Jim Cramer’s top 10 things to watch in the stock market Monday
My top 10 things to watch Monday, July 27 1. Futures are surging this morning , and oil prices are tumbling after the U.S. and Iran paused fighting over the weekend. Nasdaq is leading the way, up about 1.4%. WTI crude is down about 7% to under $84 a barrel, on pace for its biggest decline since May. Rising oil prices were a problem for the market last week, but not the only one. 2. The sell-off in many tech stocks showed the market is no longer willing to tolerate the massive spending of public companies on AI infrastructure. Even as Google Cloud showed tremendous demand, Alphabet still got dinged. We’re looking for companies to make money, not just “meet demand.” I explored this tension in my Sunday column for Investing Club subscribers. 3. Club name Nvidia is considering providing a $250 billion backstop for OpenAI to help the ChatGPT creator lease Softbank’s massive data center project in southern Ohio, the Wall Street Journal reported . That figure doesn’t even include the chips that would go inside the data center. A bit awkward. Nvidia as the central bank of AI? The market will like and then ultimately hate this deal on the belief that it’s a “Lazy Susan.” 4. Nvidia and South Korean tech conglomerate SK Group inked a $500 billion partnership to build AI infrastructure. SK Telecom plans to build a 2-gigawatt data center using Nvidia’s Vera Rubin chips. Also, Nvidia and SK Hynix agreed to a long-term memory supply deal. Securing enough memory is a big bottleneck right now. Supply is tight and adding production capacity takes time. 5. Just look at what happened in memory-chip maker Changxin Technology Group’s debut in Shanghai. CXMT soared 466% today following its initial public offering, becoming the most valuable China-listed company. The U.S. government considers CXMT a national-security risk. But faced with soaring memory costs, Club name Apple is reportedly testing CXMT chips for devices sold within China. 6. Samsung and Broadcom announced a $200 billion pact to widen their collaboration on memory and foundry technologies. Even as the market grows uneasy about AI infrastructure spending levels, the companies designing and making the chips are forging ahead. We own Broadcom for the Club because it’s the leading designer of custom AI chips for tech giants like Google and Meta Platforms . We get earnings from Meta , Amazon , and Microsoft this week. 7. Important: The direction of Verizon price target cuts over the years has been definitively down. This time, Barclays takes the stock up to $46 from $45 and hints at a change of the guard. Wells Fargo went to $47 from $43, pointing to strong growth into year-end and 2027. Still, both Barclays and Wells kept a hold rating on shares. Verizon is making a play on the data center boom, landing a $1 billion-plus fiber deal with Google. 8. Devastating call on another telecom giant. Wells cut its price target on Charter to $101 from $160 and reiterated its sell rating. Analysts lowered their broadband outlook and said cable remains a tough operating space. Barclays slashed its PT to $115 from $130 as well. The stock dropped Friday after Charter reported another quarter of declining subscribers and missed on free cash flow estimates. 9. Barclays raised its PT on SLB to $67 from $64. Analysts said the Middle East rebuild and a data center partnership with Meta are reasons to be bullish. Bank of America took the stock to $57 from $56. This is the only oil service company worth playing if you think the pause in fighting between the U.S. and Iran is chimerical. 10. SAP’s price target was lowered to $242 from $255 at Barclays. Although the German software company sees growing AI demand that reinforces confidence in its second-half outlook, analysts said near-term cost execution may be less predictable. That is something I worry about with Palantir . Sign up for my Top 10 Morning Thoughts on the Market email newsletter for free (See here for a full list of the stocks at 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.