CrowdStrike lands an upgrade, and Jim Cramer's advice on Apple ahead of earnings
Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a “Morning Meeting” livestream at 10:20 a.m. ET. Here’s a recap of Monday’s key moments. 1. Wall Street is in rally mode to kick off the new trading week. The Nasdaq and Dow are both up around 1%, though the S & P 500 is not too far behind. Megacap tech names like Amazon and Alphabet are having strong days, supporting the Nasdaq. With its more than 4.5% advance Monday, Amazon has comfortably erased all of Friday’s post-earnings losses, which Jim Cramer at the time saw as a buying opportunity . A big drop in crude prices, on hopes of a diplomatic solution to the Middle East conflict, is giving support to oil-related stocks, such as Boeing . We added to our position in the planemaker earlier Monday, as the dust settles on last week’s cash-flow-guidance reset. Despite our fundamental reasons for sticking with Boeing, the stock’s linkage to oil prices this year must be acknowledged. “If oil goes lower, Boeing goes higher no matter what,” Jim said. 2. CrowdStrike is not participating in Monday’s tech rally, despite catching an upgrade from Deutsche Bank. Analysts went to a buy from hold, arguing that “investors are still not fully appreciating the extent to which AI will expand the market for cybersecurity and CrowdStrike’s leadership at the forefront.” And yet we’re seeing weakness across the cyber landscape to start the week, with disappointing results from industry peer Check Point likely weighing on the group. On the heels of Fortinet’s unsatisfactory earnings report last week, “we had another cybersecurity company not do well,” Jim said. “What’s happened here is we have the haves and the have-nots. CrowdStrike is a definite ‘have.'” He said he wants investors without a position in CrowdStrike “to think about this.” 3. Apple is set to report earnings after Monday’s closing bell. With Apple shares having a nice run since August, portfolio director Jeff Marks noted the stock’s valuation has been extended. That raises expectations into the print, which is CEO John Ternus’ first since taking over from Tim Cook on Sept. 1. The conference call will be helpful in getting a better sense of demand for the iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone Duo, Jeff said, along with the impact of higher memory prices. Jim reiterated his “own it, don’t trade it” mantra, but emphasized he’s not making a call on how shares will react to the results. “Historically it would go down after this big run, but I don’t know when I could get back in,” he said. 4. Stocks covered in Monday’s rapid-fire at the end of the video were: Estee Lauder , Abbott Labs , PepsiCo , and Marriott International . (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long AMZN, GOOGL, BA, CRWD and AAPL. See here for a full list of the stocks.) 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.
