Wall Street has chalked up a number of milestones since the Club’s April Monthly Meeting. The Nasdaq Composite has set a series of all-time highs, including on Tuesday, when it closed above the 17,000 level for the first time. Despite a pullback Wednesday, the tech-heavy index is up nearly 8% since April 24, the day of our April gathering. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average secured a historical record of its own May 17, when it settled north of 40,000 for the first — and so far only — time. The 30-stock Dow has since drifted a bit lower, closing Wednesday at 38,441.5. It’s basically flat since the April meeting. The S & P 500 most recently closed at a record May 21, though the broad index is up about 3.9% since April 24. In recent weeks, Wall Street has celebrated signs of easing inflation , while the artificial intelligence trade continued to have had a hold on many tech stocks. The latter fact is on display in our list of top-five performing portfolio stocks since the April 24 close through Wednesday’s close, the eve of our May meeting. NVDA YTD mountain Nvidia (NVDA) year-to-date performance Nvidia came in No. 1 out of the Club’s 33 holdings. The chipmaker jumped 44.1% since April’s Monthly Meeting. Shares of Nvidia had been climbing into last week’s blockbuster quarterly earnings , only to take another leg higher after crushing Wall Street’s sky-high expectations on the top and bottom line. The results, guidance and management commentary gave investors assurance that Nvidia can maintain its standing as an AI chip powerhouse for years to come. Nvidia’s outperformance is no surprise to us. The Club’s “own it, don’t trade it” stock has been on a tear for nearly two years. It’s more than doubled since the start of 2024 alone. AAPL YTD mountain Apple (AAPL) year-to-date performance Our other “own it, don’t trade it” stock registered the second-best performance since our April 24 meeting, with Apple shares climbing 12.6% over that period. The stock really took off following Apple’s earnings beat on May 2 . Investors are cheering recent signs that the company’s China market may be improving, and seem hopeful that an expected AI-integrated iPhone will boost sales of its flagship device. Concerns had mounted since the start of the year about waning iPhone demand in Apple’s second-largest market, China, as local rivals grab smartphone share. Building on the better-than-feared China results in the May earnings report, data released Tuesday from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology indicated that iPhone shipments in the region surged 52% in April. Jim Cramer said the figures seemed extreme, but directionally correct. Still, we’re bullish on Apple’s forthcoming AI offerings, which we believe will usher in a significant upgrade cycle for the iPhone. Bank of America analysts reiterated these sentiments in a client note on Wednesday, describing the upgrade cycle as a “once in a decade type of event.” We expect to hear more about management’s AI strategy during Apple’s developers conference in June. COST YTD mountain Costco Wholesale’s year-to-date stock performance. Shares of Costco Wholesale rose 11.4% since the Club’s last monthly gathering, capturing third place in the portfolio. Costco closed Tuesday’s session at a record high of $813.17. The stock has experienced a run higher into its quarterly print Thursday night, likely on the back of positive Wall Street chatter and signs that shoppers want more bang for their buck as inflationary pressures in the U.S. economy remain sticky. In these conditions, the benefits of Costco’s membership really shines. On May 16, in particular, shares surged after fellow value-focused retailer Walmart delivered a strong earnings beat. At the time, Jim said Costco was “the stock to buy off of Walmart,” he added. “Costco and Walmart are where this frugal consumer [goes].” LLY YTD mountain Eli Lilly’s year-to-date stock performance. Coming in at No. 4, Eli Lilly stock jumped 10.8% since our April 24 meeting. Shares of the pharmaceutical giant surged on its April 30 quarterly earnings report and climbed even higher since then, closing Wednesday at a record of $811.53. Alongside its first-quarter numbers, management raised the company’s full-year guidance on revenue and profit, highlighting huge demand for the company’s diabetes drug Mounjaro and anti-obesity drug Zepbound. That was on display again Friday when Eli Lilly announced that the company would spend $5.3 billion to boost manufacturing for both GLP-1 treatments, which share an active ingredient called tirzepatide. A few days prior, Eli Lilly stock advanced after receiving approval in China to market tirzepatide for diabetes, as well. All of this is great news for the Club because the crux of our investment thesis in Eli Lilly is the growth of GLP-1s treatments. AVGO YTD mountain Broadcom’s year-to-date stock performance. Broadcom added 10.6% since April 24, rounding out the list at No. 5. Shares closed at a record $1,436.17 apiece on May 15, but have largely traded sideways since then. The stock closed Wednesday’s session at $1,390.67, down about 3% from that peak. A slew of promising AI announcements helped fuel the stock’s strong performance since the April meeting. For example, fellow Club holding Alphabet unveiled new AI-integrated offerings at Google’s I/O developer’s conference the same week of Broadcom’s record. Broadcom for years has worked on Google’s internal AI chip. It also stands to gain from the aforementioned AI-driven iPhone upgrade cycle we expect to begin later this year. More broadly, Broadcom has been one of the portfolio’s biggest beneficiaries of the AI trade. The stock is up 24.6% in 2024, compared to the S & P 500’s 10.4% advance over the same period. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long NVDA, AAPL, COST, AVGO and LLY. 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.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on April 10, 2024 in New York City. As new inflation data released today showed a continued rise, stocks fell across the board with the Dow falling over 400 points.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Wall Street has chalked up a number of milestones since the Club’s April Monthly Meeting.
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