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Every 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. (We’re no longer recording the audio, so we can get this new written feature to members as quickly as possible.) Lack of direction: Stocks were muted Wednesday, with the S & P 500 trading in a tight range. Leadership was coming from the Real Estate, Consumer Discretionary, Financials, and Industrials sectors. Communication Services, Health Care, and Tech were lagging. Conference Call: TJX Companies ‘ conference call erased any potential concerns that we had about the availability of quality, branded merchandise drying up. “There’s more goods out there than we can handle, and we’re still holding our merchants back,” CEO Ernie Herman said on the post-earnings call. This is a great sign that the owner of the T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods chains will have plenty of merchandise available to grow its businesses and gain market share. TJX usually picks up extra business when other retailers struggle and are forced to close underperforming stores. This ongoing theme got a boost Tuesday after Macy’s announced it will close 150 stores by the end of 2026. TJX explained on the call that business will benefit from this in two ways: (1) the obvious incremental market share gains that come when another store closes its door, and (2) an indirect benefit that we never thought of before. When there’s less brick-and-mortar competition, the importance TJX’s army of buyers has on the vendor community strengthens, leading to better buying and margin opportunities in the future. Could there be more retail closures on the horizon? “The closure of 150 Macy’s stores is real good, but I wonder how many others we will hear from in this last week of earnings. Nordstrom and Target report next week,” Cramer thinks. Other Cramer observations: “There’s a bid underneath in cybersecurity stocks because there has been a big step up attacks from e-criminals. That makes it so you have to invest in Palo Alto Networks , which was called in by UnitedHealth to help with its recent hacking incident. We don’t know who they were using before, but we know that when you are really in a jam and have unlimited capital you turn to Palo Alto Networks.” “People are liking the streaming alliance in India for Disney . It would be better if they could have some sort of alliance with ESPN for Apple ‘s Vision Pro.” ” Linde ‘s 9% dividend boost is impacting the stock positively” as the industrial gas giant made a new all-time high Wednesday. Up Next: Salesforce is one of the big names reporting after the closing bell. Snowflake , Paramount , and Okta are a few others. Thursday’s earnings feature a bunch of consumer names like Best Buy , Anheuser-Busch , and Hormel . On the data side, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, which is the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, will be key to the markets when the data hits before the bell Thursday. (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.
Every 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. (We’re no longer recording the audio, so we can get this new written feature to members as quickly as possible.)