Our top and bottom performing stocks in the market’s record run over the past 6 weeks
The past six weeks since our last CNBC Investment Club Monthly Meeting have been great for the market overall and most of our portfolio. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq were trying to reach record highs on Wednesday. Since our April 16 meeting through Tuesday’s close, the S&P 500 was up 6.7% and the Nasdaq was up 10.6%. .SPX .IXIC mountain 2026-04-16 The S&P 500 and Nasdaq have had a particularly good run since our monthly meeting on April 16, despite a bit of a rough patch earlier this month due to higher oil prices and bond yields driven by the Iran war, owning the stock. Over the past month and a half, only nine of our 33 portfolio names were in the red. Conversely, nine other stocks rose by double digits; one of which was up almost 100%. As we eagerly await live coverage of our May meeting, which begins at noon ET on Wednesday, here are our top and bottom performers since our last meeting. Top performers rose to 97.9% Wall Street continues to send Arm to record highs on signs that demand for central processing units (CPUs) will continue to rise in the age of agency AI. That’s because Arm is designing (and soon producing its own) CPUs that are well-suited to running AI models because of their lower cost and ability to respond faster to energy demands and queries. Club, which held Nvidia’s quarterly earnings last week, was a prime example of this. Arm shares rose after Nvidia management said Arm-based Vera CPUs (and their Grace predecessors) had generated $20 billion in revenue this year. This is great news for Arm’s copyright business. We initiated a position around $173 on April 20, less than a week after the last Monthly Meeting. We cut twice because we tend to book profits on higher parabolic moves. Kol shares closed at a record high of $321 on Tuesday. CrowdStrike increased by 60.6%, Palo Alto Networks increased by 53.8%. What a transformation in cyberspace. These stocks have been climbing for weeks as the market ignores narrative that artificial intelligence is a threat to the cybersecurity industry. Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike are experiencing steady price target increases. In the past week alone, a barrage of Wall Street firms have increased their targets on CrowdStrike and Palo Alto. On May 18, we did the same and increased CrowdStrike from $500 to $650 and Palo Alto from $200 to $255. We will re-evaluate after next week’s earnings as both stocks have surpassed these levels. But CrowdStrike and Palo Alto were giving back some of their gains on Wednesday. They were sympathetic to cyber peer ZScaler, whose shares fell 30% on weak guidance. Given their massive success, we can’t blame anyone for CrowdStrike and Palo Alto turning a profit, but ZScaler’s problems appear to be specific to the company rather than a warning sign for the entire industry. CrowdStrike is our favorite cybersecurity stock. Qnity Electronics gained 25.3% Qnity, a supplier of materials for making chips and other electronic devices, sent its shares soaring with blockbuster earnings. We found the Qnity region to be the best in the entire semiconductor industry. Management increased its full-year forecast for top and bottom lines. We love Qnity as an under-the-radar AI play. Qnity spun off the Club name from DuPont late last year. The lowest-performing Meta Platforms are down 9.5%. The bulk of Meta’s losses came after quarterly gains in late April. While the parent company of Facebook and Instagram has been releasing the top and bottom line, investors didn’t like management’s decision to spend more on productive AI going forward. Meta reaffirmed its full-year total expense forecast, but the company still raised its capital spending outlook by $10 billion at the midpoint. Investors aren’t as tolerant of Meta’s spending because Meta doesn’t have a public cloud to fall back on like our other three hyperscalers (Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft). To be sure, it was an impressive quarter, with the strongest revenue growth in five years. We saw all sales as short-sighted. Home Depot fell 7.9% This home improvement giant continues to be crushed by stubbornly high mortgage rates. We’ve had too much patience with too little reward on this stock. Frankly, we regretted even getting into it. Home Depot was supposed to be a play on the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates. This clearly hasn’t worked yet. In the face of rising gas prices and high bond yields, will new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh be able to fulfill President Donald Trump’s desire for a rate cut? We will see. But we took solace in the fact that Home Depot reached same-store sales growth parity with Lowe’s this quarter. Earlier this month, we lowered our price target on Home Depot from $420 to $360 after a quarter like this. Capital One lost 7.1% The sluggish quarter in April caused this credit card stock to fall much lower. We don’t think this release should take away our belief in the transformational story that emerged from Capital One’s acquisition of Discover last year. But the benefits of the $35 billion deal last longer than expected. Weakness in the financial sector due to concerns about consumer health and the economy didn’t help either. Not all bank stocks got the short end of the stick. Club, which holds shares of Goldman Sachs, is up more than 10% since our last monthly meeting after SpaceX began dealmaking to lead what is expected to be the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history. (See here for a complete list of stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) When you subscribe 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 trading alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable foundation’s portfolio. If Jim talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trading alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTMENT CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY, TOGETHER WITH THE DISCLAIMERS. NO CIVIL OBLIGATIONS OR DUTIES EXIST OR SHALL BE RESULTING FROM YOUR RECEIVING ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTMENT CLUB. NO SPECIFIC RESULT OR PROFIT CAN BE GUARANTEED.
