GE HealthCare Technologies Inc

Nvidia, Google, Microsoft and more head to Las Vegas to tout health-care AI tools

Visitors check out Nvidia’s AI technology at the 2024 Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, China, on September 19, 2024.

Costfoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Nvidia, Google, Microsoft and dozens of other tech companies are descending on Las Vegas next week to showcase artificial intelligence tools they say will save doctors and nurses valuable time.

Sunday marks the official start of a health-care technology conference called HLTH, which is expected to draw more than 12,000 industry leaders this year. CNBC will be on the ground. Based on the speaking agenda and announcements leading up to the conference, AI tools to conquer administrative burdens will be the star of this year’s show.

Doctors and nurses are responsible for mountains of documentation as they work to keep up with patient records, interface with insurance companies and comply with regulators. Often, these tasks are painstakingly manual, in part because health data is siloed and stored across multiple vendors and formats.

The daunting administrative workload is a major cause of burnout in the industry, and it’s part of the reason a nationwide shortage of 100,000 health-care workers is expected by 2028, according to consulting firm Mercer. Tech companies, eager to carve out a piece of a market that could top $6.8 trillion in spending by the decade’s end, argue that their generative AI tools can help.

Alex Schiffhauer, group product manager at Google, speaks during the Made By Google event at the company’s Bay View campus in Mountain View, California, Aug. 13, 2024.

Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images

Google, for instance, said it’s working to expand its health-care customer base by tackling administrative burden with AI.

On Thursday, the company announced the general availability of Vertex AI Search for Healthcare, which it introduced in a trial capacity during HLTH last year. Vertex AI Search for Healthcare allows developers to build tools to help doctors quickly search for information across disparate medical records, Google said. New features within Google’s Healthcare Data Engine, which helps organizations build the platforms they need to support generative AI, are also now available, the company said.

Google on Thursday released the results of a survey that said clinicians spend nearly 28 hours a week on administrative tasks. In the survey, 80% of providers said this clerical work takes away from their time with patients, and 91% said they feel positive about using AI to streamline these tasks.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at a company event on artificial intelligence technologies in Jakarta, Indonesia, on April 30, 2024.

Dimas Ardian | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Similarly, Microsoft on Oct. 11 announced its collection of tools that aim to lessen clinicians’ administrative workload, including medical imaging models, a health-care agent service and an automated documentation solution for nurses, most of which are still in the early stages of development.

Microsoft already offers an automated documentation tool for doctors through its subsidiary, Nuance Communications, which it acquired in a $16 billion deal in 2021. The tool, called DAX Copilot, uses AI to transcribe doctors’ visits with patients and turn them into clinical notes and summaries. Ideally, this means doctors don’t have to spend time typing out these notes themselves.

Nurses and doctors complete different types of documentation during their shifts, so Microsoft said it’s building a separate tool for nurses that’s best suited to their workflows.

AI scribe tools such as DAX Copilot have exploded in popularity this year, and Nuance’s competitors, such as Abridge, which has reportedly raised more than $460 million, and Suki, which has raised $165 million, will also be at the HLTH conference.

Dr. Shiv Rao, the founder and CEO of Abridge, told CNBC in March that the rate at which the health-care industry has adopted this new form of clinical documentation feels “historic.” Abridge received a coveted investment from Nvidia’s venture capital arm that same month.

Nvidia is also gearing up to address doctor and nurse workloads at HLTH.

Kimberly Powell, the company’s vice president of health care, is delivering a keynote Monday that will explain how using generative AI will help health-care professionals “dedicate more time to patient care,” according to the conference’s website.

Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, are used to create and deploy the models that power OpenAI’s ChatGPT and similar applications. As a result, Nvidia has been one of the primary beneficiaries of the AI boom. Nvidia shares are up more than 150% year to date, and the stock tripled last year.

The company has been making steady inroads into the health-care sector in recent years, and it offers a range of AI tools across medical devices, drug discovery, genomics and medical imaging. Nvidia also announced expanded partnerships with companies such as Johnson & Johnson and GE HealthCare in March.

While the health-care sector has historically been slow to adopt new technology, the buzz around administrative AI tools has been undeniable since ChatGPT exploded onto the scene two years ago.

Even so, many health systems are still in the early stages of evaluating tools and vendors, and they’ll be making the rounds on the HLTH exhibition floor. Tech companies will have to prove they have the chops to tackle one of health care’s most complex problems.

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October 19, 2024

Lost in the market’s sharp rotation out of tech stocks is a really bullish call on major banks

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. Market slides : The S & P 500 gave back earlier gains and fell throughout Tuesday afternoon, led lower by the mega-cap tech stocks. Ahead of the post-Fed meeting news conference Wednesday afternoon, when central bank chief Jerome Powell is expected to signal interest rate cuts are coming, the market continued to toss out stocks of companies that don’t need lower rates to beat and raise. Investors instead kept buying stocks of companies whose prospects get a lot better in a lower-rate environment. In an example of this dynamic, Club name Nvidia doesn’t need rate cuts to spur demand for its artificial intelligence GPUs, but lower rates could create a windfall for Stanley Black & Decker if lower mortgage rates reignite sales of older homes that need repairs and remodeling. Nvidia dropped 5% on Tuesday. Stanley Black & Decker, also a portfolio holding, rose more than 9% in an earnings-driven rally that extended last week’s surge. We don’t know how long this rotation will last, but that’s what playing out right now. Banks shining : Lost in the shuffle of all the earnings earlier and another tech selloff was a bullish note on large-cap banks from Morgan Stanley analyst Betsy Graseck. We read Graseck carefully because of her previous big calls. Back in January, Graseck and her team upgraded their view on the large-cap banks to “attractive” and upgraded Citi , Goldman Sachs , and Bank of America to a buy-equivalent overweight. At the time, Morgan Stanley already had overweight ratings on Club name Wells Fargo and JPMorgan . It was a good call. Now, Graseck is back again raising price targets on nearly every bank in her coverage after second-quarter earnings. In her review of the quarter, she found that the capital markets rebound is only in its second inning, excess capital supports higher buybacks next year, and net interest income is starting to inflect for a handful of banks. Longer term, Grasck thinks the banks are skewing towards her “bull case” on lower expected credit losses. Up next: It’s a big night of earnings with Club names Microsoft , Advanced Micro Devices , and Starbucks scheduled to report. Some other names to watch are Arista Networks, Pinterest, First Solar, Caesars Entertainment, and Electronics Arts. Before Wednesday’s open, we get earnings from Club stocks GE Healthcare and DuPont . Boeing, Norwegian Cruise Line, Mastercard, Humana, Trane Technologies, and Kraft Heinz are also set to report. Club stock Meta Platforms is out with earnings after Wednesday’s close. (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.

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.

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July 30, 2024

Stocks pop after Fed decision, oil plunges, earnings mixed — what to watch in the market

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. (We’re no longer recording the audio, so we can get this new written feature to members as quickly as possible.) Market check: Stocks surged Wednesday afternoon after the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady at the end of its latest two-day meeting. According to their post-meeting statement, central bankers noted a “lack of further progress” in bringing inflation down to their 2% target. Fed chief Jerome Powell reiterated that concern at his news conference. Powell said that rate cuts would be considered when the Fed feels inflation is on its way to target. “We feel our policy stance is in a good place” and appropriately restrictive, he added. Early in 2024, expectations in the market were for as many as six cuts. Now, there are questions about whether there will be any cuts this year. April, which has historically been one of the stronger months of the year for the market, was rough. Monthly declines in the Dow , the S & P 500 and the Nasdaq broke five-month winning streaks for the three major stock benchmarks. While April overall was terrible, there were some big winners in the Club’s portfolio, including Alphabet up nearly 8%. Before last week’s strong quarter, CNBC learned that Alphabet’s Google had laid off hundreds of employees from so-called core teams. The reorg includes moving some roles to India and Mexico. Crude sinks: U.S. oil prices sank roughly 3% to under $80 per barrel Wednesday. That’s about a seven-week low on West Texas Intermediate crude . The reasons: stockpiles surged on lackluster demand as the U.S. and its international partners continue to push for a ceasefire between the Israelis and Hamas in Gaza. WTI has fallen 9% from its intraday high for the year of $87.67 per barrel. Our lone oil-and-gas stock, Coterra Energy , was down 2% on Wednesday. It’s set to report quarterly results after the close Thursday. Cruise IPO: Viking Holdings shares rose 10% in its debut as a public company Wednesday. The cruise line company Tuesday evening priced roughly 64 million shares at $24 each — toward the higher of the expected range. Viking is the latest in a recent revival of the long-dormant initial public offerings market. The IPO comeback of late has boosted the investment banking arms of Wall Street banks. Morgan Stanley is one of the lead underwriters of the Viking offering. Last month, the Club name delivered a much-needed rebound quarter . Investment banking revenue at Morgan Stanley rose 16% year over year, driven by IPO business. These deals must succeed to entice more private companies to become public, which is crucial to Morgan Stanley. Biggest winners: DuPont was the Club’s biggest winner Wednesday, jumping more than 7% after the chemicals company beat on quarterly earnings and raised guidance. DuPont’s semiconductor business rose 10%, and we see plenty of runway for growth next year thanks to artificial intelligence. GE Healthcare was next, rising nearly 2% after Tuesday’s 14% earnings-driven decline , which we thought was an overreaction. Amazon was our third-best stock, gaining more than 1.5% Wednesday following the e-commerce and cloud giant’s great quarter and what we think was conservative guidance. “There’s no incentive in giving some pie in the sky number,” Jim said during the Morning Meeting . Biggest losers: Starbucks was our biggest loser Wednesday following the terrible quarter and outlook that was out the evening before. Jim blasted the Starbucks CEO in a morning CNBC interview, saying he was “stunned” by Laxman Narasimhan’s lack of awareness of how bad things are at the coffee giant. Estee Lauder was next, dropping 14% after light guidance and worries about China overshadowed quarterly beats. Nvidia was our third-weakest stock Wednesday, dropping more than 5%. The AI chip giant enjoyed a 15% bump last week on all the spending plans from Big Tech. While inching higher Monday, Nvidia also was down 1.5% Tuesday. Club earnings : In a busy week with quarterly reports from 12 portfolio stocks, Thursday brings morning earnings from Linde , Stanley Black & Decker and Bausch Health . After the bell Thursday, Apple is out with its quarter following a bump earlier this week tied to an upgrade from the often-skeptical Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi. Apple has had a rough year, but Sacconaghi sees the pullback as an “attractive entry point.” Jim said the call is ill-advised, and we must wait for the release to see where Apple might go from here. As mentioned earlier, Coterra is also out with earnings Thursday evening, but the post-release conference call won’t be until Friday morning. (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.

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. (We’re no longer recording the audio, so we can get this new written feature to members as quickly as possible.)

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May 1, 2024

Palo Alto Networks will see further upside as hacking threats intensify from overseas

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February 20, 2024

GE's stock has its best year on record ahead of final breakup

General Electric Co. has saved its best year for its last.

At the beginning of the second quarter, GE’s power and renewable-energy business will be spun off as GE Vernova, while its remaining business will be relaunched as GE Aerospace. That follows the conglomerate’s separation of GE HealthCare Technologies Inc.
GEHC,
-0.28%
in December 2022.

But rather than mourn the final breakup of the 150-year old company, which was co-founded by Thomas Edison, Wall Street cheered like it never had before.

GE’s stock
GE,
-0.54%
has rocketed 95.1% in 2023 as of afternoon trading Friday. That would be by far the stock’s best year on record, based on available data going back to 1972, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The next best year was 1982, when it gained 65.4%. In comparison, the S&P 500 index
SPX
has rallied 24.2% this year.

Read: GE stock sees biggest rally in more than 2 years after a big earnings beat, raised outlook.

As good as the stock’s performance has been leading up to the breakup, most analysts feel like investors still have more to gain. Keep in mind that in many cases, a company’s parts are worth more individually than they are valued as part of a whole.

Wells Fargo’s Matthew Akers has a pre-breakup target of $144 on GE’s stock, which implies about 13% upside from current levels.

“GE combines an attractive business with high aftermarket mix, solid management team with a clean balance sheet, L-T margin upside and built-in catalyst with the Vernova spin in early Q2,” Akers wrote.

J.P. Morgan’s Seth Seifman said he believes the combined equity values of GE Vernova and GE Aerospace, when including the company’s equity stake in GE HealthCare, is about $149 billion. That compares with GE’s current market capitalization of about $139 billion.

Of the 18 analysts surveyed by FactSet who cover GE, 12 are bullish and six are neutral, while there are no bears. And the average price target is $139.23, or about 9% above current levels.

GE’s 2023 marks the culmination of a five-year turnaround for the stock engineered by current Chief Executive Larry Culp, who will remain as CEO of GE Aerospace.

GE’s stock has nearly tripled in the five years that Larry Culp has been CEO, outperforming the S&P 500 by a wide margin.

General Electric Co.

The stock had suffered its worst year ever in 2018, plunging 56.6%, just after it had its fourth-worst year in 2017, when it suffered a 44.8% decline.

Things got so bad for GE that it got booted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA
in June 2018, ending a record 111-year run in the blue-chip barometer.

Culp was named CEO in October 2018. During his tenure, GE’s stock has had only two down years. It fell 3.2% in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the aerospace business, and slumped 11.3% in 2022 as spiking inflation and interest rates fueled fears that a recession was on the horizon.

But since the end of 2018, GE’s stock has climbed 181%, while the S&P 500 has rallied 90% and the Dow has gained 61%.

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December 29, 2023

Chinese listings overseas getting complicated despite growing interest, says NYSE’s Ge

Traders work during the IPO for Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Global Inc on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) floor in New York City, U.S., June 30, 2021.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

There is strong appetite among Chinese companies to list on U.S. stock exchanges, but these IPOs have become a more complicated process, according to Kobe Ge, the head of China at the New York Stock Exchange.

Despite the negative impact last year from Covid-19 restrictions and U.S. regulatory uncertainty, many of those issues are now resolved and “we still see very strong interest from Chinese businesses for listing in the U.S.,” he told CNBC’s East Tech West conference in the Nansha district of Guangzhou, China, on Tuesday.

But they’re not so familiar with the procedures, which have proved to be more challenging of late, he added. That’s according to a CNBC translation of his Mandarin-language remarks.

“Previously, listing in the U.S. was relatively easy,” Ge said, noting it would take just four-and-a-half or five months for Chinese firms to complete a U.S. IPO.

“Given some new procedures, a company may need to spend more time, a 12-month preparation period,” he said, pointing to new rules from the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

The new measures, effective since March 31, lay out a filing process for domestic companies wanting to list in the U.S. or Hong Kong, and require them to comply with national security measures and the personal data protection law before going public overseas.

Amid a tepid U.S. IPO market, the handful of Chinese names that have been able to list this year have mostly been smaller companies.

Rising political tensions between Washington and Beijing have also led to uncertainty among Chinese companies and investors, said Ge.

U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order in August aimed at regulating new U.S. investments and expertise that supports China’s development of sensitive tech. The new measures, which is expected to be implemented next year, targets investment in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum computing and certain artificial intelligence capabilities.

“Of course, specifics haven’t been released yet, everyone may be watching and waiting, so it may cause investors to wait and see regarding these changes,” Ge said.

Strong IPO pipeline

Still, Ge remained bullish that Chinese listings in overseas markets will rebound so long as domestic firms focus on building a strong business.

He likened the situation to a ship at sea. “Of course, everyone must pay attention to the weather, and at the same time they should pay more attention to whether the ship has been built well,” he said.

Today, that means investors are looking more for mature business models and predictable profits, rather than just high growth, he said. “So you need to build a very good ship.”

The overall U.S. IPO market should also improve in the April to October period next year, Ge said.

Robert H. McCooey, Jr., a vice chairman at Nasdaq, shared a similar view underlining there’s a strong pipeline of Chinese companies that intend to list on the exchange soon.

More Chinese companies aim to list soon, says Nasdaq

“I think it is 116 right now, that are on file or that we know will be filing soon,” he told a separate session at CNBC’s East Tech West event.

“And the much more interesting aspect of it is now with the new process by CSRC … everyone in China, everyone around the world gets to see the companies that are in the process, because the way that the regulations have come through,” he added, referring to the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

This is a marked increase from the 65 Chinese companies, McCooey highlighted in an earlier CNBC interview in June.

As of January 2023, there were 252 Chinese companies listed on the U.S. exchanges — including NYSE, Nasdaq, and NYSE American, — with a total market capitalization of $1.03 trillion, according to official data.

“We’re delighted that we’ve had a couple of listings that have gone through the CSRC process … there’s three or four that should be approved in the near future,” he added. “I think that gives confidence to companies that are interested in listing outside of China.”

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October 21, 2023

Here’s a rapid-fire update on all 35 stocks in the Club’s portfolio, including a new buy

Jim Cramer ran through all 35 Club stocks during our September Monthly Meeting on Thursday.

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September 21, 2023

Cramer: This is my game plan for the week ahead after Friday’s surprise rally

What the heck really did happen on Friday, when the Dow jumped 700 points on a strong jobs reading ? Why such a viscerally positive reaction to an employment number that was hotter than expected? Was it because wages didn’t spike? Was it all that perfect — a Goldilocks report? Here’s my take on Friday’s rally. Going into the debt ceiling crisis, there was a belief that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy couldn’t control his own Republican party. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer wasn’t much better off with the Democrats. Both had lost control of their parties to the extremists. That meant the United States would default on its debt. It seemed pretty logical. I truly believe the extremists never believed a default would mean more than a few weeks of setbacks and more brinkmanship. Who can blame them? President Joe Biden lamely floated that he could invoke the 14th Amendment to avoid this and any future debt limit fights; the amendment includes a clause that some legal scholars say overrides the statutory borrowing limit set by Congress. No matter what, it was pretty clear that chaos was our destiny. But when McCarthy and Biden agreed to temporarily suspend the debt ceiling and cap some federal spending in order to prevent a default, we got a deal that was even less contentious than the 2011 bargain . (The coming together brought to mind the legendary coalition of President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neil in the 1980s, memorialized in Chris Matthews’ “Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked.”) It was the compromise debt limit deal — not the employment number — that caused the market to rally. Sure, the jobs report showed wage inflation was cooling, which is good news in the Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation. But the job creation in May and the revisions were insanely strong. What matters most is that Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who is far more powerful than the independents on the Fed’s board who have such a hard time keeping their mouths shut, is reasonable. He seems to understand that it’s time to wait a bit on any more rate hikes. Not because he thinks things are cooler, but because he actually doesn’t even know. We have a young workforce coming into the market akin to when I got out of school in 1977 — nary a job to be had anywhere. This is potentially a monumental moment. The new debt limit legislation sets the date for resuming federal student loan repayments, which have been on hold since March 2020. We have the end of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and other pandemic breaks. Why not wait two months to see if unemployment naturally goes up and wages come down? To sum things up: We came into Friday shocked that there was a shocker of a deal and a not-red-hot employment number (at least one that didn’t send rates higher). This is what triggered the long-awaited buying of stocks outside of the Magnificent Seven that have led the market all year: Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL), Tesla (TSLA), Meta Platforms (META), Apple (AAPL), and Nvidia , which briefly joined the $1 trillion valuation club. We each have our own way of monitoring these things. I used Club name Caterpillar (CAT) as my judge. On Thursday afternoon, CEO Jim Umpleby went into the lion’s den of Sanford Bernstein and told a tale about de-cyclization. Shares of the heavy equipment maker had a tiny snap back. One day later and armed with the budget deal and the employment number, CAT shot up seventeen points — an unheard-of short squeeze. This took the stock back to when it reported a good number that was converted into a bad number by bearish analysts still unwilling to admit that the company had changed its bi-polar ways. Of course, the bears would say that it only went up because of one more silly stimulus by China, this time to adjust rents. I say Caterpillar went up because it was overly shorted, like so much of the market, including retail, health care, financials, other industrials including the commodities (the oils!). We even saw the imperfect chipmakers and heavily challenged enterprise software stocks come alive. The shorts were correct to press their bets if there was no debt deal and we got an employment number that was a steamer. But they were wrong on both counts. This plus a rare wave of new money coming in and massive buybacks by companies capable of plundering after their reports, caused the broadening that had been bemoaned as non-existent as recently as the day before. You could argue it was a short squeeze of monumental proportions. A short squeeze happens when short sellers having to buy stocks to cover their short positions, pushing prices higher. But every time there has been a broadening since FANG, it’s always been called a short squeeze. That’s just how things work, although it’s never been acknowledged by anybody. Which brings us up to date for Monday. We have a blackout of the Fed speakers. We have no real macroeconomic data. We have no landmines of earnings. And no Fed meeting until mid-June. A true interregnum. We are going to have to take more things off the table if we get a rally into an overbought setting. Yes, we have some real stinkers — Disney (DIS), Foot Locker (FL), Emerson Electric (EMR), Estee Lauder (EL) — and we can battle them. But the important thing is that we have so many winners that we have to ring the register on some stocks if all goes our way. Of course I obsess on the losers. I didn’t think that Fabrizio Freda at Estee Lauder and Mary Dillon at Foot Locker could both blow it that badly. I had reason to dislike the Emerson team, but it still gave me more than I can handle. I have no idea how Disney’s stock could be this weak in a long-on-money-short-on-time moment. I am furious at myself for not seeing around any of these corners. But I am not going to throw good money after bad and I see no good on these names — yet. This leaves us with the big question: Which winners to trim? As long as we are not subsidizing losers, we aren’t breaking protocol. But we have two tasks. One is to come up with a new name that hasn’t moved that we actually like. And two is to trim into strength as we get overbought. I want both resolved by our next Club meeting on June 14. That’s what I am working on right now. Do we need so much Salesforce (CRM), even as it reported a good quarter all things considering? Do we even need Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) when it has nothing to rival Nvidia? I just don’t know. I want the market to tell me what to do. I think it will. Where does this leave us? In a sanguine week that will allow us to see if the short squeeze continues. If it does and continues to broaden, we can both peel some winners. See which caterpillars can develop into, well, Caterpillars. Maybe add Take-Two (TTWO), which gave us a two-year outlook, possibly aided by a new Grand Theft Auto game and better Nvidia cards. Just one of many ideas. But one Jeff Marks and I are trying to get our arms around. Some who read might ask: “Shouldn’t there be more of a thesis behind a bullish move?” I say no, no more than you needed in 2011, when the debt ceiling deal led to a fantastic rally because Armageddon was avoided. We cannot sit back and relax. But what we can do is accept that it is a better moment than we thought not that long ago. There are cracks. The Dollar General (DG) call was a compendium of weakness for the lower middle class and the Macy’s (M) call was a confusion of negativity. But who is to say that these companies just don’t have the “it” of Five Below (FIVE) or Lululemon (LULU). We are close enough to the infrastructure money wave to handle another rate hike if we need it. But Powell recognizes the futility of another rate hike right now because it lowers mortgage rates, making his job even harder. What we can do is watch and wait as battlegrounds get resolved — like CAT did on Friday. We can anticipate better things from a Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) — especially with a 3M (MMM) deal — and from GE Healthcare (GEHC). We can lick our Estee and Foot Locker wounds. And we can be glad that we got through the debt deal and wax in the wave of new money that will at last be coming in. No, we can’t be complacent. Too many needs for the shorts to save themselves. They have been run over in so many places that they have to make a comeback somewhere. Their number didn’t get so strong before the debt ceiling deal that they can’t all cover at once. Nevertheless, we have enough money to put to work if we want to in a new name that hasn’t moved and has a special situation thesis. But I do not want to be so relieved as to think there is no woods, just that we are out of it for now. Personally, the last few weeks have been hard ones, ameliorated by members who have made money with the club. Some mistakenly believe that we missed this entirely rally. It galls me because I gave up being a hedge fund manager years ago and I know the truth: This may be the best we’ve ever been, and this time it is for you, not the entitled class. I thank you all for letting us have the floor to help and not be tools of the traders who have infiltrated our ranks. So let’s take and make some gains and be ready for the next storm after the calm, wherever it might be coming from. Rest up. We have gotten past the systemic chaos into business as usual, where we can glow in a world where stock picking matters. (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.

US President Joe Biden, accompanied by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, arrives for the annual Friends of Ireland luncheon on St. Patrick’s Day at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on March 17, 2023.

Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

What the heck really did happen on Friday, when the Dow jumped 700 points on a strong jobs reading? Why such a viscerally positive reaction to an employment number that was hotter than expected? Was it because wages didn’t spike? Was it all that perfect — a Goldilocks report?

Here’s my take on Friday’s rally. Going into the debt ceiling crisis, there was a belief that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy couldn’t control his own Republican party. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer wasn’t much better off with the Democrats. Both had lost control of their parties to the extremists. That meant the United States would default on its debt. It seemed pretty logical.

I truly believe the extremists never believed a default would mean more than a few weeks of setbacks and more brinkmanship. Who can blame them? President Joe Biden lamely floated that he could invoke the 14th Amendment to avoid this and any future debt limit fights; the amendment includes a clause that some legal scholars say overrides the statutory borrowing limit set by Congress.

No matter what, it was pretty clear that chaos was our destiny. But when McCarthy and Biden agreed to temporarily suspend the debt ceiling and cap some federal spending in order to prevent a default, we got a deal that was even less contentious than the 2011 bargain. (The coming together brought to mind the legendary coalition of President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neil in the 1980s, memorialized in Chris Matthews’ “Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked.”)

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June 4, 2023

Tag: GE HealthCare Technologies Inc

GE’s stock has nearly tripled in the five years that Larry Culp has been CEO, outperforming the S&P 500 by a wide margin.