Every weekday the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer releases the Homestretch audio feature in time for the last hour of trading on Wall Street. Here’s today’s edition. Choppy day: The market was lacking momentum in either direction as it digested a slew of Dow industrial component earnings reports. Some standouts to the upside were Verizon and Club name Procter & Gamble . Meanwhile, Johnson & Johnson beat but the stock was lagging and 3M got slammed. Inflation still here: Jim Cramer said Tuesday he’s observed that companies are still dealing with inflation. “This is not what we want to hear,” he said. This hasn’t been good for some stocks that performed well into the end of 2023. What happened was a lot of stocks rallied in November and December as Fed interest rate cuts started to get priced into the market, starting as early as March. That put them at valuations that reflected sanguine times compared to what we’re seeing in 2024 guidance, which hasn’t been that great. Bucking the trend: However, inflation at P & G has gone down with input costs coming in lower . That’s how it was able to get a huge gross margin upside in its latest earnings report. We’re moving our rating on P & G stock to a 2 , because the stock was up on a spike not typical for a defensive stock like this. Club winners: Names doing well Tuesday were Meta Platforms after Citi raised its price target to $440 per share from $425. Ford was also having a good day, and so were our banks Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley . Estee Lauder was higher, possibly on China taking steps to stabilize its stock market. However, Jim said he’s not convinced that on China’s apparent rescue package. “People feel like China’s problem is going away today,” Jim said. “I think it’s a huge stretch and I’m not buying into it.” In other words, our China-tied stocks might not get any ripple-effect benefit. Club laggards: GE Healthcare and Stanley Black & Decker were lower. We tend to see these names move inversely to…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply