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. Markets: The S & P 500 turned positive Wednesday as investors put more weight on another day of strong bank earnings than verbal volleys in the Trump administration’s renewed trade grievances with China. Bank of America shares jumped more than 3.5%. Morgan Stanley surged 5%. Both banks delivered better-than-expected quarterly earnings and revenue before Wall Street’s opening bell. That followed Tuesday morning’s solid results from Club names Wells Fargo , BlackRock , and Goldman Sachs . Wells Fargo has been the standout, hitting an all-time high Wednesday. The stock was riding a three-session winning streak of more than 10% heading into Wednesday’s close. In China trade developments, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC on Wednesday morning that the stock market’s reaction to China trade talks won’t keep the U.S. from doing what’s right for the country’s economic future. On Tuesday afternoon, President Donald Trump threatened China with a cooking oil embargo as retaliation for Beijing not buying U.S. soybeans. The renewed trade hostilities all started last week after China put export controls on rare earths and Trump retaliated Friday with an extra 100% tariff on Chinese goods entering the U.S., starting Nov. 1. The Trump administration, on Wednesday afternoon, is putting numbers on federal worker job cuts. Budget chief Russ Vought said the reductions will likely be “north of 10,000.” These comments make good on Trump’s intention to use the two-week-old government shutdown to reduce the federal workforce. (Data) center of the universe: Even with escalating China tensions, the artificial intelligence boom is still front and center on Wall Street. The latest announcement involves Club names Microsoft , Nvidia , and BlackRock. They’re all part of an investor consortium that is buying Aligned Data Centers for $40 billion . Elon Musk’s xAI, a big buyer of Nvidia chips, is also involved. Aligned’s data center footprint contains more than 5 gigawatts of operational and planned capacity. We asked Zev Fima , portfolio analyst for the Club, for his thoughts on the deal: “It’s just the latest monster deal in a series of monster deals announced in the AI space as it relates to infrastructure. When you have investors as sophisticated as BlackRock, or companies with the AI expertise at the level of Nvidia and Microsoft putting up this much money, you can’t write-off the AI trade as a bubble. Some areas may be bubbly but there is clearly a massive amount of demand for AI and in turn massive demand for AI infrastructure and power. This serves to further support the view that we are in the very early innings of the AI trend. This may not be a deal to build out more power or infrastructure, but it does show the importance of owning that infrastructure and being able to secure the power needed to drive AI. There will be many AI providers over time. To an extent, large language models themselves are on the path to commoditization. So, it’s the ones that own the infrastructure that will be able to win no matter.” Faster chips: Apple unveiled refreshed versions of the MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro based on a new, faster chip. The upgraded processor, known as the M5, will deliver “the next big leap in AI performance and advances to nearly every aspect of the chip,” Apple said in a press release Wednesday. Available on Oct. 22, the new laptop, tablet, and headset come on the heels of the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, and Apple Watch Series 11 launch last month. They help fortify Apple’s hardware lineup for the holiday shopping season. Its October-to-December quarter is typically its biggest for sales each fiscal year. More broadly, Apple continues to innovate and improve its in-house silicon, a crucial ingredient to its success in extending the battery life and advancing the capabilities of its devices. Processors that are purpose-built to run your software is how you maximize the benefits of custom chips. Hold the plus : Elsewhere in Apple land, the head of its services business, Eddy Cue, appeared on a Hollywood-focused podcast, “The Town With Matthew Belloni,” to discuss the company’s streaming service and ambitions in entertainment. Apple TV — the “+” was just axed from its name — is not on its own a huge deal for investors. However, its financial performance shows up within the company’s high-margin services unit, which investors do care a lot about because it’s become a significant profit driver and enabled multiple expansion for the stock. So to the extent that Apple TV moves the needle for the services segment, which is also home to things like Apple Music subscriptions and additional iCloud storage, it is something to monitor. Apple TV also enhances its Apple One subscription bundle. Here’s a few of Cue’s notable comments: Asked about claims that said Apple TV has 40 million to 45 million subscribers, Cue responded: “Well, we haven’t said what our numbers are, but we’re significantly more than that.” The monthly price of Apple TV in the U.S. recently went up to $12.99 a month , a $3 increase. That’s its third price hike in three years. That raises the question: Is Apple TV profitable? When asked that pointed question, Cue responded: “The service is doing fine. Look, it’s a lot harder than it looks, as always, because when you try to do things that are great, it takes longer than you want. I didn’t forecast being out of production for a year and a half [due to the pandemic]. I didn’t forecast a nine-month strike from that standpoint. So, we’re a little further behind than where I’d like to be. But where we are today is great. Our content has never been better.” Our thought bubble on this answer: If the services segment has roughly 75% gross margins with Apple TV apparently still losing money, where could they go if it became profitable? Up next: Still no government economic report because of the shutdown, but investors will get Thursday morning the Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing index and the NAHB’s housing market index. No more Club earnings this week, but look out for quarterly results Thursday morning from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing , the primary fabricator of Nvidia chips. 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