We're upgrading Palo Alto as shares tumble 10% despite strong earnings
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Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer releases the Homestretch — an actionable afternoon update, just in time for the last hour of trading on Wall Street. The S & P 500 rose modestly Wednesday , aiming to break a three-session losing streak. Bonds steadied after the 10-year Treasury yield rose to its highest level since November 2023 earlier in the day. Oil prices moved higher, a day after the U.S. and Iran traded airstrikes. Iran also said it attacked neighboring U.S. allies, including Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain. Elsewhere, Dell shares were up 13.5% in afternoon trading, topping session highs from earlier in the day. We said Dell was the stock to watch in Wednesday's market because the staying power of its rally on incredible earnings would be a key barometer of whether the recently rocky AI trade can stabilize. Dell's strong comments on demand for AI servers is spreading to Nvidia , with shares up more than 3% and trading a few dollars shy of levels after last week's strong earnings. Nvidia and Dell are close partners, with Nvidia's chips serving as the brains for most of the AI servers that Dell sells. It looks like a nasty bout of profit-taking was hitting Palo Alto Networks . The Club stock was down more than 10% on Wednesday afternoon despite the company's earnings report Tuesday night showing ample growth is still on the horizon thanks to AI. Palo Alto stock is still up more than 75% year to date. We were right to trim shares ahead of earnings to protect our gains, thinking that expectations would be high after fellow Club cyber holding CrowdStrike's great results last week. We decided on Wednesday to upgrade Palo Alto stock to our hold-equivalent 2 , up from a sell-into-strength 3. This brings Palo Alto in line with our rating on CrowdStrike. On Tuesday evening, we upped our Palo Alto price target to $400 from $380. Palo Alto has about a 1.3% weighting in the portfolio versus CrowdStrike at around 4%. That reflects Jim Cramer's preference for CrowdStrike, which was down 6% on Wednesday as the entire cyber group took a breather. GE Vernova erased its early losses after Bloomberg reported the electric power company is expected to play an important role in rebuilding Venezuela's energy infrastructure. An agreement is expected to be announced sometime Wednesday, according to the report, and it is expected to include a commitment to rebuild Venezuela's deteriorated power grid and support "several" gigawatts of capacity. We view this development as incrementally positive for GE Vernova , which would add some diversification to a power and electrification story that is dominated by data centers. Broadcom reports earnings after the closing bell , and we need to see management raise its fiscal 2026 and 2027 AI semiconductor revenue for the stock to start working again. Snowflake , Hewlett Packard Enterprise , NetApp , Five Below , and PVH also report Wednesday evening. Before Thursday's opening bell, Ciena and Campbell's release quarterly results. On the economic docket: jobless claims, S & P Global U.S. Services PMI, and the ISM Services Index are out. (See here for a full list of the stocks in 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.