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: Stocks strengthened in afternoon trading as Wall Street bet that the credit-market problems behind Thursday’s sell-off were more isolated in nature. Zions Bancorp — one of the regional lenders whose bad-loan warning spooked investors and sent its stock plunging 13% on Thursday — rose nearly 5% in the final trading day of the week. State Street’s closely followed regional bank ETF was up about 1.4% Friday after sinking 6.2% a day earlier. Club name Capital One , which got caught up in Thursday’s financial selling, was also having a bounce-back day Friday. Its nearly 4% gain made it the top stock in our portfolio, followed by DuPont , which added around 2.5% after Deutsche Bank issued a short-term buy call ahead of its Qnity electronics spin-off. On the downside, Eli Lilly dropped almost 3% after President Donald Trump indicated his administration was working to bring down the price of GLP-1 drugs. Orderly stretch : It may seem like the S & P 500 is all over the place lately, with lots of record highs and lots of pullbacks. Since July 15, however, the S & P Short Range Oscillator momentum gauge has been on its longest streak of flashing neither an overbought nor oversold market in at least 20 years. As of Thursday’s close, the streak stands at 67 sessions, according to MarketEdge, the keeper of the Oscillator. For the Club, we use the Oscillator, which Jim Cramer has trusted for decades, to spot imbalances in the market. While on the upswing since this year’s tariff lows in early April, the rally in the S & P 500 has leveled out a bit since mid-July. Sure, we have still been hitting new highs as every dip is bought. But the two steps forward, one step back nature of trading lately has seen the index gain just 6% during this benign stretch for the Oscillator. Dare we say, orderly? Every time we mention the Oscillator, we’re flooded with requests from Club members:
