Jim Cramer's top 10 things to watch in the stock market Thursday

Published Thu, May 18 20239:22 AM EDTUpdated Thu, May 18 20239:24 AM EDT

My top 10 things to watch Thursday, May 18 1. The Dow , the S & P 500 and the Nasdaq are set for a lower open. Bond yields rise on a hotter weekly jobless claims number. Dallas Fed president says current economic data don't justify an interest rate hike pause in June. Wall Street saw a big rally Wednesday after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden said the U.S. won't default. Staff-level debt talks continue. Biden back from his trip to Asia on Sunday. 2. Walmart (WMT) beats on first-quarter earnings and revenue. Advertising sales nice. Grocery very strong. U.S. same-store sales excluding fuel gain well ahead of expectations. Boosts full-year guidance; roughly matches estimates. Q2 outlook short. Dow stock Walmart up more than 1% on the release. 3. Procter & Gamble (PG) cut to hold from buy at Truist, which also takes down price target to $155 per share from $165. The analysts see valuation at peak levels. Club name we talked about Wednesday on our Monthly Meeting for members. It could have further run. Check out our meeting rapid-fire update on all 34 stocks our portfolio. 4. Mizuho analysts join the chorus of people who think that Palo Alto Networks (PANW) is going to have a choppier quarter because of the macro environment. Price target lowered to $220 per share from $235. Still a buy. We own it for the Club and want to ride it out because if rivals Zscaler (ZS), CrowdStrike (CRWD) and Okta (OKTA) were good, PANW should be good when it reports Tuesday. 5. Oppenheimer increases Nvidia (NVDA) price target to $350 per share from $300. AI is having an iPhone moment. H100s, used to run artificial intelligence, are worth more than gold or diamonds right now. You can't do massive cloud management without these cards. Nvida is set to report its quarter on Wednesday after the bell. 6. Citi makes Amazon (AMZN) its top e-commerce pick. The analysts also make fellow Club name Meta Platforms (META) their top pick among the companies working on innovating online advertising. For Meta on the video-form video front, I think TikTok will begin to go away. Montana becomes the first U.S. state of many to ban the Chinese-owned platform. 7. Alibaba (BABA) to spin off its cloud division as a separate, publicly traded company. The Chinese e-commerce titan's quarterly revenue misses. The year got off to a tepid start, reflecting the slower recovery in China's economy post-Covid that we've been seeing in many of our American companies that do business there. 8. Cisco Systems (CSCO) sees big drop in orders so it is all that is focused upon, even as they told you that would happen. Big beats on earnings and revenue. Didn't matter. We exited Cisco two weeks ago. 9. Club holding TJX Companies (TJX) gets multiple price-target boosts on Wall Street after an awesome quarter. Just a great print . Shows the off-price retailer behind the T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods chains can deliver in a slowing economy. Over at Target (TGT), the discount retailer saw a price target cut to $183 per share from $186. The analysts didn't like the gross margin. 10. Deutsche Bank names FedEx (FDX) a short-term buy idea idea ahead of the quarter, due out next month. I totally agree and it will be fabulous. I think this company is a very changed company and can be bought aggressively. See upside to even bullish call. (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. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.

My top 10 things to watch Thursday, May 18

1. The Dow, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq are set for a lower open. Bond yields rise on a hotter weekly jobless claims number. Dallas Fed president says current economic data don't justify an interest rate hike pause in June. Wall Street saw a big rally Wednesday after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden said the U.S. won't default. Staff-level debt talks continue. Biden back from his trip to Asia on Sunday.

2. Walmart (WMT) beats on first-quarter earnings and revenue. Advertising sales nice. Grocery very strong. U.S. same-store sales excluding fuel gain well ahead of expectations. Boosts full-year guidance; roughly matches estimates. Q2 outlook short. Dow stock Walmart up more than 1% on the release.

3. Procter & Gamble (PG) cut to hold from buy at Truist, which also takes down price target to $155 per share from $165. The analysts see valuation at peak levels. Club name we talked about Wednesday on our Monthly Meeting for members. It could have further run. Check out our meeting rapid-fire update on all 34 stocks our portfolio.

4. Mizuho analysts join the chorus of people who think that