S&P 500 and the Dow go different ways — plus, Google gives our chip names a lift

CNBC

4 days ago

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: The S & P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were clinging to slight gains Thursday afternoon, boosted in part by Google parent Alphabet's strong earnings report the prior evening. The 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average , meanwhile, is lagging, thanks to a slide in shares of IBM , Club name Honeywell and UnitedHealth . IBM was down on earnings, and the same goes for Honeywell — though, as Jim Cramer argued earlier Thursday , the industrial conglomerate's pullback is overdone. Shares of UnitedHealth fell after the company said it was cooperating with the Justice Department's investigation of its billing practices for Medicare. Follow through: Danaher was our top-performing stock on Thursday and is going for a three-session winning streak. The upswing began on Tuesday when Danaher delivered better-than-feared earnings, driven in part by its important bioprocessing business. Rival Thermo Fisher Scientific's quarterly results on Wednesday exceeded estimates, offering confirmation that the business of serving companies that develop and manufacture therapeutics is improving after a difficult stretch. Indeed, our frustration with Danaher's performance this year is no secret — and even with this week's gains, the stock was still not back to where it closed July 10. Still, we're pleased to see this positive stretch and remain hopeful that the momentum sticks around. Chip flows: The Financial Times reported Thursday that at least $1 billion worth of Club name Nvidia 's artificial intelligence chips were "smuggled" into China in the three months following the Trump administration's decision in April to tighten U.S. export controls on high-powered semiconductors. In a statement to our CNBC colleagues , Nvidia addressed the report. "Trying to cobble together datacenters from smuggled products is a losing proposition, both technically and economically," a spokesperson said. "Datacenters require service and support, which we provide only to authorized NVIDIA products." Concerns about technically banned Nvidia technology entering China are hardly new — for example, there was a lot of discussion about whether this was happening in the wake of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's emergence in January. We're thinking about the risks of these kind of reports differently now, though, given the Trump administration restored Nvidia's ability to sell its made-for-China H20 chip back into the market in mid-July . Proponents of allowing Nvidia to compete in China had argued that Washington's technology bans weren't as effective as their backers believed. With the White House adopting a more accommodating stance toward Nvidia's overseas sales, our view is that investors focusing a lot on the FT headline would be missing the forest for the trees. Next week, we're likely about to go through another stretch of earnings reports where all the big American tech companies announce that they plan on spending more on AI than they did three months ago. Alphabet did exactly that Wednesday night, and that's likely the main reason why shares of Nvidia added more than 1% in Thursday's session. Alphabet is a big buyer of Nvidia chips, as well as a longtime customer of fellow Club name Broadcom's custom chip design services for its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). Unsurprisingly, shares of Broadcom also added around 2% Thursday. Up next: Chipmaker Intel is the headliner among companies reporting earnings after Thursday's close. Hoka owner Deckers Outdoor , gold miner Newmont and artificial heart valve maker Edwards Lifesciences also report. On Friday morning, we'll hear from insurer Centene , used car dealer AutoNation , consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton , and Spectrum parent Charter Communications . (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 . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.