Jim Cramer’s top 10 things to watch in the stock market Friday

1. Wall Street is steady on the first day of March following strong gains last month. On the final day of February, the Nasdaq logged its first record close since November 2021. The tech-heavy index gained 6.1% for the month. The Dow and S&P 500, which have recently hit a series of all-time highs, climbed 2.2% and 5.2%, respectively, in February.
2. U.S. oil prices rise roughly 2% to near $80 per barrel ahead of OPEC+ decision on production cuts this month. Also in the market, cease-fire negotiations in the Israel-Hamas war are in jeopardy.
3. While the majority of our 32-stock Investing Club portfolio ended February in the green, five names pulled ahead of the pack. Nvidia and Meta Platforms as the top two were not much of a surprise. But the other three were not among our Super Six mega-caps leading the market.
4. New York Community Bancorp shares are dropping more than 22% early Friday. The bank, already under pressure due to commercial real estate exposure, reveals issues with its internal controls. NYCB also names its executive chairman, Alessandro DiNello, as CEO. Thomas Cangemi is out but remains on the board.
5. Dell shares jump more than 25% after much, much better-than-expected quarter on strong demand for artificial intelligence servers. Dell is largely associated with personal computers. But this AI strength is something new. The company also increases quarterly dividend by 20.3%.
6. Zscaler shares fall 5%. The cybersecurity firm beat on quarterly earnings and revenue and raised outlook. But investors seem concerned about competition from the likes of Club name Palo Alto Networks, whose stock has been digging its out of its hefty post-earnings plunge.
7. Apple is removed from the U.S. conviction buy list at Goldman Sachs. Analyst Mike Ng said “the market’s focus on slower product revenue growth masks the strength of the Apple ecosystem.” That’s exactly how we feel about our “own it, don’t trade it” Club stock.
8. Oppenheimer and Bank of America hike their Broadcom price targets to $1,500 per share ahead next week’s earnings from the Club name.
9. Bank of America raises Eli Lilly price target to $1,000 per share from $800 on margin expansion expectations and compelling pipeline. That PT would bring the Club name just shy of a $1 trillion market value. Lilly has built a wide moat around its GLP-1s (Zepbound for obesity and Mounjaro for diabetes) due to the billions of dollars it’s invested in capacity.
10. Elon Musk is suing OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, among others. The Tesla and X boss alleges the Microsoft-backed startup abandoned its founding mission to develop AI “for the benefit of humanity broadly.” Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI in 2015 but stepped down from the board three years later.

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