Wall Street's weekly performance was near the flat heading into Friday. On the last trading day of the week, everything started well, until President Donald Trump's new Chinese trade threats put pressure on the stock market. The S&P 500 lost 2.71% on Friday – its worst single-session decline since April 10, the day after rising at the White House and pausing “mutual” rates. The index fell 2.43% this week. The Nasdaq also had its worst day since April 10, losing 3.56% on Friday. It fell 2.53% this week. S&P 500 Weekly Performance on SPX 5D After Friday's close, Trump followed up his broader morning warning on social media with an announcement of an additional 100% tariff on imports from China, saying the duties “will be on top of any tariff they are currently paying.” He also added export controls on “critical software.” Both will take effect on November 1. The president said the steps were being taken to “financially counter” new export controls China imposed on rare earth elements – key elements needed in modern production of everything from iPhones to rockets. In a new dose of uncertainty for markets, the Trump administration began laying off federal workers earlier on Friday, the tenth day of the government shutdown. Nvidia's big week The big week for Nvidia started on Monday, when shares fell after GPU rival Advanced Micro Devices announced a successful chip purchase deal with OpenAI. The deal, which sent AMD's shares up nearly 24% in one session, could see OpenAI take a 10% stake in the company. Investors shouldn't worry about Nvidia's dip on Monday, Jim Cramer said, because the AMD-OpenAI deal isn't enough to threaten its dominance in the heated AI chip race. “In the end — I know this is going to be funny — I think everyone wins,” Jim said Monday, referring to OpenAI's massive $100 billion equity-and-supply deal with Nvidia last month. The Information on Tuesday reported that Oracle is seeing slim margins on its business of leasing Nvidia chips as a cloud provider to customers like OpenAI. For the three months ended in August, Oracle's cloud business reportedly had 14% gross margins on $900 million in revenue, which is far lower than Oracle's overall gross margin of about 70%, according to The Information. Shares of Oracle fell as much as 5% during Tuesday's session as a result. That same day, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang walked back these claims during an interview with Jim at the October Monthly Meeting, saying that Oracle is “going to do incredibly well.” Although margin pressure in the short term with new chips cannot be ruled out, this will not be the case in the longer term. “When you first bring a new technology to market, chances are you won't make any money at first. But over the life of the system, they will be wonderfully profitable,” Huang said at the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday afternoon. During the hour-long interview, Huang also argued that if the United States wants the future to be built on American technology, the country must win the generative artificial intelligence race against China. “Just as we want the world to be built on the American dollar, we want the world to be built on the American technology stack, including developers in China.” The tech stack is expanding to more than just Nvidia, as Huang also cited holdings Apple, Amazon and Microsoft. Huang also provided Club members with updates on three other Nvidia partners. Additionally, Huang said America's refocus on energy growth will help the US win in AI and fuel continued prosperity. “Without energy growth there is no industrial growth, without industrial growth there is no stock price growth, there is no economic growth and there is no national security,” he said. One of the stocks that will benefit from AI's energy needs is GE Vernova. At Wednesday's morning meeting, Jim said, “We bought the right one.” GE Vernova has a booming business in natural gas-powered turbines, which can be connected to data centers to generate additional energy needs off the grid. NVDA 5D Mountain Weekly Performance of Nvidia Nvidia stock has certainly had some big moves this week: down days on Monday and Tuesday, and then up days on Wednesday and Thursday. It looked higher on Friday until Trump's China threat crushed the market. Ultimately, Nvidia shares fell 2.4% from their October 3 closing price. Portfolio Moves We bought more GE Vernova shares on Tuesday as the stock fell below its all-time high in early August. We upgraded the stock, which Jim calls “the best story on the market,” to a buy equivalent of 1. “Our belief in the long-term demand for AI infrastructure has increased in recent weeks following OpenAI's announcement of new partnerships to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of AI data centers using Nvidia systems and 6 gigawatts on AMD GPUs,” Jeff Marks, director of portfolio analysis at the Investing Club, wrote in the trading alert on Tuesday. The Club sold a number of Salesforce shares on Monday. We made gains on the lagging enterprise software name after it surfaced with OpenAI's announcement that Salesforce-owned Slack would be integrated into the AI startup's software engineering tool known as Codex. “Monday's pop eases some of the pain, but there is still significant overhang on the stock, coupled with concerns on Wall Street that artificial intelligence is 'eating' the software industry,” Marks wrote in the trading alert. Salesforce needs to make a big impression at this month's Dreamforce client and developer conference, in front of quite a few critics. On Monday, we also added Corning to our Bullpen watchlist for consideration as a portfolio name. Sales of Corning's fiber optic cables should increase because modern AI data centers require much more fiber than previous generations of these energy-intensive facilities. That's a big reason why the stock is up 75% this year, compared to the S&P 500's gain of 11.4%. Another reason to like Corning: the company's big deal with Apple, announced in August, to produce all the cover glass for iPhones and Apple Watches. On Friday we reduced our BlackRock position for the first time. Despite the selling off in the general market, the stock wasn't that far off the all-time high of October 3. BlackRock shares are also still up nearly 10.5% year to date. We put some of those proceeds to work, alongside our newer names, Nike and Boeing. The Club recently purchased these two stocks to build the size of our positions. Despite last month's earnings results, Nike shares are down nearly 14% so far this year. Boeing has done much better: a profit of 19% in 2025. Nike's turnaround Investors received an update this week on Nike's turnaround plan. In a CNBC interview that aired Monday, CEO Elliott Hill said it will take “a while” for Nike to return to profitable growth. Hill also said restoring the company's operations in China is crucial and part of its larger efforts to revitalize the brand. “For example, the difference in the Chinese market compared to the United States is that it is a single-brand store. Physical retail is only Nike, and I think we are too focused on sportswear and not enough on sports. Now we are reevaluating the concepts we have in China,” Hill said. Nike's new direction is sports-themed stores. “We have an ongoing store that is starting to sell very well [in China] because it is anchored in sports. It has a vision on sports. There are 5,000 of them [Nike stores there]“So it will take time for us to roll out those concepts, but we feel good about the consumer-led, sports-led concepts there,” the CEO added. NKE 5D mountain weekly performance of Nike Jim touted Nike stock shortly after the interview, saying he still believes in management's plan to revive the sportswear and retail giant, which has lost nearly 14% year to date. “This fellow Elliott Hill. He's about sports. He's competitive,” Jim said on “Squawk on the Street” this week. “He's not going to lose because he has such a great brand, and they can make a comeback.” On Thursday, Nike earned good marks in the fall edition of Piper Sandler's Taking Stock with Teens survey. Nike remained the number 1 favorite shoe brand for all teenagers. Signs of stabilization among the cohort made Piper analysts more bullish on Nike. Five consecutive losing weeks ended, but Nike shares lost more than 9% this week. (See here for a complete list of the stocks in Jim Cramer's Charitable Trust.) As a Jim Cramer CNBC Investing Club subscriber, 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 charity's portfolio. Once Jim talks about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTMENT CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY, ALONG WITH OUR DISCLAIMER. No fiduciary obligation or duty exists nor is it created by your receipt of any information provided in connection with the Investment Club. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
