My top 10 things to watch Thursday, April 9 1. Stock futures are pointing to a lower open this morning as oil prices are rising. U.S. benchmark WTI crude is up 5% to over $99 a barrel. Will oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz resume? Will the ceasefire hold? Iran has already accused the U.S. of breaching it. 2. After yesterday’s big relief rally, the S & P 500 has climbed 6.9% from the war-driven bottom on March 30. It’s also just 2.8% below its record close on Jan. 27. Yesterday, the market showed you what’s worth owning when things calm down. Labor market and inflation are key questions. We learned this morning that the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge matched expectations in February, up 3% year over year when excluding food and energy. 3. Club name Meta Platforms and CoreWeave announced an expanded long-term agreement for AI computing capacity worth $21 billion . Meta needs all the compute it can get for things like Reels and its new AI models , and CoreWeave has the chips, including Nvidia’ s forthcoming Vera Rubin platform. Clear signal that the AI boom hasn’t faded. 4. JPMorgan upgraded Capital One to buy from and hold, naming the credit-card issuer its top pick in the consumer finance sector. The pullback in this Club stock has been frustrating, but JPMorgan sees limited downside from here unless “new tail risks emerge.” When Capital One reports in less than two weeks, I want to see clear progress in realizing synergies from the Discover acquisition and learn more about its plans for payments startup Brex . 5. Hormel Foods was downgraded to hold from buy at JPMorgan, with analysts worried about margin headwinds for the maker of Spam and Skippy peanut butter. Packaged food stocks have been a graveyard. Hormel is down 27% over the past year, and its 5% dividend yield hasn’t blunted the decline. With plans to buy Unilever’s food business, McCormick is arguably the most interesting stock in this neighborhood. 6. Stifel upgraded Texas Instruments to buy from hold. After a six-year investment cycle that weighed on profits, analysts believe the analog chipmaker is ready to grab market share in the next upcycle. This is a good call. The stock has done very little for years. But the company told a good story last quarter, with strength in industrial and data center. 7. Chipmaker Marvell Technology landed an upgrade at Barclays. Analysts took the stock to buy from hold and said Marvell is “first and foremost an optical company.” Marvell’s business co-designing custom AI chips is usually what gets the most attention. Right now, optical is a red-hot corner of the data center trade. Corning is our way to play it for the Club. 8. Wolfe Research started coverage of Dell with a hold and no price target. Analysts warned about memory prices putting pressure on margins. That kept a lot of people out of Dell before, and yet the AI server maker still turned in a great quarter in late February, and shares have rallied since. Could they be stupid enough to sell it again? I am banging my head on why I never pulled the trigger on this one. 9. BTIG took cloud-based cybersecurity provider Zscaler to hold from buy. Analysts cited increasing competition from “multiple sources,” including Club name Palo Alto Networks . We also own CrowdStrike . Both PANW and CRWD rose yesterday on news of the Anthropic security initiative . Too soon to sell those. 10. Investors are paying too much attention to App Store numbers and not enough to Apple taking market share from Android. That’s from Melius analyst Ben Reitzes. Feels like the first pro-Mag 7 thing I have read in ages. Conflicting foldable phone reports hit the stock earlier this week. But I think Apple goes higher from here. Sign up for my Top 10 Morning Thoughts on the Market email newsletter for free (See here for a full list of the stocks at Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) 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.
Jim Cramer’s top 10 things to watch in the stock market Thursday
Apr 9, 2026
