Amazon and Starbucks look to stay competitive with different approaches to pricing
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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. Wild week: The stock market was little changed Friday, which masked the drama we saw in this holiday-shortened week of trading. Nvidia soared to all-time highs on Tuesday and became the most valuable U.S. company — if only briefly. Back-to-back losses Thursday and Friday put Nvidia in the No. 3 position of $3 trillion-plus stocks. Club names Microsoft regained the throne followed by Apple . The Dow was poised to be the big weekly winner, a change from its recent also-ran status. The S & P 500 and Nasdaq , while off their record highs, were holding on weekly gains in Friday afternoon trading. The CME FedWatch tool indicated a high likelihood of two Federal Reserve interest rate cuts before the end of the year — one in September and the other in December. Energized : West Texas Intermediate crude , the U.S. oil benchmark, was on track for its second consecutive positive week. In Friday’s session, WTI lost nearly 1% to trade around $80.50 a barrel. Strong gasoline demand in the U.S. is one factor cited for crude’s advance. Alongside the move, energy is the top-performing sector in the S & P 500 this week, up more than 2%. However, Club name Coterra Energy has largely sat out the rally, with the stock only slightly higher week to date. Natural gas prices have cooled off recently, which could be pressuring Coterra given the producer’s significant exposure to nat gas and oil. Coterra did shift more resources to oil production earlier this year, which has so far been a good move due to the volatility in nat gas. Alexa overhaul : Amazon is planning a huge overhaul of Alexa that could include two tiers of new generative artificial intelligence features, Reuters reported on Friday. This follows a CNBC report in May that Club name Amazon could charge a monthly subscription fee for its AI-powered voice assistant services. A paid version can complete more complex tasks like “composing a brief email, sending it and ordering dinner for delivery from Uber Eats, all from a single prompt,” Reuters reported. Amazon aims to complete the project, known internally as “Banyan,” by August. An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in a statement that the company has “already integrated generative AI into different components of Alexa, and are working hard on implementation at scale … to enable even more proactive, personal, and trusted assistance for our customers.” “Amazon’s pricing strategy for Alexa could help keep losses down, but it’s too early to know if consumers will be willing to pay for it,” said Jeff Marks, the Investing Club’s director of portfolio analysis. Amazon shares are up about 0.4% Friday, to nearly $187 each. Over the past month, the stock is up around 1.9%. Caffeinated deals : Starbucks is looking to win back price-conscious customers through discounts. According to The Wall Street Journal , the company launched a $5 value menu and ran promotions for about half of May. The coffee deals follow weak traffic that led to a sales slump last quarter, driven by higher prices and slow service. “It’s good to see Starbucks recognize it needs to provide more value to its customers to get them back in the store, but this is one small step in what will be a long turnaround,” Marks said. The sentiment around Starbucks stock has been negative, with shares down roughly 17% so far this year. Shares are still nearly $10 below where they were trading before their May 1 earnings rout. Jim Cramer has said he’s tentative about the next steps and has the stock in the penalty box. He’d prefer waiting a few more quarters to see if management can deliver on plans to improve financials. Next week : There are a handful of economic reports on the agenda, including housing data on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Also on Thursday, we get durable goods orders for May, weekly jobless claims, and the final look at first-quarter gross domestic product. The Fed’s favorite inflation gauge — the PCE price index — is released next Friday. — CNBC’s Matthew J. Belvedere and Kevin Stankiewicz contributed to this article. (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.
