S&P 500 eyes another record close — plus, our 2 health-care stocks that defied the group

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: The S & P 500 is on pace for another record close and its sixth straight positive week. That would mark the broad index's longest win streak of 2024; it has twice registered five-week win streaks this year. Looking back, the S & P 500 hasn't had a down week since the Fed cut interest rates by 50 basis points on Sept. 18. It's pretty remarkable. But earnings will have to deliver in the weeks ahead to keep this rally going. Sector spotlight : The top two performing sectors this week were utilities and real estate, up more than 3% and roughly 2.8%, respectively. Financials also continued their strong run this week thanks to strong earnings from banks such as Club holding Morgan Stanley and other financial services companies. In fact, the financial sector is the No. 1 group so far in October, adding just over 5%. Information technology, the best-performing sector of 2024, is in the middle of the pack this week. A bunch of chip stocks dropped earlier in the week in response to a multibillion-dollar bookings shortfall from semiconductor capital equipment maker ASML Holdings . But on Thursday, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company reported strong results and said that artificial intelligence chip demand is still strong, which explains why Club name Nvidia outperformed the group. Nvidia is hovering near its all-time closing high late Friday. The two sectors that traded lower were health care and energy. Health care had a poor week due to double-digit percentage declines in several managed care stocks, most notably including industry bellwether UnitedHealth Group , which issued a 2025 profit forecast below expectations Tuesday. Some Club names in the sector stood out, though. Abbott Laboratories posted a weekly gain fueled by another beat-and-raise quarter Wednesday; a round of price-target bumps followed, including UBS going to $146 a share from $143 and Mizuho going to $130 from $115. Meanwhile, Danaher put together two solid sessions toward the end of the week in reaction to solid earnings from its German bioprocessing peer Sartorius. We'll hear from Danaher directly on Tuesday. Energy dropped nearly 3% thanks to a 6% drop in U.S. oil benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude. Both OPEC and the International Energy Agency cut their global oil demand forecasts for 2024 and 2025, which added pressure to the commodity. Coterra Energy , our lone oil-and-gas holding, had a tough week as a result. Up next: Earnings season picks up more steam with about one-fifth of the S & P 500 and almost one-fourth of the Dow Jones Industrial Average reporting. But only three companies in the portfolio release earnings. Up first is Danaher on Tuesday, as mentioned, followed by both Dover and Honeywell on Thursday. The megacap tech stocks report the following week. It's a relatively quiet week on the economic data side. The key reports are the preliminary manufacturing and services purchasing manager indexes (PMIs) on Thursday morning alongside new home sales. Then on Friday, we'll get durable goods orders. (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.

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.