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 were mixed on Tuesday. It’s been a very choppy session with the S & P 500 trying to fight its way into green. Once again, it’s the energy sector leading the way, thanks to additional gains in oil and natural gas prices as well as a more than 4% boost in shares of Phillips 66 after Elliott Management disclosed a $2.5 billion stake in the company and published a letter pushing for changes. Our lone oil and nat gas stock Coterra Energy was up modestly Tuesday, one day after closing roughly 4% higher. Materials on Tuesday were having a good day, too. Club name DuPont was leading the way, with a nearly 8% stock gain, after reporting better-than-expected fourth-quarter results before the opening bell. Consumer discretionary continued its struggles, with the sector index falling more than 1% on Tuesday; more than 4% in February; and slightly lower for all of 2025. The decline was led by travel and leisure stocks after Marriott issued soft first-quarter guidance and smaller-than-expected net unit growth for the year. Shares of the hotel company lost 5%. Financials: All three of our financials spoke at industry events Tuesday. Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs were at the UBS Financial Services Conference, and BlackRock was at the Bank of America Securities Financial Services conference. Wells Fargo CFO Michael Santomassimo spent most of the time discussing how the bank has built a nicely growing capital markets business. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon gave his outlook on investment banking and trading. BLK YTD mountain BlackRock YTD For the Homestretch, we want to focus on what BlackRock had to say since its stock has stumbled over the past week. BlackRock was off to a solid 2025 after last year’s more than 26% gain. Shares closed at a record high of $1,075.50 each. BlackRock stock, however, has fallen more than 8% since Vanguard on Feb. 3 announced fee cuts on nearly 100 of its funds. We added to our BlackRock position that afternoon, citing how the commoditization of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) validates BlackRock CEO Larry Fink’s push into faster-growing opportunities like private markets. But the stock has only struggled since. The Vanguard news wasn’t the focus of BlackRock CFO Martin Small’s talk at the BofA conference, but it did come up toward the end of the conversation. Small pointed out several important differences between BlackRock and Vanguard. For example, most of the Vanguard fee cuts were for index mutual funds that Small explained were
