What a rate cut means for stocks, plus a bullish call on AI spending

Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer releases the Homestretch — an actionable afternoon update, just in time for the last hour of trading on Wall Street. Markets: Wall Street is putting together a strong bounce-back session Monday after wrapping up last week on a sour note thanks to a weak jobs report. All three major benchmarks — the S & P 500 , tech-heavy Nasdaq and 30-stock Dow — added more than 1% in afternoon trading. It’s a broad-based rally, with 10 of the 11 sectors in the S & P 500 in the green. Energy is the laggard, weighed down in large part by declines in shares of ExxonMobil and Chevron , by far the two largest constituents in the sector. We took advantage of the positive day to lighten up on shares of Abbott Laboratories , our third sale since July 21. If not for our trading restrictions, we would’ve used some of the cash raised in that sale to buy more Starbucks , consistent with what Jim said last week following the coffee chain’s post-earnings decline. BLS drama: President Donald Trump on Monday was again posting on social media that last week’s big July nonfarm payrolls miss and the massive combined downward revisions to May and June were rigged. Those comments echoed the ones that came Friday as he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. On CNBC Monday morning, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, one of Trump’s top advisers, was asked directly if the BLS numbers were rigged. Hassett pivoted. He acknowledged the longstanding problem of jobs data collection that pre-dated Trump but said, “All over the U.S. government, there have been people who have been resisting Trump everywhere they can.” Hassett, who has been talked about as a possible Trump choice for Federal Reserve chairman, also said, “To make sure that the data are as transparent and as reliable as possible, we’re going to get highly qualified people in there that have a fresh start and a fresh set of eyes on the problem.” Ironically, the weak jobs numbers bolster Trump’s case for the Fed to cut interest rates. Jim Cramer said Monday that he is not here to opine on whether Trump is doing the right thing or not. However, Jim said he is here to help Club members make money. He concluded that the jobs numbers point to a weakening economy and suggest the Fed should not wait any longer to cut rates. If the Fed cuts rates at its September meeting, as the market expects, Jim said the stock market should go up, even ahead of the move, and investors should make money. Keep on spending: The generative AI boom isn’t slowing down anytime soon, according to Morgan Stanley’s analysis of capital expenditure (capex) plans. In a note to clients, analysts said the 11 largest hyperscalers — including Club holdings Meta Platforms , Microsoft , Amazon and Apple — are projected to significantly increase their spending on cloud computing and other AI-related infrastructure into next year. Analysts expect the global capex from these companies to grow 56% year over year in 2025 and 31% in 2026. The estimates are based on second-quarter earnings reports from the aforementioned tech giants, along with those from Alphabet -owned Google, IBM , CoreWeave and Oracle , along with the Chinese tech firms Tencent , Alibaba , and Baidu . Additionally, Morgan Stanley analysts said they wouldn’t be surprised to see 2026 capex commitments “move materially higher” by this time next year due to the continued growth in AI model output and cloud providers still mentioning that demand for compute is outstripping supply. “This earnings season, most management teams highlighted the need to accelerate infrastructure deployment timelines/address tight supply and support increasingly complex cloud/AI workloads, and executives across MSFT, META, AMZN and GOOGL signaled: (1) greater confidence in generating a return on these investments; and (2) a willingness to sustain elevated levels of spending into 2026,” the analysts wrote. This is all promising news for the generative AI trade. As these hyperscalers pour billions into AI infrastructure, it signals that management teams are taking the technology — and the demand for it — even more seriously than before. We hope this means improved AI offerings from our portfolio companies, too. Apple, in particular, is in desperate need of one, which is why we were pleased to hear CEO Tim Cook say on the conference call that the company is “significantly growing” its AI investments. Apple has comparatively spent much less on capex in recent years compared with the likes of Meta, Microsoft and Amazon. The iPhone maker has had a lackluster rollout of its suite of AI tools called Apple Intelligence since last year. Buzzy new AI features could mean more upside in device sales and revenues…