The stars continue to align for Wall Street. The iShares MSCI USA Momentum Factor ETF (MTUM) hit a fresh intraday record on Thursday. That also marked the fund’s 10th winning session in a row. Momentum, or growth, stocks are characterized by their large earnings expansion potential relative to the broader market. Put another way, the Street thinks these companies can grow earnings fast. Tuesday’s move to record levels for MTUM marks a sharp reversal for the fund. At one point, it was down more than 7% year to date. It’s now up 8% for 2026. It also coincides with the S & P 500 this week erasing the losses it suffered since the Iran war began and moving back to record territory. This turnaround in momentum may be the beginning of a broader market upturn. MTUM YTD mountain MTUM back at records “There’s plenty of reasons to be optimistic,” Yardeni Research president Ed Yardeni. “We’ve seen concerns about an AI bubble that’s going to blow up—I think that those concerns have diminished.” He added that this behavior is consistent with historical precedence and attributed the market bottoming out on March 30 to the commencement of the White House’s talks about finding an exit ramp from the war. “The market tends to look ahead, usually by 12 months. And in addition, history shows that geopolitical crises, more often than not, have been buying opportunities,” Yardeni added. What drove momentum, what to buy Shares of Bloom Energy have surged more than 40% since the start of the Iran war. The renewable energy stock soared 24% on Tuesday after expanding its partnership with Oracle to provide the cloud provider with power to fuel its skyrocketing data center energy demand. Intel is up more than 40% as well in the same time period. Shares soared 24% last week, making Intel one of the week’s most overbought stocks , after the chip giant entered new partnerships with Google and Elon Musk ‘s Terafab project. “I think what momentum is doing, specifically in 2026, is amplifying movement,” Jeff Kilburg, founder and CEO of KKM Financial, told CNBC. “We saw the movement amplified down to the downside, where the S & P was just at 6,300 less than 10 trading sessions ago. And now, with momentum coming back in and shorts covering, I think we’re going to make new all-times highs in the S & P 500 because momentum is now a tailwind.” The S & P 500 traded just below 7,000 on Wednesday — teetering just below its intraday all-time high — after bouncing more than 10% from its post-war closing low. Kilburg called momentum the primary driver for these gains. “Momentum is absolutely the captain of the ship, and it seems like the ship wants to go higher. Markets always find a way to put the most people in the most amount of pain before they relent or go the other way,” he added. As for specific names he owns that fit the momentum stock description, Kilburg listed Palantir , Micron Technology , Applied Materials , Advanced Micro Devices , Lam Research and KLA — all names within MTUM.
