3 forces driving a record week for stocks as 7 portfolio names hit new highs

It’s been a week of records for the U.S. stock market — and for several stocks in the CNBC Investing Club’s portfolio. The S & P 500 jumped to an all-time high of 6,187.68 Friday, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose to a new record of 20,311.51. Both benchmark gauges advanced around 4% from last Friday’s close. These milestones cap off a remarkable comeback for financial markets since April. Stocks were pummeled by President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariff announcement on April 2 as Wall Street panicked over what higher levies would mean for economic growth and geopolitical relations. The S & P 500 has jumped 24% since its 2025 lows on April 8 despite lingering uncertainty on three fronts: the administration’s trade policies, the Federal Reserve’s next monetary policy move and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. That rebound in equities has lifted seven Club holdings to all-time highs, including Nvidia, Microsoft , Broadcom , GE Vernova , Capital One , Goldman Sachs and CrowdStrike . The outperformances highlight many of the driving forces of the stock market. In fact, we see three key themes: 1. The generative artificial intelligence trade is back. Wall Street had feared a slowdown in AI spending as U.S.-China tensions threatened semiconductor production and demand. Investors have since brushed off this uncertainty, which stemmed from tariffs and Trump’s chip export controls . That’s, in part, because of a slew of good news from AI behemoths like Nvidia, which hit a record of over $158 apiece on Friday as the stock heads for a five-day win streak. The recent gains have raised Nvidia’s market cap to $3.8 trillion, making it the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world. A blowout quarterly earnings report in late May indicated demand for the chipmaker’s offerings were still strong. Around the same time, CEO Jensen Huang announced a huge deal with startup Humain, which would send 18,000 of its latest artificial intelligence chips to Saudi Arabia. This all helped fellow chipmaker Broadcom as well, which on Friday hit a record of $272 apiece, its latest of several records over the month. That’s because the more demand there is for AI chips, the more sales both of these firms can rake in. Another beneficiary of the AI trade are the hyperscalers, the companies that help support the computational power and infrastructure needed for AI. One of those mega-caps, Microsoft, is benefiting because of its huge cloud computing business, Azure, which generates a large portion of its revenues. The stock reached a record high of over $499 on Friday. Club holding GE Vernova has been a recent AI winner, too. GE Vernova supports the build out of the data centers — the power-hungry facilities used to handle the computation demand of AI — with the production of its turbines. The industrial stock has hit a number of highs this year alone, mostly recently on Friday. Shares are up over 61% so far in 2025, compared to the S & P 500’s 5%. 2. Investors are turning to defense stocks. Geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East and around the world has companies looking for offerings that can protect them from virtual attacks. The companies, in turn, are seen as safe havens for investors. That’s what led cybersecurity names like CrowdStrike to hit a new record on Thursday of $506. Club holding and peer Palo Alto Networks is only 3.5% off its all-time high set back in February. 3. The U.S. economy has been more resilient than expected. Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell described the economy as “still solid” and said the central bank was “well positioned to wait” before cutting interest rates. A resilient economy can lead to a pick up in Wall Street dealmaking such as initial public offerings. That means more companies will tap Goldman’s crucial investment banking business to help with their public debuts. Goldman was named the lead underwriter on big-name IPOs like Chime and eToro over the past month alone. The stock hit an all-time high of roughly $694 on Friday. For Capital One, a stable economic environment means lower odds of a consumer spending slowdown, which is good news for the credit card issuer. Investor sentiment has also improved after the company completed its $35 billion acquisition of Discover earlier this month. We’ve long pounded the table that the deal was a key catalyst for the stock. Shares of Capital One hit a record high Friday of nearly $213 apiece. “I think people should still be buying the stock,” Jim Cramer said during Friday’s Morning Meeting, adding that Capital One trades at a discount to rivals like American Express. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) 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