What Nvidia's comeback to a $5 trillion stock value tells us about this narrow market
“They are sapping this market of cash; every single available new dollar seems to go into this group.” That’s the issue Jim Cramer has, at the moment, with stocks tied to the data center boom. He said that on CNBC on Monday morning to emphasize the point he made in his latest column. “Even the most tangential of the data center ‘stories,’ such as the warehouse REITs and machinery stocks like Cummins and Dover, manage to sustain themselves if they have healthy data center orders — and not much else,” Jim wrote Sunday . Shares of Dover were higher again Monday, nearing record highs, after a fourth straight weekly gain. The stock jumped 5.5% last Thursday after stellar earnings and a prediction of over $1 billion in revenue in 2026 from its solutions supporting AI and power generation infrastructure. That would only be 11.5% of revenue. Our other industrial data center stocks — Corning, GE Vernova , and Eaton — are all on a roll as well, especially GE Vernova, which had a monster quarter . Corning reports earnings Tuesday morning. While lower on Monday, Corning shares were still up more than 90% year to date. Jim said Monday that he would not fault anybody for taking some profits there. It’s hard to argue against the move because the earnings estimates are keeping pace — indicating that the stocks aren’t really getting more expensive in terms of valuation, they’re just catching up to the realities of demand for AI hardware. Nor are we really complaining, given we’re currently invested in all of those industrials stocks (except Cummins) as well as chipmakers Nvidia , Broadcom , and Arm Holdings . NVDA AVGO,ARM YTD mountain Nvidia, Broadcom, and Arm YTD performance Nvidia closed at a record high Friday and above a $5 trillion market cap. The stock, which had been going sideways for months, was adding to those gains on Monday. Broadcom fell modestly Monday from Friday’s record close. It, too, had been going sideways for months. We have been using the Broadcom rally to bolster our cash and to keep the customer chip maker from becoming too big in the portfolio. That brings us to Arm. That stock has been a rocket ship year to date, nearly doubling. We initiated Arm last Monday, at around $173. Even with Monday’s more than 8% pull back, we’re still up nearly up 25% on our Arm position. During Monday’s Morning Meeting , Jim said, “Today is a day I want people to be very careful of, OK. It does feel like that the stocks that opened up the highest overnight, like Qualcomm , like Nvidia, are going down, and it’s not a good sign for the group.” However, Jim would like to see the market rally broaden out. That’s because the more cash that flows to the data center cohort, the fewer dollars there are left for anything else. Case in point, enough money has finally flowed into semiconductors to soak up all that Nvidia supply we’ve been seeing come to market at $200, a key technical level of resistance going back to October 2025. To better understand the technicals, resistance happens when supply from sellers overwhelms demand from buyers, and the stock struggles to appreciate further; the opposite is true of support, which happens when demand from buyers overwhelms supply from sellers, and the stock tends to move higher. This tug-of-war between buyers and sellers can’t last forever. Eventually, the sellers run out of stuff to sell, or the buyers run out of dry powder. Either way, a break in the equilibrium holding a stock to support/resistance levels results in a breakout or breakdown. That’s exactly what we think has taken place with Nvidia in recent weeks as it battled with and finally overcame the $200 level. That provides a strong setup this week, should megacap capital expenditure guidance be reaffirmed. We previously talked about how we suspected that Nvidia stock was being ” pinned .” The idea being that activity in the options market was making it hard for Nvidia to overcome $200. Either way, natural sellers entering the market or options traders circling and putting in orders that sell upside at $200, the idea is the same: Nvidia was going to be stuck at $200 until that massive cohort of sellers was overcome. That no longer appears to be the case. With the stock now firmly above $200 — trading up 2% on Monday to around $212, which would be another record closing high — the next test likely comes on Wednesday evening when we learn more about hypercalers’ spending intentions. The big four — Amazon , Microsoft , Alphabet , and Meta Platforms — all report earnings on Wednesday evening. Normally, they are not all on the same night. Since they are, we will get the capex spending outlook snapshot all at once, instead of it trickling in over several days. The staying power of Nvidia’s rally, however, comes back to the lack of money sloshing around; throw in the possibility coming up soon of some record-breaking-sized initial public offerings (IPOs) — we’re talking about SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic. They are sure to garner a lot of attention and perhaps even pull money away from the S & P 500 , making it difficult for the overall stock market to sustain its incredible ascent from its Iran war low on March 30. The index on April 15 closed at its first record high after the conflict began on Feb. 28. While flat on Monday, it closed at its latest record high on Friday. Where does that leave us going into tech earnings? Cautious. We wouldn’t be chasing this Nvidia move just yet, even as we do think that an important level has been overcome; at least, not until we see a bit of broadening or, as Jim noted in his Sunday column, perhaps one of the major IPOs expected later this year could get delayed. (See here for a full list of the stocks in 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. 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