What investor Stephanie Link is buying as stocks rip higher to start the week

Investor Stephanie Link shared a trio of investing plays Monday on " Halftime Report " as the markets rebounded, including a battered regional banking stock that she thinks has potential. Equities traded broadly higher on Monday after President Donald Trump signaled that the U.S. and Iran have held “productive” conversations regarding resolving ongoing Middle East hostilities. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 1,100 points at its session high, marking an about-face from its sharp decline on Friday. Amid the bounce, Link, the chief investment strategist at Hightower Advisors, called out Truist Financial as one of her preferred plays. She likes the name even as the financial services sector is down more than 3% in March alone and the stock is lagging its peers. She also said she is buying more shares of Truist. “I think this company is really doing some great things from their new management team and the new strategy to grow profitability 15% this year, 16% next year,” Link said. Link commented that the company is currently trading at 0.9 times its book value, and added that historically, it’s always a good idea to buy a bank under its book value. She also pointed to an era of deregulation kicking in as another catalyst. “I think as a result, you’re going to see the banks at large really start to increase their buybacks and dividends,” she remarked. Shares of Truist are down more than 8% in 2026 and the stock has a current dividend yield of 4.6%. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported two senators would introduce legislation that would ban sports betting on prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket. Link stood by her ownership of Las Vegas Sands despite acknowledging that the bill could have an “overall impact” on casino stocks. “About 60% of their business is Macau, 40% Singapore — they’re humming,” she said of the casino operator. Shares of Las Vegas Sands are down more than 16% in 2026. Link also said that she owned the iShares MSCI Brazil ETF (EWZ) index, up 16% this year. She said that the South American nation would be a beneficiary of growing power demand to fuel artificial intelligence data centers. Constituents in the ETF include Vale, a major nickel and copper miner. “It’s the seventh largest country in the world, and most people think it’s a commodity country only, but they have been building up substantially in fintech,” Link said. “And guess what they have that everybody else wants? Power. So they will benefit from the whole AI data center, grid power themes that we’ve been talking about for years,” Link added. “I like what they’re doing, fiscally and monetarily.”