My Top 10 Things to Watch Tuesday, May 19th 1. Stock futures are down this morning. I’ve been warning for weeks about the challenges rising bond yields pose for stocks. Lower interest rates provide oxygen for stock prices to rise. President Donald Trump announced last night that he was halting plans to attack Iran at the request of some regional leaders in the Middle East. 2. Recent Oil Issues: Oil prices don’t go down much when President Trump says there are signs of peace, but they go up a lot when there are rumors of war. All of this “truce, no carrots” leads to soaring prices. If a peace deal is not reached soon, oil prices could return to their current levels of $108 to $119. If so, could the inflation-sensitive 10-year Treasury yield reach 5.5%? This morning it was 4.62%. 3. Home Depot, the club’s name, reported pretty much the same first quarter results this morning. The company reiterated its full-year outlook. There’s nothing good or bad about it. Stock prices are in dire straits as mortgage rates are out of sync and the housing market remains depressed. This requires a lower rate to move to a higher value. period. We will provide a full analysis of the quarter after management’s conference call with investors. 4. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said on “Mad Money” last night that the company’s foundry business is gaining momentum. Tan did not directly comment on reports that Intel had signed a manufacturing deal with Apple, but said manufacturing quality had improved to the point that outside customers were seriously interested. It is key to both economic recovery and U.S. national security. Tan’s progress during his 14 months at Intel has been nothing short of amazing. 5. HSBC raised its price target on NVIDIA from $295 to $325 ahead of tomorrow night’s earnings report. Keep your purchase rating. HSBC believes that earnings momentum and a good product roadmap are less meaningful stories today. Analysts argued that further diversifying revenue from the cloud service provider’s customer base could help unlock stock price. 6. Broadcom’s price target was raised to $582 from Evercore’s $490, with analysts saying the company is a top candidate to bring optical networking technology closer to chips (optical packaging). We own Broadcom primarily for our custom chip business, but networking is also a key driver. Corning is our flagship business in club optics. Evercore also raised its PT against Broadcom rival Marvell from $133 to $155. 7. Here’s an interesting headline. The Wall Street Journal reported that private equity giant Blackstone and club name Google are partnering to create a new AI cloud company that will run on Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs). Broadcom co-designs the TPU. Blackstone and Google’s stock prices haven’t moved much, but so-called neoclouds like Coreweave and Nevius are falling. This is a foray into their territory. 8. Mizuho raises Micron’s PT from $740 to $800, citing pricing tailwinds as memory supplies tighten through 2027 thanks to AI. Once again, Micron is a stock to buy on a rebound. Shares fell more than 2% this morning and were down nearly 6% yesterday after Seagate’s CEO commented on the pace of new capacity expansion. 9. Goldman Sachs raised its price target for Senior Homeowner Ventas to $110 from $100, suggesting an upside of about 25% from yesterday’s closing price. Keep your purchase rating. The aging of the U.S. population is a structural factor. CEO Debra Cafaro appeared on “Mad Money” last month to explain how Ventas leverages its financial strength to act as an integrator. He said senior housing starts are also at historic lows. 10. Bank of America raised its price target on railroad company CSX from $49 to $51. Analysts expect further upside after the company’s board approved a $5 billion share buyback for about 6% of its outstanding shares. This is comparable to the largest scale in the company’s history. CSX is the type of stock that wins when the economy picks up steam. 11. Here are the losers that can turn into winners: StubHub. Guggenheim upgraded the ticket market from hold to buy and raised its price target from $8.50 to $12.50. Analysts cited tailwinds like this summer’s World Cup and easy fourth-quarter performance as evidence for that. The stock is up nearly 5% premarket, but has been on a rough slide since its September IPO. It ended yesterday down 31% since the beginning of the year. 12. Yesterday afternoon, we added a new company to the club’s portfolio by calling it up from the bullpen watchlist. You can read our inception story here and we claim ownership. We like to start new positions small and expand over time. 13. Several other club articles were published for club members yesterday. We explained the rationale behind our “own, don’t trade” belief in Nvidia and why it’s not too late to initiate a position in the leading AI chipmaker. The company also raised its target price for cybersecurity-related stocks. Barclays raised its PT on CrowdStrike from $550 to $650 this morning. 14. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is preparing to test launch a new version of its reusable Starship rocket this week, less than a month before its planned initial public offering. Linde, the club’s name, is poised to be a winner in this deal as one of SpaceX’s primary gas suppliers, but I worry that all these huge IPOs could be problematic for the broader market. Sign up for free for my Top 10 Morning Thoughts on the Markets email newsletter (See here for a complete list of Jim Cramer Charitable Trust stocks.) As a subscriber to Jim Cramer’s CNBC Investment Club, you’ll receive trade alerts before Jim makes a trade. After Jim sends a trade alert, he waits 45 minutes before buying or selling stocks in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim talks about a stock on CNBC TV, he will issue a trade alert and then wait 72 hours before executing the trade. The above investment club information is subject to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, along with our disclaimer. No fiduciary duties or obligations exist or arise from your receipt of information provided in connection with the Investment Club. No specific results or benefits are guaranteed.
