Two weeks into the second half of the year, we put together a quick look at the top three performers and the bottom three in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust, the stock portfolio we use for the Investing Club. The first full trading week of July saw Wall Street under some pressure Friday after a multisession winning streak. Gains month-to-date of roughly 2.4% for the Nasdaq add to the tech-heavy index’s best first half (up nearly 32%) in four decades. There are some new names on both the July leaders and July laggards list since we did this exercise looking at our January to June portfolio performance. July leaders HAL mountain 2023-06-30 Halliburton stock performance since June 30 close Oilfield services giant Halliburton (HAL) flips from a first-half loser (down 16%) to top our second-half winner. Month-to-date, HAL gained nearly 12%, a recent rally that we took advantage of Friday morning by booking in some profits. During our Monthly Meeting on Wednesday, we told members we were thinking about a HAL trim. We downgraded the stock in anticipation to a 2 rating . The recent HAL rally can be attributed to a feeling that oil and natural gas producers, like Club names, Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) and Coterra Energy (CTRA), might need to boost production and that means they’d need the help of a Halliburton. We’ll look for more color around production trends in North America when the company reports its second-quarter earnings this coming Wednesday before the opening bell. CRM 1M mountain Salesforce stock performance month-to-date. Salesforce (CRM) advanced 8.6% in July after a 59% first-half advance. The enterprise software giant announced it will be increasing list prices for some of its top-selling products for new and existing customers by an average of 9%. This is the first time the company has raised prices in seven years. The changes will go into effect next month. The company’s latest move should help top-line growth, expand margins, and boost cash flow. So far this year, CRM stock has also benefitted from getting costs down through personnel cuts and reducing office space. It also bought back stock. It looks like CRM’s quarter will come in the latter part of August. META 1M mountain Meta stock performance month-to-date. Meta Platforms (META) remains a top performer in the portfolio to start the second half, rising 7.6% for the first two weeks of July after more than doubling in the first half. The Facebook and Instagram parent made another 52-week high intraday high of $316.24 on Thursday following the launch of its Twitter rival. Meta’s Threads platform surpassed 100 million signups since last week’s debut. However, there are recent signs suggesting activity has cooled off a bit. More broadly, investors have been sticking with Meta for its leadership in generative AI to attract and keep users on its platforms while offering advertisers AI-powered tools to improve monetization. Jim predicts Meta will deliver a strong second quarter on…
Read More: Here are our top 4 stocks and worst 4 stocks to start the second half