Morning Filter Podcast Stock Picks That Are Actually Worth Your Time in July 2026

Before the opening bell has a chance to do any harm, Dave Sekera and Susan Dziubinski get together every Monday morning to sort through the gains or the wreckage from the previous week. Morningstar’s weekly podcast, The Morning Filter, has quietly amassed a following that takes the pair’s stock calls seriously. The most recent episode, which focused on the last few days of June 2026, was the kind that merits that devotion.

Last week was rough for tech. Almost every name saw a decline as the sector fell by slightly more than 5%. Nvidia fell almost 9%. Broadcom shed 11%. Oracle and Western Digital were each down around 20%. On the surface, it looked like a moment of panic. Sekera’s read was more measured — part of this, he suggested, was natural profit-taking after a sustained run-up, and part of it had to do with the SpaceX IPO drawing speculative energy out of the sector. Technology stocks were still up more than 15% for the year even after the decline. Even when the numbers on a particular Friday seem concerning, that context is important.

The episode demonstrated that Morningstar views the decline as a possible opportunity rather than a red flag. Nvidia was trading at a 30% discount to Morningstar’s fair value estimate at the time of the recording. Microsoft was discounted by 38%. At 44%, Broadcom was even farther behind. Although it’s debatable if those projections are accurate—no one accurately predicted the SpaceX selloff—the framing is helpful. Stock-picking is not treated as a guessing game in the show. Valuation is viewed as a compass.

The discussion of inflation and oil gave the overall picture more depth. The price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate was about $70. Sekera was open about how unclear the US-Iran situation was, calling it “clear as mud.” He pointed out that core PCE was 3.4% year over year and headline PCE had increased to 4.1% in May from 3.8% the previous month. Neither number was catastrophic, but neither suggested a quick path back to the Fed’s 2% target. Inflation of this kind tends to linger, and Sekera pointed out that it falls hardest on lower-income households — a detail that doesn’t often make it into stock-picking conversations but probably should.

Additionally, the show adopted two of the more contentious names currently on the market. This year has been challenging for Adobe. So has Lululemon. Without claiming to have a clear solution, the episode framed both as questions: value traps or real opportunities? One of the things that makes the show valuable is its intellectual honesty. A podcast that tells you what to think is not the same as one that helps you think more clearly.

For the July stock picks themselves, memory stocks came under scrutiny. Morningstar analyst Will Kerwin flagged SanDisk, Micron, and SK Hynix as names that have gotten ahead of themselves — momentum stocks riding AI enthusiasm that may not survive a full market cycle. The show discussed whether Micron’s blowout earnings qualified it as a buy. The answer was cautious. Stretched valuations and strong earnings are compatible.

The podcast has consistently discussed core holdings on the buy side: Deere for its combination of industrial depth and GPS-driven technology investment, Coca-Cola for pricing power and balance sheet strength, and Amazon for its multi-source economic moat. Salesforce also came up — described as a stock requiring a strong stomach right now, which is its own kind of endorsement for patient investors.

It’s still unclear whether the tech sector’s wobble is a brief correction or the beginning of something longer. However, the Morning Filter is not useful for forecasting that. It is in providing investors with a stable enough framework to endure the uncertainty.