We were all excited to see Lizzie join Charles Payne in studio for her Fox Business interview. In Charles’s words, “she’s killing it!”

They ran through Lizzie’s 2025 reflections and 2026 market outlook and Charles ended it with a special shoutout for Lizzie’s stock picks.

In case you missed it, watch the replay below ⬇️⬇️

 

Transcript:

Now, my first guest says that 2025 provided the perfect setup for a strong 2026. Joining me now, Evans May Wealth managing partner Elizabeth Evans.

And Elizabeth, before we even get to some of your ideas here, I want your thoughts on today’s session. You know, we kind of see, it’s interesting, some green on small, some green on mid-caps. Large caps have done extraordinarily well. This is even a better zoom of it.

Is this something that you anticipated, more of some sort of rotation? And could this be sort of a blueprint for the year?

Well, Charles, time will tell. You know, this morning we saw CPI and PPI numbers that came in and the read-through on PCE—some of the data points that feed into PCE—really indicate that maybe we have stickier inflation.

And so the concern is, does the Fed continue to pause? So, I think that’s creating some of the volatility. But as we look at this blueprint, we still think that the leadership remains concentrated in mega-cap technology. But we do think unlike 2025, we will start to see a broadening out.

 

Let’s talk about that, right? Because you have pushed back against, you know—let’s bring up your 2025 stuff here.

A reflection: the soft landing, solid growth, moderating inflation, strong equity performance. That’s sort of the runway as we begin this year.

Yes. So, we had a—we really delivered a soft landing in 2025. So, you had really strong equity growth, you had both the S&P and the Dow double-digit returns again, real GDP +1.9%, core PCE coming in at 2.8%, expected to be at 2.4% by the end of 2026.

So, earnings hung in there. We saw earnings growth tracking at 12%. All of that to say that it’s a very good setup going into 2026.

And you push back against the notion—again, that, you know—this AI bubble. You’ve been pushing back against that. You’re saying it’s not the exuberance we saw in 2000.

These are some of the differences here on the screen that you share with us.

 

Yeah. So, short interest is still high, 88th percentile. If you look at the equity inflows last year, they were relatively subdued. You had $100 billion flow into equity mutual funds and ETFs. Compare that to $1.6 trillion in money markets and fixed income. So, we’re not, you know, there’s not this mania out there.

 

No. There’s definitely not a mania out there.

By the way, the PE expansion that you see before every top, a gazillion percent up, we were flat on some of these, you know, the mega-cap names.

Areas to watch this year

So, let’s talk about areas to watch this year. We’re going to bring that up as well from your notes. So again, you like the mega-cap techs.

But you also mentioned regional banks and defense sector.

What is it about regional banks?

So, financials is interesting to talk this week with earnings season. So, if we look at the KRE and overlay that to the KBWB—so, the regionals to the big money center banks—regionals have underperformed the big money center banks by 20%.

So, we think that there’s a catch-up trade to be had there. We know financials do well as credit concerns continue to lessen. Yield curve is steepening. So, there’s a lot of—we’re in a deregulatory environment. So, there’s a lot of positives for financials.

 

Okay. And we know there’s defense sector. I kind of think that speaks for itself. I want to give you a shout-out here.

Stock Pick: Huntington Ingalls

One of the ideas you gave us more recently, HII—this thing has gone parabolic. It’s a number five percentage gainer this year coming into this session. A stock like this that you liked a few months ago. Do you hold this? I know you’re mostly a long-term buy and hold, but this has made a monster move.

 

I know, 49% since we talked in September. So, yes, we still think that there—we know from the Trump administration, especially in the last few weeks—they are very committed to military capabilities. Huntington Ingalls has a duopoly in Navy shipbuilding, and that is a part of military capabilities that the Trump administration is super focused on.

Google, more upside?

Before I let you go, then, let’s look at some fresh ideas. Or more or less fresh. Google. You know, listen, we talk about it almost every day. You can’t not talk about it. Last year it was deemed OpenAI—I mean the winner over OpenAI. Obviously, you think it still has more upside.

 

We do. It just hit $4 trillion now surpassing. [$5 trillion is right around the corner.] It’s right around the corner. No, I think that there’s still continued upside from here. And so, they’re doing a lot of things right. So yes, that’s one of, really, our top mega-cap tech pick for 2026.

 

I think everyone knows the Lilly story. They kind of beat Novo last year, whatever. It felt like there was a ton, you know, nip-and-tuck race, and then, of course, they kind of took off, and they have had so much more success.

Baker Hughes play, why?

But with just about 30s to go, I’m intrigued with your Baker Hughes play. Obviously, the Venezuela situation, everything changed. Everyone’s kind of talking and looking at energy and oil more closely. Why this specific play?

 

So, Baker Hughes is not your traditional oilfield services provider. So, if you look, this company is quietly becoming really an industrial energy and infrastructure play. But it’s still trading like an oilfield services company.

[So, that will come in at a higher premium?]

Much higher. So right now, it’s trading at 9 to 10 times EBITDA, which is what you would expect from oilfield services. The industrial energy and technology business is also almost in parity with, from an earnings standpoint, with their oilfield services. So, we think that there’s going to be a gap up that investors can participate in.

 

Great stuff, great having you in the studio. Thank you, Charles, so good to be here. You’ve been killing it. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.