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There was so much to digest that you might think the decline of the Nasdaq has to have run its course by now. You might think that the drama about the destruction of the data center has to have peaked by now too. But for my money, next week might be even worse — some crazy volatility, a lot of emotion. So after a hard day where the Dow fell 572 points, the S&P declined 1.82%, Nasdaq plummeted 2.86%, closes worst month since March 2025. Well, we got to take a look at what awaits us and why I think the tech rout sadly may not yet be over. So let's do this.
Let's start with the biggest events, a little bit different from usual, and then we'll get granular with stocks. Tuesday, as we know, is election day. I hope you will vote if you haven't voted already. And we need to see if the House and Senate will turn over to the Democrats. What's at stake for the stock market? I think chiefly the environment, specifically the expedited work on any source of energy that isn't natural. The Dems will be able to kill recently enacted anti-green regulations. Plus, I'm greatly concerned that we could see a slew of anti-data center politicians come in and stop projects that were in the numbers, so to speak. The neocloud companies have a lot to lose here because they have nothing to fall back on. I am not going to write off the data center entirely because there are still plenty of states that will still welcome them. However, given how long it takes to site them, busted deals will indeed hurt the whole ecosystem.
Wednesday, the president is supposed to decide about Iran. This decision could rock stocks if the war is ratcheted back up. Oil will go even higher and inflation will get more ingrained. Chevron's the best if you play them; Valero's number two. That brings us to our final big event, the non-farm labor report, which I think is going to show robust hiring, but very little increase in wages. That's one of the reasons I think the bonds are so tame. The other being the debacle this week in earnings that's been limited mostly to tech companies, both large and small. So, now let's go over to the stock portion. Remember, I told you big picture, now we're going to go granular on what's going to happen next week, remembering that when earnings season's beginning to wind down, there are still plenty of landmines ahead, especially in the remaining tech names.
But sure enough, when we come in on Monday, it would not surprise me if Marvell Technologies, MRVL, announces a deal to acquire Lumentum, which would be one of the largest tech deals ever. Marvell stock has been flying high ever since CEO Matt Murphy held a terrific meeting October 6th, coincidentally the top of the Nasdaq, where he revealed his plans to try to become one of the most dominant semiconductor companies ever. He wants to dominate the fiber portion of the data center. He knows that all the copper in data centers will eventually be replaced by fiber optics, which transport data faster and give off much less heat. The industrial logic of this combination is fabulous.
I think the wags will say that this transaction reminds them of when JDSU, another fiber optics company, bought SDL for 41 billion in mid-2000, even though it was only doing about $300 million in sales at the time. Right now, with the data center theory of investing under assault, you have to recognize that only a few of the long knives are sheathed. Ultimately, I reject the analogy, though these companies can scoop up a great deal of intellectual property for the data centers for years to come. That's how much this transaction could mean to Marvell and Lumentum shareholders. We need actual users, and people want to pay for their products.
After the close Monday, Apple reports. Apple stock is one of just a handful of Nasdaq names that just hit their all-time highs in late October. That's because it's got some terrific new products and it gets the benefits of Google's Gemini AI models for Siri, but with none of that ridiculously expensive data center buildout stuff. The iPhone Duo has launched, but good luck getting your hands on one. I can tell you that this one is revolutionary. It's a phone that unfolds into a real TV. Now, look, I'm a sports addict. I love watching when I'm working, and I'm going to get five of them once I'm able to and give them away for the holidays. I hope I can get a good deal from T-Mobile at Costco. Interesting that T-Mobile stock was up today. What was that all about? A prelude to something good.
Am I concerned that Apple stock has risen so much? It sells at nearly 40 times earnings. So, the highest — that is, by the way, the highest price-earnings multiple I can remember. But I've ridden through every vulnerable moment for Apple since it's been at $5. You can trade it. All right, I'm not going to say that's wrong, but I'm an owner.
Palantir also reports, and I expect nothing but good news. Every testimonial that I hear behind the scenes is effusive about how much value they create when you bring them in. Now, I have occasionally chided Alex Karp for being so fiery, but his skills and the skills of his team render my carping irrelevant.
This market has fallen in love with the drug stocks, and the two that I think have a chance to follow in this week's giant footsteps of AstraZeneca and Merck will be Pfizer and Amgen, with the latter probably talking about its rival to Lilly's weight loss drugs. They should talk more about Repatha. That's a real good thing. We also have Advanced Micro Devices, AMD, and I'm going to talk about the heartbreak of its competitor Intel later in the show. AMD has PC exposure and it's taken share from Intel consistently, but it has data center galore, including GPUs, direct rivals to Nvidia. And I think that it will do much better than Intel, though it still might go down on PC demand destruction because of the high price of memory. Keep track of that. We're starting to get demand destruction for some things that have gone up too high.
Wednesday is CVS day. Now, CVS Health reports, and I'm fascinated by this company, given how it's kind of a last man standing operation, the pharmacy business. We had it in the bullpen for the Charitable Trust, but I worry about this pharmacy benefit management business, Caremark, which some critics say raises the price of drugs. I wish it could disengage from that business. If it could, I know the stock would go higher, and I would like to be on board.
I'm worried about the stock of McDonald's. I thought management offered a credible plan of store models and a renewed focus on value. But we have all read the negative comments of its key constituents, who are the franchisees. I wonder if we are only hearing one side of the story and the program is doing well. Heaven knows McDonald's needs it.
Thursday, Kimberly-Clark reports, and it's been a big beneficiary of this headlong move to consumer packaged goods, or CPG, stocks. I am thrilled about that. Why? Because I got a big position for my charitable trust, and I've talked and written endlessly to club members about its merger with Kenvue. That's the old Johnson & Johnson consumer health business. If this one falls before then, well, I think you should just pick some up.
Finally, Friday, CNBC Investing Club members are going to convene for our annual meeting, where we will discuss our portfolio, talk about the pitfalls of the market, and of course, the biggest winners. Jeff Marks and I always have such a grand time talking to members. For those who are coming, I will salute you. For those who are not members, I'm cooking up some real new educational moments for 2027 that I want you involved in.
The bottom line: after a brutal week for tech, don't assume that the worst is necessarily behind us. We've got the election, uncertainty overseas, the jobs report, and another slew of earnings. That means we might not be out of the woods yet. Wall Street's no longer giving expensive tech stocks the benefit of the doubt, especially when it comes to all that data center spending. My advice: don't try to call the bottom in the Nasdaq just yet, but maybe pick up some high-quality companies that are being thrown away. And don't forget that even great earnings, if they're from tech, might not be enough to send a stock higher anymore. That might only be true if we go from a lower level. Let's go to Jim in New York. Jim.
I am doing well. Jim, tell me how you're doing.
I'm doing wonderful, and it's an honor to speak to the great one.
I wish I were great — feet of clay today. But what's going on?
IBM. It's one of my hero stocks. Buy, sell, hold?
No, I mean, it's funny that you mention IBM. It was one of the stocks that reported while I was away for some stuff involving my family, and I didn't get to talk to Arvind Krishna and tell him thank you for doing what was right — pre-announcing when things weren't good and what was then an immediate recovery. He is a good man, and that's a good company, and I'm proud to know him. Let's go to Jim in Florida. Jim.
Hey Jim, down here in Naples, Florida. How you doing?
I am doing well. How about you?
Great, buddy. Hey, listen. What the heck's going on here with Corning? They've got all these contracts with the phone companies, T-Mobile and Verizon and those guys. Plus, all...
You're right. Now, we sold them for the trust, but sometimes it's better to be lucky than good, because I think Wendell's doing a good job. Here's the skinny, okay? They have a lot of business with Verizon and with AT&T in just regular long-distance haul, and people feel that that is going to be eliminated or crushed by Starlink. Even though we know it's a small part of the business, you know how this market is right now. One little is enough to send a stock down. I like Corning here. If we didn't have so much tech, I would go right back in it now that it's going lower.
All right. Look, it's been a brutal week for tech, but don't necessarily assume the worst is behind us. We got a couple really volatile days coming up on Mad Money tonight. The earnings out of big tech are saying that AI capex spending is slowing. So, how worried should you be about the whole complex? Taking a close look at the guidance. Get used to this. This is what we're going to be focused on for some time. Then, in a sea of red, I'm taking a look at one sector that actually made an all-time high today. Don't miss my deep dive on consumer staple stocks. And days like today are reminders that you can't have too much of your portfolio in tech. And that's why we're playing another round of Mad Diversified and doing a checkup on your holdings. So stay with Cramer.
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The AI infrastructure stocks are decidedly out of favor after a very tough October. And at this point, the big question investors should be asking is whether this is just a temporary setback on the road to higher levels, a storm that will pass, or if this is the beginning of the end for this theme, the data center, after we've seen such huge gains over the past four years or so. One way we can begin to answer this question is to look at what some of the largest tech companies are saying in their conference calls, chiefly about their capital expenditures, or capex, plans so far this earnings season. See, just a small handful of companies are responsible for the lion's share of the hundreds of billions of dollars that are being invested in new data centers. Really, it's just five that matter: Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and SpaceX. These companies' capex spending becomes the revenue for all the various companies that sell into the data center, and you know we talk about these all the time.
So at the end of a bruising week for tech, where so much money was lost versus at least other sectors, I want to spend some time focusing specifically on what these companies said about their capex budgets. I want to be factual, not emotional. Let's start with Microsoft, because CEO Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood — after these reports, they look like the grown-ups in the room, spending money only when they have a clear idea of how they'll earn it back and then some, mostly through Azure, which is, we know, their web service business, and some through the extremely successful Copilot. Microsoft had the best report of the three mega-cap tech companies that reported this week, beating revenue and earnings expectations, while Google and Amazon missed on both. Azure grew 48%, and the quarterly free cash flow was positive $18.6 billion. That's the appeal of living within your means, investing somewhat aggressively while still managing to generate cash after your capital spending.
Microsoft was the only company that signaled a cut to its spending. Its capex result for the reported quarter came in well below expectations, and the company lowered its calendar 2026 capex forecast to $170 billion, down from $175 billion previously, largely because of delays in third-party capacity. That means some computing capacity it expected from these neoclouds, you know, companies like Nscale and Nebius, isn't arriving as planned. Microsoft expects spending to accelerate in the second half of fiscal 2027, meaning the first half of calendar 2027. So this might be more of a delay rather than an outright cut. Still, it was noteworthy that with its restrained comments on capex, Microsoft had one of the best reactions of any mega-cap tech stock. We really like the stock for the trust, and we gave CNBC Investing Club members, I thought, a fabulous bulletin about it, much better than all the street research that I read.
Alphabet, tougher spot. The company missed both earnings and revenue expectations for the first time since late 2022. Search, which accounts for about half its total revenues, missed expectations, and its growth slowed to 12% from 17%. That's a big number, okay? That's just from the previous quarter. That brings back concerns from years ago about AI eating into its core advertising business. I thought those concerns were going away. That's not true. I worry that there is no solution for this problem. But maybe worse, they didn't even seem to notice it themselves. That is bearish.
Google Cloud was the only standout and the only real bright spot for the quarter. Cloud maestro Thomas Kurian outdid himself. But to keep up that growth in cloud, the company's going to have to keep spending. That's why Alphabet reiterated the guidance for $195 billion to $205 billion in capex this year and said it expects a significant increase in 2027. Unlike Microsoft, its free cash flow was negative $9.1 billion, and Google shares were indeed punished for it. They had the worst single-day performance in history yesterday, falling 12.6%, losing nearly $500 billion in market value. All I can say to them is thank heavens for Intel. They made you look good.
Alphabet's also renting more compute capacity. CFO Anat Ashkenazi said Google started using third-party compute late in the third quarter and will increase usage in the fourth quarter. She warned that that will pressure margins. It's really expensive to rent that in the near term, but management thinks this is a better solution than turning away customers. We already know that back in June, Google agreed to pay SpaceX $920 million a month for access to NVIDIA-powered computing capacity. Can you imagine? Can you really make that money back?
Then there's Amazon, which posted its first double miss at sales and earnings in four years. It reiterated its formal outlook of $220 billion in capex for 2026, and Andy Jassy expects to spend, I'm going to quote, 'meaningfully more,' end quote, in 2027, saying customers begin consuming new capacity almost as quickly as Amazon installs it, impressing upon us that, in other words, there's a good return on the stuff. The AWS cloud business grew 39%. Management expects growth above 40% both in 2027 and 2028. Now, that's a powerful argument for investing in more compute, but Amazon's free cash flow was negative $33.5 billion in the quarter. That's the third straight quarter in which cash flow was negative. The customers are there, but so are the bills.
The stock was hit hard after hours last night, but ended down less than 2% today, much less than the Nasdaq as a whole. More on Amazon later in the show, but I can tell you that I think the market got it wrong by selling the stock. Meta reported last week, and the results actually, in retrospect, were strong on top and bottom lines. Third-quarter revenue was a clear beat and a record quarterly figure, but quarterly free cash flow was again negative $2.1 billion. Its plan for $97.5 billion in equity financing, including a proposed $60 billion at-the-market offering starting next year, didn't help the stock.
Now, I'm going to Mark Zuckerberg: these kinds of at-the-money offerings drag your stock down. Just try to get it done as fast as possible. And by the way, the people you're speaking to from Wall Street know less than I do. So I know whereof I speak. But then again, maybe they have admittedly, let's say, less hubris than I have. How about that? But as for the company's 2026 capex forecast, it was narrowed to a range of $135 billion to $145 billion, up slightly from the prior outlook of $130 billion to $145 billion.
Now, here's the one that most intrigues me: SpaceX. Its results were strong, too. Adjusted earnings per share of 45 cents, which beat estimates by 32 cents. Its first profit of $4.4 billion was a huge step forward on the road to joining the S&P 500. All three segments — space, connectivity, and superintelligence — were profitable on an adjusted EVA basis. SpaceX's SI segment generated more than half of the company's revenue, up from just 17% in 2025. That's mostly cloud infrastructure, with some Grok and Cursor revenue. Hey, I did a lot of Grok this last few days. I kind of like it now. I didn't used to like it. I had a bit of X ad sales, a bit.
But SpaceX spent $19.6 billion on capex in the quarter and said it expects $35 billion to $40 billion in the fourth quarter, nearly double Wall Street's estimate of around $20 billion, as additional capacity comes online. The company also announced a binding commitment for approximately $40 billion of GPU equipment financing with an Apollo-managed entity, that's a private equity firm. So, long story short, most of these companies are maintaining or raising their capex outlooks. And the few that are giving color on 2027 said they expect to spend even more next year. That's positive if you're bullish on stocks that sell into the data center. Not so positive, say, if you're... Kevin Warsh runs the... well, let's just say the Federal Reserve doesn't want to hear that.
But there's one big thing to note as we exit these companies' reports. Microsoft was the only hyperscaler that said it would be spending less than previously thought, and it's gotten the best reaction of any of these companies. Boards and management teams watch what their stocks do very closely. They always tell you they don't, but that's because they have a problem with assembly. For now, we don't see any signs that they're getting cold feet on their spending plans. But if what we've seen these past couple weeks continues, specifically the market rewarding smaller budgets and punishing bigger ones, then shareholder pressure could eventually force the hyperscalers to slow construction and cut their spending plans. That would be very negative for a lot of stocks, impacting all sorts of companies that have thrived these past few years. That's what we're watching after the bell today in particular.
The bottom line: we're not there yet when it comes to spending on AI being cut. The checks are still getting bigger, but watch what gets rewarded going forward. A market that once demanded more spending is starting to reward restraint. If that changes the hyperscalers' behavior, today's punishment for the data center spenders could become tomorrow's problems for the companies that have benefited the most from all this data center spending. And they may need to be sold, because I've got to tell you, I think there may never ever be a boom this big again. Mad Money is back after the break.
Coming up, with tech stocks turning turbulent, Cramer's choosing his favorite consumer staple stocks to help you diversify. Next.
This final week of October confirmed that we officially got a problem with tech, as the Nasdaq 100 finished the month down more than 9% from its October 6th all-time high, and many individual tech stocks are down much more than that after a brutal few weeks for the sector, especially today. Now that will be front of mind as we turn to November, because tech stocks have powered this overall market's growth, not just for this year, but you know, actually for the past three years, say, it's just been going on and on and on, with an outsized weighting in the benchmark averages like the S&P 500, part because they just kept going up and up and up. A recovery for tech is vital for the overall market's health going forward. Tech stocks concentrate the mind, not so the rest of the market.
But for now, I feel compelled to remind you that the stock market is not all tech stocks. Why we play Mad Diversified, and some other sectors have actually done quite well this month. It's just we don't talk about them enough. When you look at the performance of the 11 major sectors in October, you see that the energy sector had the best month, up nearly 14%. Stick with Chevron. Makes sense if you believe, as many do, that the turmoil in the Middle East is about to pick up again after the midterm elections next week. But just behind energy is the group that I want to talk about tonight. It's a group that if there is a pickup in the war, it actually will not hurt. And I'm talking about the consumer staples, which are up nearly 11% in October.
The staples are your classic safety stocks, popular when investors are fearful about riskier groups like tech. They've been out of favor for a while, though, primarily because so many of the staple subsectors have what seem to be secular — meaning longer-term, and not just like cyclical, but secular problems, existential threats, like GOP just went for the drug stocks or junk food. Okay. Right now, at this uncertain moment, I don't hate the idea of camping out in some staples, so long as you pick the right ones. That's why tonight I wanted to go through some of the favorite names in the group. I want to start with the one that I think is right now most captivating, and that's Kimberly-Clark. We all know these companies. It's the newest staples holding for my charitable trust, which you can follow by joining, and I urge you to do so, the CNBC Investing Club. For now, Kimberly is a leading maker of all sorts of paper-based...
products like Kleenex tissues, Cottonelle toilet paper, Huggies diapers, and Kotex feminine care products. But soon it will be even more of a powerhouse once the company completes its transformational merger with Kenvue. That's the former consumer health business of Johnson & Johnson, which owns a bunch of iconic brands that you might have definitely in your medicine chest, and you'll know all these. I'm talking about Tylenol, Listerine, Neutrogena, Band-Aid. Combined, the two companies should have 10 different brands with over $1 billion in annual sales. Once the merger is completed, there'll be all sorts of efficiency gains and the combined company will have a scale that really few companies can match in the consumer product space. I think Kimberly-Clark got a great value with its cash and stock deal for Kenvue, which was announced after Kenvue had a particularly tough stretch in late 2025. For now, Kimberly-Clark is just, let's just call it a cheap stock. It trades less than 15 times earnings for an excellent 4.7% yield. We just started buying this one for the trust in September. We already have a nice gain. I'm thrilled about that. But I do think that the move is just getting started.
What else? Okay. Before Kimberly-Clark, my charitable trust owned Procter & Gamble for many years. I still like it. But the company struggled during the period of elevated inflation that began roughly 5 years ago, and eventually we moved on, selling most of our position for a nice gain in 2024 and then fully exiting the stock earlier this year. Although I wish I had held on to it. I wanted to move to Kimberly. I wanted diversification. Procter still has an iconic portfolio of brands, and you know them: Tide, Pampers, Head & Shoulders, Old Spice, Gillette, and Crest. And it's a quality operator with a new CEO, Shailesh Prakash — actually, Chalesh Jajura — who seems like he's got some real game. Last week, P&G had one of its best quarters in ages. Top and bottom line beaten, 4% organic growth. Wall Street was only looking for 2.5%. It was a surprisingly good quarter. A very good conference call, by the way. With that result and the overall thirst for safe staples names, investors piled back into P&G shares and they were up over 11%. We're happy in Kimberly-Clark for the trust. It has a much lower P/E multiple and a much higher yield than Procter, but this is still a fine option for anyone who wants to get some new exposure to staples. I think the stock can go much higher. I've been telling people you can buy it right here still.
Now, here's a little trickier one because with GLP-1, you may think, what? Wait a second. Why is he doing this? But it's Constellation Brands. I did a segment on this beer, wine, and spirits company earlier this month, explaining that Constellation had given its best quarterly update in quite some time. The core beer business is looking solid and taking share with brands like Modelo, still the top-selling beer in America by dollar sales. Faster-growing brands like Pacifico — you know them as the brown longneck with the yellow label. Victoria, which is a brand that didn't even try to market here, now they're finally doing it. But the big surprise was the wine and spirits business, which might finally be in a good place after years of portfolio changes. It's still very small compared to the beer segment, but it saw 15% shipment growth last quarter thanks to the success of brands like Mixo, that's an inexpensive tequila, Kim Crawford wine. I also like Constellation's acquisition of Spiked Aid. This is a spiked sports drink company that is the talk of the liquor business. I think this could be huge and I think it's one of the reasons why the stock has taken off. We're at the beginning of the arc here. Constellation shares have been screaming higher since I covered the story and ended October up nearly 20%. It increasingly looks like the worst is behind Constellation Brands and the stock's still cheap at 11 times earnings, 3% plus yield. Looks like new CEO Nick Frink has hit the ground running.
One more quick one. The soda stocks have all bubbled up in October. Coca-Cola shares have gained 9%. PepsiCo was up 8%. And it just seems like these might have bottomed last month. Even the long-forgotten Keurig Dr Pepper made a great move, up 18%. Our favorite from this group going forward — and it's still not too late, but it's had a big move — is Coca-Cola. It had a great beat-and-raise third-quarter report on Tuesday morning, driven by strong volumes, not price hikes. That's important. They don't have the snacks baggage that PepsiCo does. And they continue to impress us on the innovation front with plenty of diet or zero-calorie offerings for the GLP-1 crowd, as well as protein-heavy options like Fairlife Milk, which is crushing it. I mean, just killing it. Banana flavor coming out real soon. Don't worry about it.
Here's the bottom line. You got to take what the market is giving you. And until we sort out some of the issues for the tech sector, some other groups might be better bets for the time being. I like the idea of camping out in the staples for a bit. Kimberly-Clark, that's an investment, not a trade. Procter & Gamble, Constellation Brands looking better, and Coca-Cola for the long term. Please do not forget that the Kenvue closing kicker for Kimberly-Clark could close sooner than most people think. Hey, I'm going to go to Indiana. An...
Hey Jim, so sad about Cliff, but it was such a beautiful column that you shared with us.
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, this is, you know, I come out here and I try to be like myself and I'm not an actor, obviously. I'm trying to do my best. How about that? I'm trying to do my best, Dan. Thank you. Thank you for this time.
Thank you. I'm trying. I'm sure trying.
I'm a club member. Thank you. And feeling so ambivalent about Costco, which I'm so sick of, but on a day like today, you know, I feel more grateful that I kept it.
You know, look, this is one I'm really glad you bring it up. I'll tell you why. Because I have been of the opinion — and I had to speak to the company — that maybe it's run out, that it's done. Do you know that every time I have felt that it is time to buy, I do not like the price-earnings multiple, which is 44, but I do like the changes that they're making, and I like the fact that both Costco and Walmart stock are acting well. That means they are fighting inflation. That's what the people want. Congratulations, by the way, to Walmart too. They are fighting inflation. These two companies need to be applauded, and I think Costco, we're in a good place. Every time I said that I got really angry about it. That's when you had to bet with it, not against it. As tech wavers, I like to do a camping out in staples for a bit. You know, it's kind of wilderness, you know, that kind of thing. There's much more Mad Money ahead, including Cramer's America's favorite game and my diversifi...
I need to say I'm wrong, okay? Because when I say I'm right, well, let's just say if you can't do that and also not mention when you really screwed up on... so I got to go there. You probably want to stick around, and all your calls rapid fire tonight is the lightning round. So stay quick.
Geez, we rounded out the month of October with red across the board, other than those consumer packaged goods stocks. NASDAQ tumbling nearly 3%. Like I said earlier, this might not be the end of the tech selloff. So it's all the more critical for you to have positions outside of the tech sector. And that's why tonight we're playing Am I Diversified? We're going to make sure you're prepared for any turn in the market. That's why some people did so well today because they own these stocks like healthcare, nothing to do with tech. I'm going to tell you whether you're diversified enough. Maybe you mix up a little bit. Now, why don't we start with Betsy in California. Betsy, what do you got for me?
Well, um, Jim, in Am I Diversified, I have Abercrombie & Fitch, I have Eli Lilly, I have Lockheed Martin, I have Visa, and then for the ultimate diversification, I have Procter & Gamble.
All right, let me go to work on this. But you know what? This is the kind of... see, now Betsy in California is not going home tonight thinking, why did I ever get in the stock market? She is not thinking, I cannot believe that I lost so much money in XYZ. Don't... that's square, I got to be careful, which is now blocked. What she's thinking is, I'm getting a good dividend in Procter, which is a consumer packaged goods company. I had tremendous earnings yesterday in Lilly and the stock responded, went up big. I'm going to take a flyer with a company that is on the mend for apparel, Visa, that's consistency. Visa only beat this time, but Mastercard was a little better, but you know what, Visa is up for the year nicely. And then Lockheed Martin, you got Jim Taiclet, they call him, but his name is Jim, and he is delivering, delivering, delivering, and he doesn't like it when I say buy RTX instead because RTX is doing a little bit better. But we've got a defense company, we've got a credit card — but not credit meaning borrowing money, the actual technology of it, card — we've got a great consumer packaged company with a very good new CEO, a terrific drug company, and then a nice apparel company. And that is what... that's a portfolio that I applaud, and that's a person who went home today and said, 'Hey, what's everyone so glum about?' All right, next we have Travis in Georgia. Travis,
Hey Jim, how you doing today on this correction Friday?
Well, yeah, it's a correction. I like that theory. It might not be over. Let's go to work.
All right. By the way, I've got stocks: HD, Home Depot, KMB, Kimberly-Clark, Google, GOOGL, QNT, and KO. Am I diversified?
You've got kind of a home group, you know. See, now Travis from Georgia, he's buying some Coca-Cola and Home Depot, both located there. I like that. Okay, so Quantum is his spec. All right. And that's okay. We don't mind having one spec. I don't happen to think it's doing very well, but it's a spec, might be able to do well in any sort of quantum computer run, so to speak. Home Depot, something I own for the charitable trust. Why? Because I find it's the most lending sensitive. Yields are down today and that is making it so that mortgage rates may be going down, which means you might want to own some Home Depot. Kimberly-Clark yields 4.7. It's merging with Kenvue. That should happen imminently. And it's got very consistent earnings. Coca-Cola was the best consumer packaged goods company in the market. I fortunately had dinner with the old CEO and new CEO recently, and I can tell you I think it is in the best shape that I have ever seen Coca-Cola. So, and then Alphabet, okay, that's a... well, look, I don't want to... that's a stock not worth fighting for right now, and you can own it. We decided for the club that we're going to just own it and see where it bottoms in terms of a price-earnings multiple. We understand it is deeply hobbled technology, spec. Remember, I'm not saying tech and spec. Nice consumer products company, the best home retailer, and yes, the best of any of the food and beverage stocks. Now we're going to go to Nico in Illinois. We had a lot of good Illinois callers this week. Nico.
