Every weekday, CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer publishes the Homestretch — an actionable afternoon update, just in time for the ultimate hour of trading on Wall Street. Markets: The Dow and S&P 500 traded lower Friday after soaring to record highs Thursday in response to the Fed's 50 basis point rate cut. It was a robust week for stocks, with the S&P 500 up about 1.5%. The best-performing sectors thus far this week were energy, communications services, financials and industrials. Only three sectors were headed for a down week: real estate, consumer staples and health care. Obesity drugs: New information often drives an organization's stock higher and sends its biggest competitor lower. Take a take a look at shares of the club called Eli Lilly. They traded higher in a weak market after a key obesity competitor reported disappointing results from Phase 2 trials. That rival, Novo Nordisk, said Friday its drug monlunabant, a small molecule oral cannabinoid receptor (CB1) inverse agonist, showed weight reduction of about 6% after 16 weeks. That was an enormous disappointment. The results fell wanting those of Lilly's leading day by day oral GLP-1 orforglipron, which showed weight reduction of about 8% after 16 weeks, well below what Novo had previously reported. Deutsche Bank analysts called the trial results disappointing, adding they “remove the threat of a large, well-capitalized, small-molecule competitor to LLY's orforglipron.” Competition within the obesity space will intensify over the subsequent few years, but this disappointment from Novo Nordisk shows how difficult it’s to make a protected and effective drug. That's why we've long been against selling Eli Lilly when a competitor issues a press release about an early-stage trial. Some drugs will work, some won't. Some shall be highly effective, some will do nothing. Some could have safety and tolerability issues. That's the character of the business. But what we all know now’s that Eli Lilly isn't going to lose its leadership position anytime soon, due to its current obesity drug lineup, robust pipeline, and large manufacturing capability. Cybersecurity Stocks: In other scenarios, each an organization and its competitor can rise on the back of recent news. CrowdStrike shares rose after the cybersecurity company hosted its annual conference. One of the important thing revelations of the event was the very low customer churn following the worldwide IT outage it caused in July. Recall that we initially assumed that competitors like Clubname Palo Alto Networks would use this event to tout their products. However, we will't say we're completely surprised that only a few customers are abandoning CrowdStrike. When we checked out Palo Alto's August quarter, the outcomes didn't show an enormous swing in market share consequently of the outage. Sure, the quarter was good because Palo Alto has an ideal product and value proposition, but it surely didn't indicate an enormous departure from CrowdStrike. Both firms are great, so why aren't Palo Alto shares lower? CrowdStrike's commentary likely suggested that cybersecurity spending continues to be healthy, which advantages each firms. Next up: We'll see a bump in earnings next week. Some of the notable reports come from KB Home, which offers insight into homebuilding, and Micron, which supplies us a very good take a look at demand and inventory for high-bandwidth memory (which matches into AI chips) in addition to mobiles and PCs. Jefferies, which all the time provides a very good preview of the banks, and clubname Costco, which offers a very good read on consumer spending, also come out next week. (An entire list of stocks in Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust might be found here.) As a subscriber to CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you’ll receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after he issues a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable foundation's portfolio. If Jim has discussed a stock on television on CNBC, he’ll wait 72 hours after the trade alert is issued before executing the trade. THE INFORMATION REGARDING INVESTING CLUB PROVIDED ABOVE IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS OF SERVICE AND PRIVACY POLICY, AS WELL AS OUR DISCLAIMER. NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS AND WILL NOT BE CREATED BY RECEIVING INFORMATION RELATED TO INVESTING CLUB. NO PARTICULAR RESULT OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
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