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: Stocks strengthened in afternoon trading as Wall Street bet that the credit-market problems behind Thursday’s sell-off were more isolated in nature. Zions Bancorp — one of the regional lenders whose bad-loan warning spooked investors and sent its stock plunging 13% on Thursday — rose nearly 5% in the final trading day of the week. State Street’s closely followed regional bank ETF was up about 1.4% Friday after sinking 6.2% a day earlier. Club name Capital One , which got caught up in Thursday’s financial selling, was also having a bounce-back day Friday. Its nearly 4% gain made it the top stock in our portfolio, followed by DuPont , which added around 2.5% after Deutsche Bank issued a short-term buy call ahead of its Qnity electronics spin-off. On the downside, Eli Lilly dropped almost 3% after President Donald Trump indicated his administration was working to bring down the price of GLP-1 drugs. Orderly stretch : It may seem like the S & P 500 is all over the place lately, with lots of record highs and lots of pullbacks. Since July 15, however, the S & P Short Range Oscillator momentum gauge has been on its longest streak of flashing neither an overbought nor oversold market in at least 20 years. As of Thursday’s close, the streak stands at 67 sessions, according to MarketEdge, the keeper of the Oscillator. For the Club, we use the Oscillator, which Jim Cramer has trusted for decades, to spot imbalances in the market. While on the upswing since this year’s tariff lows in early April, the rally in the S & P 500 has leveled out a bit since mid-July. Sure, we have still been hitting new highs as every dip is bought. But the two steps forward, one step back nature of trading lately has seen the index gain just 6% during this benign stretch for the Oscillator. Dare we say, orderly? Every time we mention the Oscillator, we’re flooded with requests from Club members: “How can we access?” Well, we went directly to the source, our partners at MarketEdge, the data provider that publishes the Oscillator. We’re excited to share that Club members can now get an exclusive discount for this helpful tool. Click here . In times of big market swings, you might hear Jim refer to the Oscillator as a reason for making trades. When the Oscillator rises to 4% or above, that signals an overbought market. In that case, we consider whether to do some selling and pad our cash position. That’s because when the Oscillator falls to negative 4% or lower, which signals an oversold market, we look to do some buying. To be sure, the Oscillator is only a guide, and the most important factor in buying or selling shares for the portfolio comes down to what we think about the fundamentals of the companies and how they are positioned within their industry and the larger macro backdrop. Power play: BlackRock isn’t the only portfolio name that wants a bigger piece of the AI data center boom. Goldman Sachs, according to The Wall Street Journal , is putting together a team dedicated to infrastructure financing. The team would be part of the firm’s global banking and markets division, the paper reports. On Wednesday, BlackRock, along with Club names Nvidia and Microsoft , as well as Elon Musk’s xAI agreed to buy Aligned Data Centers for $40 billion. Infrastructure needs in the U.S. go beyond data centers, including a gold rush to bring manufacturing back to America. Start your engines: Apple inked a five-year agreement to becom e the exclusive broadcast partner of Formula 1 racing in the U.S. , bringing more sports content to its Apple TV streaming service alongside Major League Baseball games on Friday nights. Apple also has the broadcast rights for Major League Soccer, but requires people to subscribe to a separate package to get access to all of the league’s games. By contrast, Formula 1 races will be watchable through a regular Apple TV subscription. Apple is paying about $140 million a year for the F1 rights, CNBC’s Alex Sherman reported. The iPhone maker is taking over the rights from Disney -owned ESPN, which had been paying around $85 million a year, Sherman reported. F1 has soared in popularity in the U.S. in recent years, boosted in large part by a popular Netflix series about the sport. Apple has found success in one F1-related project already: Its “F1” movie starring Brad Pitt, released this summer, became its highest-grossing theatrical film ever . While Apple TV is not a driver of the stock, its financial results are housed within Apple’s high-margin services business, which commands gross margins in the 75% range and is important for investors. With all indications that Apple TV isn’t profitable yet, we want to see Apple taking strides to make that happen so it becomes additive to the services business. Up next: We’ll hear from five Club holdings in the week ahead: Danaher and Capital One on Tuesday, GE Vernova on Wednesday, and the industrials Honeywell and Dover on Thursday. And better late than never, the September consumer price report index is due out on Friday following a shutdown-related delay. (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.
