Three Club holdings — Salesforce (CRM), Linde (LIN) and Nvidia (NVDA) — just reached their highest levels of the past 12 months, which Wall Street generally views as encouraging. At the same time, however, some investors may be wondering whether hitting a new 52-week high might signal that it’s time to take some profits. Here’s how the Club is thinking about our positions in these three stocks that reached this juncture during Tuesday’s session. Salesforce (CRM) 52-week high: $200.12 per share on Tuesday Upside to average Wall Street analysts’ price targets: 12% Year-to-date gain: 49.7% 52-week low: $126.34 back on Dec. 22 CRM 1Y mountain Salesforce’s stock performance over the past 12 months. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has proven he’s the right person to lead the enterprise software giant, accelerating its profitability goals by two years and getting well-respected activist hedge fund Elliott Management to retreat on its battle for board seats . Against the backdrop of slowing enterprise spending, Salesforce has found a way to deliver results. The company’s current-quarter guidance, issued back on March 1, also came in above expectations. Salesforce has ample room to grow its business in the years ahead, but we believe Wednesday that investors can be patient before adding. As for the Club’s portfolio in particular, we’re comfortable with our 2.6% weighting in CRM and don’t see a compelling reason to justify violating our cost basis of $188.70. Our last purchase of Salesforce stock was Dec. 21, scooping up 25 shares around $130 each on the belief that investors were way too negative on the company. We’re glad to see sentiment in a much better spot now. Linde (LIN) 52-week high : $365.84 per share on Tuesday Upside to average Wall Street analysts’ price targets: 3.75% Year-to-date gain: 11.9% 52-week low: $262.47 back on Sept. 27 LIN 1Y mountain Linde’s stock performance over the past 12 months. Linde’s advance Tuesday pushed its stock to an all-time high, not just a 52-week peak. The industrial gas giant is a steady performer — growing earnings per share (EPS) by at least 20% annually on a constant currency basis for nine quarters in a row — and an attractive long-term holding for the Club. We’re not taking action Wednesday to add to our position, and generally feel investors should wait for some weakness before buying. The company may have some economic sensitivity in the near term, but notably entered the year with a $9.2 billion project backlog and remains exposed to favorable secular trends around clean energy and the electronics industry. Indeed, on Wednesday, Linde said it is expanding capacity at a South Korean facility that supplies industrial gases to Samsung’s screen-making division. Remember, Linde also is building new facilities in Arizona to support Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company ‘s (TSM) new chip fabrication plants. Nvidia (NVDA) 52-week high: $281.10 per share on Tuesday Upside to average Wall Street analysts’ price targets: 0.3% Year-to-date gain: 89.3% 52-week low: $108.13 back on Oct. 13 NVDA 1Y mountain Nvidia’s stock performance over the past 12 months. Nvidia has been the star of the 2023 show after being one of our worst-performing stocks last year. Nvidia’s future remains bright with artificial intelligence adoption at an inflection point, but we’d like to see a pullback in the stock before buying any more shares. As the stock move suggests, we’re far from alone in our optimism on Nvidia’s role in the AI investment cycle underway. For example, Bank of America on Wednesday boosted its Nvidia price target to $340 per share from $310, while noting that surging AI workloads are creating more demand for the company’s graphics processing units. In the near term for the Club, we’re hoping the inventory correction that’s hung over the chip industry as a whole continues to dissipate. Bigger picture, though, the landscape is ripe for Nvidia. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long CRM, LIN and NVDA. See here for a full list of the stocks.) 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.
Three Club holdings — Salesforce (CRM), Linde (LIN) and Nvidia (NVDA) — just reached their highest levels of the past 12 months, which Wall Street generally views as encouraging. At the same time, however, some investors may be wondering whether hitting a new 52-week high might signal that it’s time to take some profits. Here’s how the Club is thinking about our positions in these three stocks that reached this juncture during Tuesday’s session.
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