Jim Cramer’s top 10 things to watch in the stock market Monday

By News Room Last updated Oct 14, 2024

My top 10 things to watch Monday, Oct. 14 1. Wall Street looked calm Monday morning as investors geared up for a busier week of corporate earnings . The S & P 500 and Dow are coming off record closes Friday. Morgan Stanley and Abbott Laboratories are the two Investing Club stocks set to report this week. 2. Was Wells Fargo ‘s earnings report the best of the batch on Friday? There’s a strong case to be made, as I laid out in my Sunday column for Investing Club subscribers. Piper Sandler upped its price target to $62 a share from $60 and kept its neutral rating — really? Barclays was more bullish, going to $75 a share from $66 and keeping its buy-equivalent overweight. 3. Why do people cling to buying Boeing when it must do a huge fund-raise to pay down debt? Makes no sense to me. For example, JPMorgan kept its overweight rating but cut its PT to $195 a share from $235. It should downgrade the struggling plane maker, which late Friday announced major job cuts amid mounting losses and a prolonged machinist strike. 4. The China dichotomy: amorphous stimulus talk over the weekend versus its military conducting blockade drills near Taiwan. The latter could mean a real hot war with China given the strategic importance of Taiwan’s semiconductor foundries. 5. A couple of positive Apple notes: JPMorgan said its latest analysis of iPhone availability suggests initial demand weakness was an aberration, while Evercore ISI added the Club stock to its “Tactical Outperform” list. Evercore said the negative sentiment toward Apple has lowered expectations to the point that in-line quarterly results should be enough for the stock to advance. 6. KeyBanc raised its price target on Walmart to $86 a share from $82. Oppenheimer went to $90 from $81. Both firms reiterated their overweight ratings. Walmart is the only general retailer worth owning other than Club holding Costco unless we find out the back-to-school season was better than expected. 7. Seems weird to me that the FDA is rethinking its decision to remove Eli Lilly ‘s tirzepatide — branded as Mounjaro for diabetes and Zepbound for obesity — from its drug shortage list. During that review, the FDA is allowing compounded versions of the popular GLP-1 drugs to continue to be produced. We own Lilly for the Club. Lilly has been spending billions to boost supply while taking steps to crack down on altered versions of tirzepatide. 8. Truist downgraded Amgen to hold from buy, arguing the stock is appropriately pricing in the drugmaker’s opportunity in the obesity market. Shares are up big since the spring when Amgen announced progress on its experimental weight-loss injection . Amgen is among the firms trying to challenge Lilly and Danish rival Novo Nordisk ‘s dominance in the space. 9. Melius Research argued chipmaker Nvidia ‘s competitive moat is formidable and protects the company from being ” Cisco ” during the dot-com bubble when the networking provider briefly became the world’s most valuable company. To this day, Cisco stock has never returned to its 2000 highs. In my mind, one area of Club name Nvidia’s business that doesn’t get talked about enough is its autonomous driving efforts. 10. Morgan Stanley downgraded Caterpillar to a sell-equivalent underweight from equal weight and cut its price target to $332 a share from $349. The Morgan Stanley analyst missed the move in this industrial stock, which has climbed more than 25% since early August. There’s concern about peak earnings, but that’s been the case for ages. JPMorgan, meanwhile, upped its Caterpillar PT to $500 from $435 and kept its overweight rating. Sign up for my Top 10 Morning Thoughts on the Market email newsletter for free (See here for a full list of the stocks at 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.

My top 10 things to watch Monday, Oct. 14

1. Wall Street looked calm Monday morning as investors geared up for a busier week of corporate earnings. The S&P 500 and Dow are coming off record closes Friday. Morgan Stanley and Abbott Laboratories are the two Investing Club stocks set to report this week.

2. Was Wells Fargo‘s earnings report the best of the batch on Friday? There’s a strong case to be made, as I laid out in my Sunday column for Investing Club subscribers. Piper Sandler upped its price target to $62 a share from $60 and kept its neutral rating — really? Barclays was more bullish, going to $75 a share from $66 and keeping its buy-equivalent overweight.

3. Why do people cling to buying Boeing when it must do a huge fund-raise to pay down debt? Makes no sense to me. For example, JPMorgan kept its overweight rating but cut its PT to $195 a share from $235. It should downgrade the struggling plane maker, which late Friday announced major job cuts amid mounting losses and a prolonged machinist strike.

Read the full article here