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 was little changed Tuesday, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average is lower and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is higher. Wall Street is coming off a day in which AI tech stocks surged over enthusiasm for Meta Platform’s Muse agentic product, propelling higher shares of Meta, along with CPU beneficiaries ( Intel ), memory makers ( Micron ), and cybersecurity stocks ( CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks ). That core theme is seeing positive follow-through from Monday’s gains, but we cannot say the same for the rest of the S & P 500. One issue limiting the market’s gains to select AI buildout stocks was the move in oil prices. WTI crude rallied from an early morning low of $92.40 per barrel to around $95. The financials, as a group, were by far the worst performing sector in the S & P 500, down over 1.5%. Truist analyst Matthew Coad wrote in a note to clients that retail brokers like Schwab were selling off on fears that personalized finance AI agents will help consumers move cash out of low-yielding brokerage accounts and into higher-yielding products, a process known as cash sorting. Shares of Schwab are off over 5%. “This would threaten the spread income comprising a substantial part of brokers’ earning” Coad wrote. This potential impact on the retail brokerage business helps explain why Club name Goldman Sachs is down less than Morgan Stanley , which owns E-Trade. Goldman Sachs is also in talks to acquire the credit firm Palmer Square for $37 billion, Bloomberg News reported , in a move that would expand the investment bank’s presence in the $1.3 trillion collateralized loan obligation market. GS MS 1D mountain Goldman’s one-day performance versus Morgan Stanley. Apple may be making a bigger push into the health wearables market. Bloomberg reported that the company is developing a screenless health and fitness tracker that would compete more directly with Whoop and other newer wearables. The device, which is in preliminary stages and wouldn’t launch before 2028, would reportedly use a thin fabric band with a sensor-equipped module rather than a screen. The project is part of a broader push by Apple to rethink its health and wearables strategy as Whoops and other rivals such as Oura gain traction. Apple has already started incorporating Whoop-style features into its latest Watch and revamped Health app, including more advanced heart rate tracking and metrics that assess users’ readiness for the day. We like seeing the iPhone maker explore new form factors beyond the Apple Watch, particularly in health, where its massive installed base gives it an opportunity to deepen engagement with customers. But with no decision yet on whether to launch the product and a potential release still years away, we view the report as a welcome sign of innovation rather than something that changes our near-term investment thesis. Shares of Apple are trading higher in the session and are on pace for a new record close. The stock has rallied roughly 8% since its fall hardware event where it introduced the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max and the foldable iPhone Duo. Preorders for the Duo start next month, and we’ll be closely monitoring lead times as a sign of demand for these smartphones, which start at $1,999 and go up from there based on storage. Homebuilder KB Home reports earnings after the closing bell on Tuesday. Wednesday is a busy morning of earnings with Cintas , Paychex , General Mills , and Cracker Barrel scheduled to report. On the economic front, we’ll see S & P Global U.S. Manufacturing and Services PMI for September. (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.
AI disruption fears slam another pocket of the market. Plus, Apple explores a new wearable