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. (We’re no longer recording the audio, so we can get this new written feature to members as quickly as possible.) Lack of direction: Stocks were muted Wednesday, with the S & P 500 trading in a tight range. Leadership was coming from the Real Estate, Consumer Discretionary, Financials, and Industrials sectors. Communication Services, Health Care, and Tech were lagging. Conference Call: TJX Companies ‘ conference call erased any potential concerns that we had about the availability of quality, branded merchandise drying up. “There’s more goods out there than we can handle, and we’re still holding our merchants back,” CEO Ernie Herman said on the post-earnings call. This is a great sign that the owner of the T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods chains will have plenty of merchandise available to grow its businesses and gain market share. TJX usually picks up extra business when other retailers struggle and are forced to close underperforming stores. This ongoing theme got a boost Tuesday after Macy’s announced it will close 150 stores by the end of 2026. TJX explained on the call that business will benefit from this in two ways: (1) the obvious incremental market share gains that come when another store closes its door, and (2) an indirect benefit that we never thought of before. When there’s less brick-and-mortar competition, the importance TJX’s army of buyers has on the vendor community strengthens, leading to better buying and margin opportunities in the future. Could there be more retail closures on the horizon? “The closure of 150 Macy’s stores is real good, but I wonder how many others we will hear from in this last week of earnings. Nordstrom and Target report next week,” Cramer thinks. Other Cramer observations: “There’s a bid underneath in cybersecurity stocks because there has been a…
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