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. Monday market: Stocks were mixed with the S & P 500 and Nasdaq hovering around their all-time highs and the Dow off slightly. Last week’s rally was driven by the Magnificent Seven stocks, with Club names Apple , Amazon , Alphabet , Meta Platforms , and Microsoft closing at highs. However, the group was seeing some profit-taking to start the new week, which we cannot fault because we trimmed our large position in Meta shortly after the opening bell. AI trade : The artificial intelligence buildout trade was strong after Corning announced Monday morning it expects second-quarter core sales to exceed guidance with core earnings-per-share (EPS) at the high end of or slightly above its guidance range. The specialty materials company cited the adoption of its optical connectivity products for generative AI. The update helped boost shares of semiconductors like Club names Nvidia and Broadcom as well as other AI stocks like Dell and Super Micro Compute r. Housing plays : Treasury yields were relatively unchanged, but there was a solid move happening in a bunch of home improvement- and housing turnover-related stocks. Home Depot , Lowe’s , Whirlpool , Williams-Sonoma as well as Club names Stanley Black & Decker and Best Buy , and several others traded higher Monday despite little company-specific news These could be stocks to watch if market odds increase on Federal Reserve interest rate cuts in the weeks and months ahead. As of midday Monday, the probability of at least a 25-basis point cut in September was about 77%, according to the CME FedWatch tool. That’s up from about 65.5% at the start of July. More oil M & A: Devon Energy announced it will acquire the Williston Basin assets of private equity-backed Grayson Mill Energy in a cash and stock deal valued at $5 billion. Devon believes the transaction will be immediately accretive to its key per-share financial measures. More consolidation in the energy industry could be positive for the group. Club name Coterra Energy could be a player — either as an acquirer or an acquiree, because of its clean balance sheet and capital efficiency gains. Up next: Earnings and economic data will be quiet over the next few days before things pick up toward the end of the week. Costco reports its June sales after the market closes Wednesday. Telsey Advisory Group wrote on Monday that it expects Costco to report total comparable sales growth of 5.8%. (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…
Read More: Why our stocks tied to AI and dependent on housing are rallying in a mixed