Our top 3 gainers, laggards as the S&P 500 continues to hit records
The stock market has been on a tear over the past month, as Wall Street mulled over quarterly earnings reports, President Donald Trump ‘s tariff moves, and the Federal Reserve’s next monetary policy decision. Since last month’s third annual meeting of the CNBC Investing Club, the S & P 500 and Nasdaq hit nine and 14 record closing highs, respectively. Both stock benchmarks hit those milestones again Wednesday. From our July 11 gathering at the New York Stock Exchange to Wednesday’s market close, the S & P 500 advanced more than 3.3% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained roughly 5.5%. The market lost some ground Thursday morning after the July producer price index came in hotter than expected. That PPI followed Tuesday’s rather benign July consumer price index , which boosted stocks and raised expectations for a Federal Reserve interest rate cut during its September meeting. Despite the hot PPI, a rate cut next month still remains pretty much a lock, according to the CME FedWatch tool . The odds, however, did dim slightly on the prospect of two more rate reduction before the end of 2025. The big questions for investors and the Fed have been whether Trump’s tariffs will rekindle worrisome inflation and hurt the labor market. After all, fostering price stability and maximum employment are the pillars of the central bank’s dual mandate. Back on Aug. 1, the government’s jobs report was released and showed some signs of cracks as July non-farm payroll growth was much weaker than expected, and the additions taken together from the prior two months were revised sharply lower. Over the past month, we picked our spots in over a dozen trades — both taking profits and adding to positions. The Club started a new position in Cisco Systems on July 17 and made two subsequent buys of the computer networking equipment powerhouse’s shares. Cisco reported its fiscal 2025 fourth quarter after Wednesday’s close, beating estimates on both the top and bottom lines with a slightly better-than-expected guidance kicker. We’re going to talk more about Cisco and the Club’s other 30 positions during Thursday’s monthly meeting, which will be livestreamed at noon ET. The recorded video will be available to members later in the afternoon. The reaction to earnings reports was behind the portfolio’s best and worst-performing names over the past month. GE Vernova , for example, can thank its blowout earnings release for sending the industrial stock to No. 1. Conversely, the biggest laggard was Eli Lilly, which had its worst session in years following disappointing results for a key late-stage trial. Here’s a breakdown of our three best and three worst-performing stocks over the past month ahead of Thursday’s August monthly meeting. Winners GE Vernova up 17.6% GEV YTD mountain GE Vernova (GEV) year-to-date performance Shares surged after the power equipment maker posted a strong quarter and raised guidance last month. GE Vernova makes products to support the energy grid, which needs more juice to support all the AI data centers being built. The stock hit a record high that session, and several more since the July 23 earnings release. Jim Cramer described the industrial name as “maybe the best story in the entire market” as a result. The Club raised its GE Vernova price target by $150 to $700 per share due to the company’s growing backlog and strong demand. Still, we reiterated our 2 rating, which means we would want to wait for a pullback before adding to our position. On July 17, the Club booked some profits in a small sale of GE Vernova just in case ahead of the Street’s lofty quarterly expectations. Broadcom up 12.7% AVGO YTD mountain Broadcom (AVGO) year-to-date performance Broadcom led the recent rally in chip stocks. Nvidia was our fourth-best performer since July’s annual meeting. The group, in part, received a boost after Trump said he would exempt companies from his planned semiconductor tariffs if they committed to invest in U.S. manufacturing. News such as Samsung’s $16.5 billion deal to supply semiconductors to Tesla improved investor sentiment around the AI trade as well recently. We did, however, sell some Broadcom last week after the stock’s big run and ahead of its quarterly earnings report. The trim doesn’t reflect a change in our conviction. Instead, we’re anticipating some profit-taking after Broadcom’s quarterly report on Sept. 6, and we wanted to get ahead of that. That’s been a trend amongst its peers, at least. Advanced Micro Devices shares dropped 7% in a session following its earnings report last week despite management issuing upbeat guidance. Apple up 10.5% AAPL YTD mountain Apple (AAPL) year-to-date performance Rounding out our top three performers was Apple. Shares of the iPhone maker saw an initial boost following quarterly earnings report in late July. Investors cheered Apple’s biggest revenue growth since 2021, and CEO Tim Cook’s remarks about more generative AI investments. But the bulk of Apple’s gains came last week. Apple announced an additional $100 billion investment into domestic manufacturing, bringing the company’s total U.S. investment to $600 billion over the next four years. The news showcased Cook’s ability to get on a better footing with the Trump administration to mitigate tariff headwinds. Laggards Eli Lilly down 16.7% LLY YTD mountain Eli Lilly (LLY) year-to-date performance The drugmaker has had a rough month. Eli Lilly stock initially moved lower in late July after rival Novo Nordisk, the company’s main competitor in GLP-1s, lowered its 2025 sales growth outlook. The Club made a sale of Eli Lilly as a result, locking in big profits. The bulk of Lilly’s losses, however, came in early August. Alongside its earnings release on Aug. 7, the company revealed subpar results from a late-stage trial on its weight loss pill. The stock, in turn, had its worst session in years. As a result, we lowered our Eli Lilly price target to $800 from $1,000 and downgraded the stock to our 3 rating. That view shifted Wednesday, with our double upgrade back to our buy-equivalent 1 rating after CEO David Ricks and several other company insiders bought lots of shares of the depressed stock. CrowdStrike down 9.7% CRWD YTD mountain CrowdStrike (CRWD) year-to-date performance Shares have experienced a consistent decline amid broader weakness in the cybersecurity sector. CrowdStrike stock, for example, shed 5% in a single session earlier this month following negative commentary from peer Fortinet’s management team regarding the highly anticipated firewall refresh cycle. That didn’t make sense to us because CrowdStrike is cloud-native and doesn’t sell traditional firewall equipment. The negative sentiment spread to fellow Club holding Palo Alto Networks , too, as shares fell despite management never hyping up the refresh cycle. That’s because sometimes when a stock in a certain sector plunges, it can bring down its peers, even if the others have nothing to do with the reason why it’s down. Palo Alto stock has recently been digging itself out of the big hole left following the July 29 rumors of a CyberArk deal and the official announcement by the company a day later. Salesforce down 8.2% CRM YTD mountain Salesforce (CRM) year-to-date performance Shares have slumped with the rest of the enterprise software names. Part of the stock’s weakness can be attributed to investor concerns about generative AI’s impact on software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies like Salesforce. The emerging technology poses a risk to Salesforce’s seat-based licensing models and, in turn, its sales growth. This week’s “AI ate software” note from Melius Research outlined these worries, prompting us on Monday to downgrade Salesforce to a hold-equivalent 2 rating. Still, we’re holding on to see if Salesforce’s Agentforce, its set of AI tools, will help the stock in the long run. (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 . 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