3 themes that drove stocks to another record week — and a banner month
Stocks soared to record highs again last week, capping off a banner month for the market. Investor optimism about an end to the Iran-U.S. war, a string of positive corporate earnings reports, and strength in technology stocks led to new records for the S & P 500 and Nasdaq Composite , up over 1% and more than 2%, respectively, during the holiday-shortened trading week. That brought the weekly winning streak for the S & P 500 to nine, while the Nasdaq has been up eight out of the past nine weeks. Friday also marked the last trading day of May, with the S & P 500 and Nasdaq advancing roughly 5% and 8%, respectively. The smaller 30-stock Dow gained a little less than 1% last week, and posted an almost 3% climb for the month. Will the rally continue into Monday? The market isn’t quite in overbought territory yet, according to the S & P Short Range Oscillator , with a reading of 2.63%. Anything above 4% indicates stocks might be due for a pullback. Until then, here are three themes that drove the market last week. Peace progress (maybe) More mixed signals out of the Middle East, but it ended on a positive note. Stocks jumped on Wednesday as oil prices retreated after Iranian state media reported that Iranian leaders wanted to restore commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz to pre-war levels. Hours later, however, the White House called the report a “complete fabrication.” The S & P 500 retreated but still ended the session higher. A day later, Axios reported that the U.S. and Iranian negotiators finally reached a truce deal but would need President Donald Trump ‘s approval. The headline sent stocks climbing, with the S & P 500 and Nasdaq closing at records on Thursday. The war has continued to move the market since overseas attacks began on Feb. 28. Through it all, our advice has stayed the same: Don’t make any big moves based on a single headline. AI stocks rip Strong quarterly earnings reports from big tech companies led the way. Snowflake , the cloud-based data platform provider, delivered a beat-and-raise quarter and issued rosy second-quarter guidance late Wednesday. The real kicker was Snowflake’s AI compute deal with Amazon, which included a $6 billion commitment to Amazon Web Services over the next five years. The news helped to renew enthusiasm in the AI trade, sparking a broader rally in tech. Snowflake shares jumped over 36% in a session, its best day to date. Amazon stock advanced 0.7%, and gained 1.6% week to date. The AI rally got another boost late Thursday with Dell ‘s earnings, as the company posted its fastest-ever revenue growth , supported by fervent AI-related demand. Dell stock skyrocketed over 32% on Friday, posting its best session ever. Other tech names linked to the AI trade joined in. Broadcom reached an all-time high, jumping 4.7%. Arm shares gained 5.3%. (We trimmed the chip designer on Tuesday following a parabolic move.) Shares of Nvidia , whose graphics processing units are inside Dell’s servers, advanced nearly 1%. Jim Cramer said Dell’s results reinforced his confidence in Nvidia, given its close ties in powering AI systems. “This is the one to buy,” Jim said of Nvidia during Friday’s Morning Meeting . Not every earnings release sparked a run. Salesforce delivered a beat on the top and bottom line late Wednesday, but guidance came in light. We were hoping CEO Marc Benioff could convince Wall Street that AI isn’t eating software. That didn’t happen. The stock fell nearly 1% in the session that followed, but still climbed over 6% week to date. On Thursday, Jim said he would buy more if the Club wasn’t restricted. Cyber whipsawed It was a volatile week for cyber stocks as two corporate earnings reports told very different stories about the sector’s health. Underwhelming guidance from Zscaler led to the stock’s worst single-day performance ever on Wednesday. Investors treated the release as a read-through to industry peers, and shares of Club holdings CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks pulled back. We aren’t concerned , as Zscaler’s issues seemed company-specific rather than something more systemic. None of that mattered a few sessions later when Okta reported. The company beat first-quarter estimates, citing increased demand for its security tools driven by the rise of agentic AI. Okta stock jumped over 30% as a result on Friday. Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike climbed 9.2% and 8.9%, respectively. We’ve long said that greater AI adoption will benefit both our cybersecurity holdings. Let’s hope we hear something similar when Palo Alto and CrowdStrike release quarterly results on June 2 and June 3. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) 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