How we navigated the market’s winning week amid Trump’s Truth Social surprises
Wall Street had a great first full trading week of 2026, overcoming the barrage of uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s social media posts and the surprise military operation in Venezuela. The S&P 500 closed at a record high on Friday after December job growth was weaker than expected. The government reported that nonfarm payrolls rose by 50,000 last month; That was below the 73,000 economists had predicted, raising the prospect of further rate cuts by the Federal Reserve. For the week, the S&P 500 gained 1.6%. The Nasdaq rose nearly 2% last week but remains short of its record high. .SPX .IXIC 5D Mountain S&P 500 and Nasdaq last week The market’s hot rise comes despite the US catch-up with Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro last weekend and Trump’s dizzying number of announcements. In a series of Truth Social posts on Wednesday, Trump said he wanted to ban big investors from buying homes; prevent defense companies from distributing dividends and buying back shares; and called for increasing the country’s defense budget. On Thursday, the president ordered mortgage bond purchases designed to lower interest rates. Regardless, Jim Cramer warned that investors should not make sudden moves. This is because “strange patterns” often appear on the market in the first weeks of the year. “This is not the time to make big bets,” Jim said during Thursday’s Morning Meeting. However, the Club did make a few small, calculated transactions. We divested some of our BlackRock shares on Monday. The financial name has bounced since the start of the year following a lackluster performance in 2025, so we have benefited from the strength. In addition to BlackRock, club names Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs will announce their earnings next week. We exited Solstice Advanced Materials on Thursday. Club, which holds Honeywell, spun off the specialty chemicals company on October 30, leaving us with a small Solstice position representing just 0.15% of the entire portfolio. It’s a great name, but we were hesitant to buy more at this price point. We decided to put Solstice back in the Bullpen instead. Despite the market’s outperformance of the NVDA 5D mount Nvidia last week, some of our stocks are still lagging this week. Nvidia, for example, fell over 2% despite many positive developments from the company. On Monday evening, CEO Jensen Huang made positive comments about the chipmaker’s partnerships at the Consumer Electronics Show. A day later, CFO Colette Kress said management’s $500 billion sales guidance for 2025 and 2026 was “definitely growing.” Moving forward, Bloomberg reported on Thursday that China will allow imports of Nvidia’s H200 chips. But none of this was enough to push the stock into the green for the week. We told existing Nvidia investors not to buy the dip. Although more growth is on the horizon, especially with China back at the table, we don’t see any near-term catalysts that would suggest a breakout to the upside is imminent for Nvidia shares. For those without a position, this may be a good time to start one. CRWD 5D Mount CrowdStrike last week Nvidia wasn’t the only portfolio holding with a surprising reaction to company news. CrowdStrike fell more than 3% on Thursday after management announced plans to acquire identity management startup SGNL in a $740 million deal. The club saw this as a win, but a broader rotation of technology stocks put pressure on shares. This acquisition gives CrowdStrike a stronger foothold in identity security, one of the fastest-growing segments in the entire industry. In fact, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz told CNBC that the deal presents “a huge opportunity for us to disrupt the identity market.” Identity security has become increasingly important as the explosion of artificial intelligence makes online attacks even more sophisticated. Despite Thursday’s decline, CrowdStrike shares are still up about 3.8% for the week. (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.
