonder: How much better can stock market returns get from here, especially with a bond market in tumult? While not the base case, the S&P 500 could reach as high as 9,000 by mid-2027. A ~20% gain from current levels may seem optimistic, but remains entirely plausible,” Gupta noted.

The bank’s stock analysts are running with this thesis and picking out their own top picks for the second half. Two of those choices make for interesting reading, and according to the TipRanks database, both also earn Strong Buy consensus ratings from the broader Wall Street analyst community. Here are the details, along with JPMorgan’s take.

Broadcom (AVGO)

We’ll start with a look at Broadcom, one of the world’s leading semiconductor companies – and, with its $1.77 trillion market cap, one of the world’s relative handful of trillion-dollar-plus public companies. Broadcom has a long history in tech, and in recent years it has become a world leader in providing the cutting-edge products, particularly semiconductors, that support the AI boom.

Where Broadcom really excels is in providing application-specific integrated circuits, or ASIC chips. These are a niche product, but one that has become essential for its users – and has found acceptance in AI and in cloud computing. ASIC chips bring the customers’ unique specs to life; Broadcom designs and manufactures the chips based on customer-provided needs and specifications. Among their advantages, these chips offer increased efficiencies and processing speeds, which tend to compensate for the higher cost. Broadcom has a strong customer base for its ASICs, and there is ready demand for the manufacturing capabilities.

In recent months, Broadcom has leveraged its scale and wide-ranging capabilities to establish partnerships with major names in the AI field. The company has entered a long-term agreement with Google to design and build TPUs, or tensor processing units – an AI-specific development of ASICs. The deal will run through 2031.

Expanding from that agreement, Broadcom has also entered a three-way partnership with Google and Anthropic, under which Anthropic will gain access to as much as 3.5 gigawatts of AI computing capacity, powered by the chips that Broadcom is building for Google.

Finally, in a deal that will run through 2029, Broadcom and Meta have come to an agreement under which the chip company will produce this social media firm’s new Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) chips. These are custom-made chips, based on a 2 nm process, and the initial rollout is expected to exceed 1 gigawatt in capacity.

More recently, earlier this month, Broadcom established a new platform, AI XPV, with Apollo and Blackstone’s Credit & Insurance Business as initial anchor investors. The platform is designed to enable more than 20 gigawatts of AI compute capacity for frontier AI labs, including Anthropic and OpenAI, through 2028. The initial transaction totals $35 billion and will facilitate Anthropic’s previously-announced capacity expansion of more than 1 gigawatt, with deployment expected to begin in mid-2026 at sites operated by Fluidstack.

Those expanding customer relationships are already showing up in Broadcom’s financial results. In fiscal second-quarter 2026, the company generated $22.19 billion in revenue, surpassing Wall Street’s expectations by more than $104 million while growing 48% year-over-year. Non-GAAP earnings came in at $2.44 per share, beating estimates by $0.04, while free cash flow climbed 60% from a year earlier to nearly $10.3 billion.

However, despite the solid quarter, the stock tumbled after management merely reaffirmed, rather than raised, its closely watched long-term AI revenue outlook, disappointing investors who had been expecting even more optimistic guidance after the stock’s massive run-up.

While that guidance weighed on sentiment, JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur sees the bigger picture. Ranked among the top 1% of Wall Street analysts, Sur argues that Broadcom continues to strengthen its position in the AI infrastructure market by securing larger customer commitments while benefiting from rising AI inference demand.

“We believe Broadcom (our top pick in semis) has seen a strong pick up in orders/ backlog for FY27 as AI inferencing workload demand has continued to grow at an exponential rate since the 2H of last year. Combined with recent Google/AVGO multi-year revenue commitment/ supply agreement, Google/AVGO/Anthropic multi-GW partnership, and Meta/AVGO partnership, we believe Broadcom’s FY27 AI backlog has grown from >$120B to now sitting at >$150B – with upside coming from Google TPU, Meta MTIA XPU, and OpenAI’s new XPU ASIC program,” Sur opined.

“We continue to view Broadcom favorably given its exposure to AI infrastructure spending trends through its AI XPU/ASIC wins and market leadership in scale-out / scale-up switching supporting both optical and copper connectivity – combined with a solid ratable-based/strong FCF generating infrastructure software business,” the 5-star analyst added.

These bullish comments support Sur’s Overweight (i.e., Buy) rating on AVGO, while his $580 price target implies that a one-year gain of ~56% lies ahead for the stock. (To watch Sur’s track record, click here)

Overall, the 27 recent analyst reviews here include 24 Buy and 3 Hold recommendations, for a Strong Buy consensus rating. The shares are trading for $372.45, and the $516.91 average target price implies a ~39% upside for the next 12 months. (See AVGO stock forecast)

NetEase (NTES)

Next up on JPMorgan’s radar is NetEase, one of China’s largest internet and gaming companies, generating most of its revenue from developing and publishing online and mobile games. Alongside developing and publishing its own titles, NetEase also operates the Youdao online education platform, NetEase Cloud Music, and several digital services, giving the company exposure to multiple areas of China’s online economy.

Gaming continues driving the business, supported by a portfolio that includes long-running franchises such as Fantasy Westward Journey, Justice, Eggy Party, and Onmyoji. During recent months, NetEase continued expanding Marvel Rivals worldwide, released additional content for Where Winds Meet, and benefited from the restored Blizzard partnership in China, allowing players to once again access popular Blizzard titles.

Those positive developments continued showing up in the company’s latest quarterly results. During the first quarter of 2026, NetEase generated revenue of $4.43 billion, representing 6.1% year-over-year growth while exceeding Wall Street’s expectations by approximately $70 million. Non-GAAP earnings reached $2.56 per ADS, surpassing consensus estimates by $0.30.

At the same time, management continued returning capital to shareholders through a quarterly dividend that currently yields 2.34%, while also extending its $5 billion share repurchase program through January 2029. As of March 31, 2026, the company had already repurchased 23.2 million ADSs for about $2.1 billion, all while maintaining a cash-rich balance sheet that provides plenty of financial flexibility.

Among the bulls is JPMorgan analyst Daniel Chen, who believes NetEase’s current valuation fails to reflect the company’s earnings growth potential.

“We reiterate NetEase as our top pick in digital entertainment. We believe NetEase’s current valuation of 12x 2026E P/E is attractive (at the low end of the 10-19x range of the past three years) against a 19% OP CAGR in 2026-27E. We expect game revenue growth to accelerate to 8% YoY in 2Q26 due to easier comps in 2Q25. Then, we believe the launch of Sea of Remnants (which we expect in July/August 2026) will drive game revenue growth to 11%/16% in 3Q26/4Q26. We are positive on Sea of Remnants’ performance: Our checks suggest positive gamer feedback in a recent beta test. It combines different game modes such as Sea War (rogue-like) and RPG. ‘Freedom’ is the key characteristic of the game. The game is available on both PCs and mobiles. We are forecasting the game to achieve annual cash grossing of Rmb5bn,” Chen commented.

To this end, Chen assigns NTES shares an Overweight (i.e., Buy) rating, while his $185 price target implies a 47% upside from current levels. (To watch Chen’s track record, click here)

The rest of Wall Street shares that optimistic view. NetEase earns a Strong Buy consensus rating based on 6 Buy recommendations and just one Hold. The average price target stands at $155.33, implying a 20% upside from current levels. (See NTES stock forecast)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analysts. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.