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. Market moves : Stocks were mixed on Friday as bond yields rose following a few days of pressure on market rates. Still, the S & P 500 was on track for a weekly gain of more than 1.5%. The index was trading at record highs ahead of the Fed’s meeting next week, when the monetary policy-making committee is largely expected to cut the Fed funds overnight bank lending interest rate by 25 basis points to a target range of 4% to 4.25%. Fed funds is the rate everyone is referring to when they talk about central bank rate cuts. Laguna news: All week, we’ve been listening to the industrial-focused Morgan Stanley Laguna conference for updates surrounding names in our portfolio. One that we didn’t get to yet, was Eaton , whose CEO Paulo Ruiz spoke on Thursday evening after the market was closed. The three electrification end-markets Ruiz said he was focused on for investment were data centers, utilities, and aerospace. Given how the AI story was the big theme of this week, after Oracle provided a staggering multiyear revenue framework, data centers were a major focus of the speech. We already knew about how hyperscalers — those megacap, household name tech companies — are racing to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in new data center projects, but Ruiz backed it up with hard numbers. According to Ruiz, at the time of last year’s conference, the data center industry had $150 billion in backlog between projects that were being built and announced. Currently, that number has more than tripled to $470 billion industry-wide. On utilities, Ruiz pointed out how load growth historically was growing at about 0.5% per year, but the market needs to invest more right now because growth is forecasted to increase to 3% per year. In aerospace, Ruiz said the defense industry is looking better than what the company forecasted at its investor day in March. All in, the Laguna conference was a strong reminder of the secular tailwinds supporting Eaton’s business and why its growth should continue in the years ahead. Next week: While no companies within the portfolio report earnings next week, some of the notable releases include General Mills, Darden Restaurants, FedEx, and Lennar. Two Club names have analyst day events: CrowdStrike has one on Wednesday, as part of its annual Falcon conference; and on Thursday, DuPont is introducing the future DuPont company and also Qnity Electronics. Of course, it’s also Fed week, with the rate decision on Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET, followed by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s post-meeting news conference. (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.
