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LivestreamMenuEvery weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer releases the Homestretch — an actionable afternoon update, just in time for the last hour of trading on Wall Street. Wall Street remains in post-Fed rally mode on Thursday afternoon, despite oil prices moving off their lows of the session. Stocks were also getting help from the 10-year Treasury yield, which is down about 6 basis points to 4.95% — falling below the key psychological level of 5%. The S & P 500 is up around 1%, fully erasing its losses Wednesday afternoon in response to the Federal Reserve’s first interest rate hike in over three years. Ten out of the 11 sectors in the S & P 500 are higher on the day, led by a 2% gain in technology and a 1.6% advance for consumer discretionary. Consumer staples was the only sector in the red, pulled lower by declines in Walmart , Club name Costco and Philip Morris International . U.S. oil benchmark WTI crude is around $102 a barrel, though it traded as low as $99.10 earlier in the morning. The strength in AI infrastructure stocks is one of the big stories of the day, and that’s reflected in our portfolio. Intel is our biggest gainer, up over 9% and potentially heading for its best day since early August. We continue to like Intel here, with its budding third-party chip manufacturing business being key to American national security. Micron is in second place, adding more than 5%; we added to our Micron position on Monday as chip names tumbled on concerns about a slowdown in AI development. In third is Eaton , which gave an encouraging presentation Wednesday at an investor conference. In addition to saying the company is tracking toward the high end of its guidance range, we were pleased to hear that the recently acquired Boyd Thermal is running ahead of expectations. As we detailed in a feature earlier this month, Boyd’s liquid cooling portfolio for data center servers is an excellent complement to Eaton’s electrical equipment. Salesforce is bringing up the rear for the portfolio, down about 2%. Some investors may be lightening up on the stock after the software vendor didn’t update its long-term financial targets at Wednesday’s Dreamforce analyst day. With the battleground stock up huge since earnings on Aug. 26, it was definitely vulnerable to profit-taking absent a major upside surprise. Nevertheless, we’re walking away from Dreamforce feeling better about Salesforce’s role in the AI era, as the company is focused on helping customers unlock the power of their data stored across its applications, and giving them multiple different ways to do that, including through the Anthropic partnership. Johnson & Johnson CFO Joe Wolk offered an upbeat outlook at the Deutsche Bank Healthcare Summit. Wolk’s comments reinforced our view that J & J has multiple avenues for growth across both its pharmaceutical and medical technology businesses. Shares rose about 0.9% on Thursday. Here are some of the CFO’s most important comments: At its 2023 investor day, J & J committed to 5% to 7% sales growth for 2025-2030. Wolk said Thursday that “you’re going to see growth rates that are better than that,” adding that the company has a “clear line of sight” to double-digit growth over the next few years. Investors should get more details at J & J’s Dec. 8 investor day. Wolk expressed confidence that J & J can continue growing through future patent expirations, which allow cheaper competition to erode sales of blockbuster drugs. He pointed to the company’s ability to navigate the loss of exclusivity for its Crohn’s drug Remicade in 2018 and psoriasis drug Stelara in 2025. “We’re going to do it again whenever the next big LOE [loss of exclusivity] hits,” Wolk said, adding that J & J feels “really good about the balance of this decade.” J & J is “extremely excited” about Ottava , its surgical robotic system, but reiterated it’s not expected to be a material contributor to revenue over the next few years. “This is really about a next decade play,” he said. That gives J & J room to roll out the platform deliberately rather than chase near-term sales. Memorial Hermann in Texas served as the pioneer clinical site where the first human surgeries with the robot were performed. Wolk expects more announcements in the coming months. Poriasis drug Icotyde could become bigger than Wall Street currently expects. When asked whether analysts may be underestimating its potential , Wolk said, “I would say that’s a really good take.” The pill has reached 17,000 patients just five months after launch, and Wolk said it is attracting patients who had not previously used systemic treatments, meaning J & J is “actually expanding the market” rather than simply taking share from injectable alternatives. Though J & J’s presentation wasn’t as revelatory as others we’ve seen this conference season, we like what we heard, and it shows why we own the healthcare giant alongside peer Eli Lilly and drug distributor Cardinal Health . There are no major earnings after the close on Thursday and before the opening bell on Friday. On the data side, there’s industrial production and manufacturing production. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.Read More














