Here are the 4 big things we’re watching in the stock market in the week ahead

May 31, 2026

Earnings season isn’t over just yet. Plus, there are plenty of other important updates coming our way this week, from influential tech conferences to jobs data and spin-off milestones. Let’s dive into it all. 1. Earnings: Quarterly earnings are always a huge and exciting focus for us at the Club. While we’re at the tail end of this earnings season, we’ve got three Club names set to report this week, and they are big ones. First, Palo Alto Networks delivers its results Tuesday after the close. Then, on Wednesday evening, CrowdStrike and Broadcom are on tap. We’ll start with our cybersecurity plays in Palo Alto Network and CrowdStrike. Thankfully, the market has finally come around to our view that AI is a major tailwind for security providers, not the headwind the market priced earlier this year when these stocks were left for dead . Their remarkable comeback does present a challenge into earnings. It’s not that we believe the companies aren’t capable of meeting Wall Street’s estimates. The issue is with both trading at all-time highs — and ones that are significantly above their old records before the AI-driven sell-off this year — the bar for earnings is elevated. As a result, a beat on the reported numbers is the absolute minimum we need to see. More important will be management’s near-term outlook and commentary on the call to assure investors demand for cybersecurity has taken a definitive leg higher now that AI is being ingrained into every aspect of the enterprise. Outside of the numbers and demand commentary, we’ll be interested to hear what both Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike have to say about their leanings from the April launch of Project Glasswing , the security initiative associated with the Claude Mythos model. Anthropic organized the effort due to a belief that the still-unreleased AI model posed a major risk to the world’s technology infrastructure due to it’s incredible ability to find bugs in software. CrowdStrike in April unveiled an industry coalition of its own, dubbed Project QuiltWorks , to close what it called “the AI vulnerability gap for every enterprise.” As of Friday, the Street is looking for Palo Alto to report earnings of 80 cents per share on revenue of $2.94 billion, according to estimates compiled by LSEG. For CrowdStrike, estimates are for earnings of $1.07 per share on revenue of $1.36 billion. .SPX CRWD,PANW YTD mountain The S & P 500’s year-to-date performance versus CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks. Broadcom is also heading into the print hot, closing at a record high Friday. Against the backdrop of lefty expectations, Broadcom will need to do more than simply beating on the headline numbers. We need to see continued momentum in AI revenues, both from networking and its custom semiconductor business, which co-designs chips for tech companies like Google. More importantly, management needs to provide guidance that makes it very clear that demand for its AI offerings is not only sustaining, but set to strengthen in the back half of the year. Will CEO Hock Tan announce that Broadcom has inked a new custom chip customer? On the March earnings call, Tan said the customer count stood at six, which also includes Meta and Anthropic. Tan’s commentary on customer spending intentions over the next 12 to 18 months will be closely watched. Broadcom is expected to report earnings per share of $2.42 on sales of $22.48 billion, according to LSEG data as of Friday. 2. Conference presentations: Club names Nvidia , Arm and Microsoft are all participating in tech conferences this week, where they’ll be discussing — what else? — artificial intelligence. Nvidia and Arm are both at the influential Computex in Taiwan, the epicenter of the semiconductor supply chain. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang is scheduled to give a keynote at 11 a.m. Monday Taipei time (11 p.m. Sunday in New York). Investors want details on the “surprise new product” that Huang teased last week. A growing number of signs on social media point to that product being personal computers that run on Windows. At the moment, you can buy consumer Windows laptops that contain Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) paired with central processing units (CPUs) designed by other companies like Intel . There isn’t a PC with both an Nvidia GPU and CPU out there. Arm CEO Rene Haas has a keynote set for Tuesday. Arm’s stock has been on fire , and we’ll look for any fresh commentary on demand for its new in-house data center CPU and supply chain capacity, and its broader role enabling robotics. If the rumors come to fruition and Nvidia unveils its CPU for PCs, it’ll likely be based on Arm’s instruction set, in a boost to its royalty revenues. Microsoft on Tuesday kicks off its Build developer conference in San Francisco, where we’re hoping for encouraging updates on the company’s internally developed AI tools and products. Among our frustrations with Microsoft is a belief that its AI innovation lags well behind OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet’s Google. This conference, which will feature a keynote from CEO Satya Nadella, is an opportunity to improve the narrative. In particular, a new coding model could be on the way, tech-focused publication The Information reported Thursday . 3. Spin-off updates: We’re big fans of spin-offs at the Club — that’s when a company establishes a standalone entity to house one (or more) of its business units, with shareholders receiving proportional ownership in the new firm. We explored this concept in depth a few years ago, but the idea is that creating more streamlined corporations will result in better-run companies with better-performing stocks than if the businesses all stayed under one roof. It doesn’t always work according to plan ( J & J’s consumer-health separation comes to mind ). But some recent success stories include the three-way General Electric breakup — we now own one part in GE Vernova — and DuPont , which spun off its electronics unit into Qnity last fall. Qnity is our third best stock this year; the remaining DuPont has been solid too. The reason for this background: This week will bring two key updates for spin-offs happening at Club holdings FedEx and Honeywell . On Monday, FedEx’s freight business will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The company, which provides less-than-truckload shipping services, will be known as FedEx Freight and sport the stock ticker FDXF. The remaining FedEx, home to the parcel and air freight delivery businesses, will continue to have the FDX ticker. A belief that this spin-off will ultimately make shareholders more money than keeping the companies together was part of the reason we took a stake in FedEx on May 18 . Honeywell on Wednesday will hold an investor day for Honeywell Aerospace, which is expected to officially be spun off June 29 . Before Honeywell officially announced the spin-off in February 2025, Jim had called on the conglomerate to break itself up — recognizing its Aerospace division is the crown jewel of its portfolio. In other words, we’ve waited a long time for this. We look forward to getting the Honeywell Aerospace’s management team plan for the standalone company, which is best known for its electronic and cockpit systems. Anything management says about supply chain constraints, in particular, will be notable because that was a sticking point in its first-quarter results in April. Separately, the IPO of Honeywell’s majority-owned quantum computing firm may come later this week . 4. Jobs, jobs, jobs: The labor market dominates this week’s batch of economic data. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) is the first of the bunch on Tuesday morning. The so-called JOLTS report measures slack in the labor market — it shows the number of job openings, hires and separations, which includes quits, layoffs and discharges, within a given month. A tight labor market can become a source of inflation , as workers use their upper hand to demand higher wages. That’s why economists, investors and central bankers watch it closely. Keep in mind, JOLTS data is for April, while the two other big reports — ADP’s private payroll survey and the Labor Department’s official jobs report — are for May. As of Friday, economists polled by FactSet expect the ADP report on Wednesday to show 120,000 private sector jobs were added in May, up from the better-than-expected 109,000 in April . For Friday’s nonfarm payrolls report, the consensus is job additions of 105,000 with the unemployment rate holding steady at 4.3%. The April jobs report came in well ahead of consensus, reflecting the resilience of the economy in the face of rising oil prices and Iran war uncertainty. We’ll also keep an eye out for any revisions to the April data. Other metrics to watch besides the headline figures: labor force participation rate, average hourly earnings, and hiring within the tech sector amid AI disruption concerns. This will be the first jobs report with Fed Chair Kevin Warsh leading the central bank . While the market would love to see the Fed cut rates, the war-related spike in inflation complicates those efforts, especially if the labor market continues to hold in. Week ahead Monday, June 1 ISM manufacturing purchasing managers index (PMI) at 10 a.m. ET Before the bell: Science Applications (SAIC) After the bell: Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Tuesday, June 2 JOLTS report at 10 a.m. ET Before the bell: Dollar General (DG), Victoria’s Secret (VSCO), Donaldson (DCI), Signet (SIG) After the bell: Palo Alto Networks (PANW) , ULTA Beauty (ULTA), PicPay (PICS) Wednesday, June 3 ADP private payrolls at 8:15 a.m. ET ISM services purchasing managers index (PMI) at 10 a.m. ET Before the bell: MiniMed (MMED), Medtronic (MDT), Macy’s (M), THOR Industries (THO), Ollie’s Bargain (OLLI) After the bell: Broadcom (AVGO), CrowdStrike (CRWD), Veeva (VEEV), C3.ai (AI), Five Below (FIVE), ChargePoint (CHPT), PVH Corp (PVH), Petco (WOOF) Thursday, June 4 Initial jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. ET Before the bell: Ciena (CIEN), Toro (TTC) After the bell: lululemon (lulu), Docusign (DOCU), CooperCompanies (COO) Friday, June 5 Nonfarm payroll report at 8:30 a.m. ET Before the bell: ABM Industries (ABM) (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long *** FILL IN*** . See here for a full list of the stocks.) 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.  

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