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. Market moves: U.S. stocks were mixed in late afternoon trading, with financials leading the S & P 500 sectors on the upside. Club names Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs were higher Thursday. Both stocks have gained roughly 15% for the year, outperforming the S & P 500 ‘s year-to-date advance of just over 3%. BlackRock , our third financial, was slightly lower Thursday and down about 1% year to date. BlackRock shares have been under pressure this week Vanguard announced its largest-ever fee reduction, which we noted Monday when we bought the dip. Energy was the worst-performing sector in the market Thursday — so, it was not surprising that our lone portfolio energy name, Coterra , was lower on the session. However, the oil and natural gas production and exploration stock was still up 9% in 2025. Four portfolio names reported earnings before Thursday’s opening bell: Eli Lilly , Bristol Myers Squibb , Honeywell , and Linde . Jim Cramer looked at which ones were buys during the Morning Meeting. We have been working on our earnings analysis stories on all four companies. Keep watching your texts and email inboxes. All portfolio earnings commentaries can be found in the analysis section of our Club website. AI spending: Amazon is set to report earnings after Thursday’s close. We’ll be watching e-commerce sales and margins — and cloud growth in Amazon Web Services (AWS), too, especially after Alphabet’s Google Cloud and Microsoft’s Azure cloud missed estimates on their quarterly sales. We also want to see whether Amazon keeps its AI spending levels elevated like its Club tech counterparts Meta Platforms , Microsoft , and Alphabet did in the wake of last week’s claims of a more efficient, lower-cost artificial intelligence model from DeepSeek. The emergence of the Chinese startup crushed chipmakers last week on concerns about changes in demand. But in light of robust AI spending plans from the companies that reported already, Nvidia was recovering some of its huge losses for the third straight session. It was still down 10% from its pre-DeepSeek close on Friday, Jan. 24. C-suite Shakeup: Salesforce shares declined roughly 4% on Thursday, a day after the software maker announced that Robin Washington, current lead independent director, will assume the new, combined role of finance and operating chief. Washington, who has been on the board since 2013, is taking over for CFO Amy Weaver and COO Brian Millham. Weaver will be sticking around as a special adviser to CEO Marc Benioff through April 2026. Millham is retiring in May.
