Here are the 2 big things we’re watching in the stock market this week
It’s Nvidia earnings week, which means investors will get their clearest read yet on the AI boom. Oh, and there’s also the not-so-small matter of the Fed’s influential confab at Jackson Hole and what it could signal about the future path of interest rates. Those are the biggest market-moving events of the week, but we’ll also get earnings from fellow Club names CrowdStrike and Salesforce — two software companies with diverging futures in the eyes of many investors. Another wrinkle for this week: the last-minute collapse of trade talks between the U.S. and Canada. The Trump administration imposed 50% tariffs on certain Canadian goods, and Canada responded with retaliatory duties set to take effect on Sept. 8. While not a wide-ranging trade war like the one in 2025, it nevertheless represents an additional source of geopolitical tensions for investors to monitor, on top of the unresolved situation in the Middle East. Let’s get into it. 1. Earnings: Come Friday, we should all have a better sense of how AI is impacting three important but contested areas of the AI trade: hardware, software and cybersecurity. Rewind to the beginning of the year: software stocks were pretty much left for dead as investors bid hardware names to ever-higher levels, thanks to the incredible progress being made at AI labs like Anthropic. We lamented that Salesforce was designated as legacy software that would never survive in the age of AI, but not as much as we pounded the table on the idea that cybersecurity would benefit massively from AI — not get disrupted by it. We argued over and over that exchange-traded funds such as the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector , known as the IGV, were bucketing together stocks that had no business being traded as if they were the same thing. Eventually, the market started to come around to our view, differentiating among names in the software space. Thankfully, cybersecurity players like Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike were designated as clear-cut winners. Now, as we gear up for this week’s reports, cybersecurity remains a beneficiary. However, the hardware trade has stalled out a bit. There are concerns about the viability of AI labs’ massive funding commitments, while growing political backlash against data centers may also weigh on the group. Meanwhile, the traditional enterprise software vendors have started to show signs of life. That constant push-pull is what makes this week so exciting as we hear from Club names Nvidia, Salesforce, and CrowdStrike. Outside the portfolio, those reports will be followed on Thursday by earnings releases from chipmaker Marvell Technology in hardware (a rival of Club name Broadcom ) and Workday in software. A report on Aug. 13 that Workday could be taken private has helped sentiment around the software complex. Taking a closer look at what the Street is expecting for each report: Nvidia : As has been the case for the past couple of years, better-than-expected results and above-consensus guidance for the current quarter are likely the minimum investors need to see to solidify the stock’s move over the $210 level. Nvidia’s commentary on demand and management’s ability to ramp supply to meet it — while maintaining gross profit margins in the mid-70s percent range — will likely determine the price action following the release. The impact of rising memory prices and what Nvidia is doing to mitigate it will be another topic of interest on the call; on that note, Bloomberg News r eported Saturday that Nvidia has warned some of its biggest customers it’s raising prices on servers containing its AI chips. Other potential topics include visibility on the timing of broader co-packaged optics adoption in the data center, which carries implications for our Corning position, and the reception to its new standalone CPU rack as agentic AI increases the need for more CPUs (central processing units) relative to its bread-and-butter GPUs (graphics processing units). We also fully expect Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and CFO Colette Kress to face questions about the company’s $500 billion financing partnership with Wall Street firms to help fund the unprecedented AI infrastructure buildout. Finally, any commentary on proprietary versus open-source large language models will also help us better think through the dynamics of the AI trade into year-end. In recent weeks, Huang has spoken out in favor of open-source alternatives, and the company unveiled one of its own earlier this month. Analysts polled by LSEG expect Nvidia to report earnings per share of $2.09 on revenue of $92.04 billion. Salesforce : This is an important quarter for Salesforce. With the wind at the stock’s back, up over 30% from the late-July low, CEO Marc Benioff has one more chance to bust apart the «SaaSpocalypse» narrative. Given the concern about AI-related disruption and displacement, expect revenue and remaining performance obligation (RPO) growth rates to be closely scrutinized. Profits are important, of course. But top-line growth reflects demand, and it’s the question of demand in the AI era that has roiled the SaaS space all year. Salesforce has told investors that revenue should accelerate in the second half of its fiscal year, so the company’s guidance for the current period — its fiscal 2027 third quarter — will need to make good on that pledge. Annual recurring revenue (ARR) for its Agentforce suite was $1.2 billion in the April quarter. Expect the updated figure to be under the microscope. Salesforce is projected to report revenue of $11.32 billion and adjusted EPS of $3.27, according to LSEG. Less than three weeks after the print, the company holds its annual Dreamforce showcase from Sept. 15-17 in San Francisco. CrowdStrike : We expect to hear more about how cybersecurity is an enabling technology for AI, given that an enterprise can’t adopt new technology — and certainly not an autonomous technology like agentic AI that has access to sensitive data — without ensuring it is secure. That said, while we think demand has likely only strengthened since we last heard from CrowdStrike on June 3, shares have priced in some of this. The real issue for CrowdStrike going into the print is expectations. Shares down more than 15% from recent highs certainly helps to address that, but better-than-expected results and a strong guide are likely the minimum needed to resume the rally. Even with the pullback of late, this is still a stock that’s more than doubled since its April lows. CrowdStrike is expected to deliver adjusted earnings of 29 cents per share on sales of $1.44 billion, according to LSEG. CrowdStrike holds its annual Fal.Con expo from Aug. 31 to Sept. 3 in Las Vegas. Last year’s event proved to be a catalyst for the stock. 2. Economy: The week’s slate of economic data releases, including a fresh inflation reading, all build up to Friday. That’s when Kevin Warsh is set to deliver his first speech as Fed chairman at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, the annual gathering of central bankers, policymakers, economists and academics hosted by the Kansas City branch of the Fed. There’s always anticipation for the event in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, but it takes on an additional level of importance and intrigue when it is a Fed leader’s maiden voyage. As economist Claudia Sahm wrote in a recent blog post , «With the benefit of hindsight, a Fed Chair’s first speech at Jackson Hole has been a window into their economic worldview and their style as a central banker.» Sahm, who now runs her own consulting group, is a former White House and Fed economist. The market has plenty of reason to want to hear more from Warsh, who assumed his post in May, replacing Jerome Powell. Warsh has promised «regime change» at the Fed — something we’re generally supportive of — but so far he’s been light on the details of what that entails. To help in the process, he’s appointed various task forces on matters such as balance sheet policy, central bank communications, and inflation frameworks. Warsh has said he expects the task forces to complete their work by year-end . In the meantime, some observers, including former Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester, have said the market is struggling to understand the Warsh-led Fed’s «reaction function» — essentially, how the central bank will adjust policy in response to new economic data. In particular, Warsh faced criticism following the Fed’s late July policy meeting for not providing more clarity on what it would take for him to support an interest rate hike, given inflation stubbornly above the Fed’s 2% target. Now consider that oil prices are trading above their level at the time of the July meeting, along with the rise in longer-dated Treasury yields and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s response to liquidity problems in that part of the yield curve. Against that backdrop, it’s easy to see why there’s so much anticipation for Warsh’s speech on Friday. There’s no sense in speculating what he might say, or how the market will react. However, it’s worth noting that Warsh said at the July meeting press conference that his task forces may serve as a starting point for his Jackson Hole address. He said he planned to check in with them in the coming weeks, and «that may or may not inform anything I have to say in Jackson.» Leading up to Friday, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index for July will be released on Wednesday. The PCE index is the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, despite the consumer price index (CPI) being the more well-known measure. July CPI came in softer-than-expected, leading the market to price in less likelihood of a Fed interest rate hike in September, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool. Economists polled by FactSet expect the core PCE index to have risen 0.18% month over month and 3.2% year over year. Also on Wednesday morning, we’ll get the second preliminary reading on U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) for the second quarter, as well as the Census Bureau’s durable goods orders for July. The durable goods report helps measure demand for products meant to last at least three years. That includes aircraft, so it captures demand for Club name Boeing’s planes. Orders in June bounced back to a modest month-over-month gain after a decline in May. Consensus for July is a 0.4% increase. Week ahead Monday, Aug. 24 Before the bell: Xpeng (XPEV), PDD Holdings (PDD) After the bell: PicS (PICS) Tuesday, Aug. 25 Building permits at 10 a.m. ET New home sales at 10 a.m. ET Before the bell: DICK’S Sporting Goods (DKS), Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS), Vipshop (VIPS), Bank of Montreal (BMO) After the bell: Intuit (INTU), Zoom (ZM), HEICO (HEI) Wednesday, Aug. 26 PCE price index at 8:30 a.m. ET Durable goods orders at 8:30 a.m. ET Second-quarter U.S. GDP at 8:30 a.m. ET Before the bell: Kohl’s (KSS), Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF), Dycom (DY), Williams-Sonoma (WSM), Li Auto (LI), JM Smucker (SJM), Bath & Body Works (BBWI) After the bell: Nvidia (NVDA), CrowdStrike (CRWD), Salesforce (CRM) , Okta (OKTA), Synopsys (SNPS), Agilent (A), HP inc (HPQ) Thursday, Aug. 27 Before the bell: Best Buy (BBY), Bilibili (BILI), Canadian Imperial Bank (CM), Royal Bank of Canada (RY), Toronto-Dominion (TD), Dollar General (DG), Burlington (BURL), Dollar Tree (DT), Hormel Foods (HRL), Canadian Solar (CSIQ) After the bell: Marvell Technology (MRVL), Iren (IREN), Autodesk (ADSK), Affirm (AFRM), Ulta Beauty (ULTA), SentinelOne (S), Workday (WDAY), Gap (GAP) Friday, Aug. 28 Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh’s Jackson Hole speech at 10 a.m. ET (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long CRWD, NVDA, BA, and CRM. See here for a full list of the stocks.) 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.
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