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. Markets: The S & P 500 is closing out the week on a slightly lower note, taking a breather after notching a new all-time high on Thursday. It’s been a great stretch for stocks, with the S & P 500 on track to post back-to-back weeks of strong gains. However, the pause on Friday may be about the market looking slightly overbought — per our trusted momentum indicator, the S & P Short Range Oscillator — ahead of a huge week for earnings, Federal Reserve commentary ,and economic data. Earlier Friday, we took some chips off the table and raised cash by trimming our Stanley Black & Decker position. Successful sectors : The biggest winner of the week was the communication services, fueled in large part by Netflix’s huge advance on the back of blowout quarterly results. Club name Meta Platforms also outperformed, benefiting from uncertainty around TikTok and, on Friday in particular, a Facebook post by CEO Mark Zuckerberg that said the company intends to invest $60 billion to $65 billion this year in artificial intelligence. Meta has proved its aggressive AI investments are paying off through increased user engagement and improved ad monetization, so the market viewed the higher spending as good news. The company also announced Friday it has started testing ads on Threads, its app to rival X, formerly Twitter. Health care was the second-best performer, rallying a week after the newsmaking JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. Vaccine maker Moderna was the top-performing stock in the sector, but Club holdings Abbott Laboratories , Eli Lilly , and Bristol Myers Squibb were inside the top five weekly gainers. The timing worked out well for the Club since we added to our Bristol Myers position last Friday and added to our Lilly position on Monday. Lone loser: The worst performing sector this week — and the only group to finish in negative territory — was energy. Halliburton led the sector to the downside after a negative reaction to its fourth-quarter earnings report. Oil prices also came under pressure this week after President Donald Trump pushed for a return to a “drill, baby, drill” attitude and called on Saudi Arabia and OPEC to lower oil prices. RBN Energy’s Rusty Braziel spoke with Jim Cramer on “Mad Money” on Wednesday to share his insights into the sector. Braziel may have been bullish on natural gas prices for this year, but we took profits on our Coterra Energy position on Monday to capitalize on the stock’s big gain this year. Light on Lilly: Circling back on Eli Lilly, shares climbed 2% Friday in a newsy day for the obesity sector. Some encouraging prescription trend data for Lilly’s Zepbound — along with sister drug Mounjaro, which is used for type-2 diabetes — is likely helping sentiment in the wake of last week’s revenue guidance cut . Elsewhere, chief Lilly rival Novo Nordisk reported positive early stage trial data on a next-generation weight-loss drug known as amycretin. Novo shares rose more than 8% Friday. Amycretin mimics an appetite-related hormone in the pancreas called amylin that is not targeted by Zepbound and Mounjaro, nor Novo’s Wegovy for obesity and Ozempic for type-2 diabetes. All four of those drugs belong to the fast-growing GLP-1 class, which mimic a gut hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1 — hence the GLP-1 name — and effectively suppress appetite. Mounjaro and Zepbound target a second hormone called GIP. Considering Novo’s brutal few weeks, the amycretin data is a win for the Danish drugmaker. But that hardly means it’s a loss for Lilly. “Indeed, we think Zepbound’s significant lead time on market and proven tolerability, plus Lilly’s retatrutide and orforglipron in later-stage development, likely relegates amycretin to a post-Zepbound scenario,” Citigroup analysts wrote to clients. Retatrutide, an injectable drug, and orforglipron, a pill, are Lilly’s leading next-generation obesity treatments. But the longtime Club name also is working on molecules that target amylin and has early and mid-stage studies underway. “Today’s data fits with our view of competitive dynamics,” Bank of America analysts told clients Friday. Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly “will likely continue to advance next-gen products that keep them well ahead of the competition, given their broad pipeline initiatives that encompass the majority of known mechanisms currently in development,” analysts wrote. Next week : We have a busy one on our hands next week. More than 90 companies in the S & P 500 and four of the “Magnificent Seven” are scheduled to report earnings. Within the portfolio, Starbucks and Nextracker report Tuesday after the closing bell. Danaher is Wednesday before the opening bell. Meta Platforms and Microsoft are after the closing bell that day. On Thursday, Dover is before the opening bell and Apple after the close. Eaton is before the open Friday. On the macro side, there’s a Fed policy meeting Wednesday, and the central bank is widely expected to keep rates steady, at 4.25% to 4.5%. And then on Friday, we’ll see December PCE, which is the Fed’s favorite measure of inflation. (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.
