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. Market update : The major averages are trading higher, with the Dow leading the way as it looks to snap three-day losing streak. The positive moves come despite Thursday morning’s release of the the August ADP employment report coming up short versus expectations. While the stock action may reflect the view that “bad news is good news” — a slowing labor market (bad) will force the Federal Reserve’s hand in cutting rates (good, so long as the economy holds up) — it also puts the Fed in a tougher spot should tariff-induced inflation start to hit a bit harder. But the central bank should stay focused on jobs. Tariff-induced inflation tends to be a onetime phenomenon as the rate will come down as the implementation of tariffs is lapped the following year (assuming of course no increase in the duty rates). Unemployment, on the other hand, doesn’t resolve itself simply because you lap the year-ago period; it requires action from the fiscal and monetary authorities. Amazon : Shares of the online retailer and cloud giant are getting a boost from several positive headlines. First, The Wall Street Journal reported that the company’s satellite-internet business Kuiper has signed JetBlue on as a Wi-Fi customer. This marks the venture’s first airline customer and service is slated to start in 2027. Barclays analysts gave investors cause for optimism in the nearer term, noting that Amazon could see a re-acceleration of growth at AWS in the fourth quarter if it maintains its relationship with AI start-up Anthropic. AWS is a major focus for investors since it is the growth and profit engine of the company. However, growth concerns increased a bit after the company reported second-quarter results, and the growth rate of AWS lags the rates at Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud. At the time, Jim Cramer argued that the fear that AWS was becoming an also-ran in cloud was very much overblown — and silly when you consider it’s the largest public cloud by revenue. The Barclays note should help ease these growth concerns, but Amazon will need to keep it up in coming quarters and beyond to maintain its valuation premium. A report in Business Insider suggests that growth is very possible. Citing internal documents, BI reporterd that the company “is testing new agentic, AI-powered workspace software called Quick Suite. This too should support growth in the near-to-mid-term as Amazon can offer up more tools to its customers. (It also adds to pressure in the SaaS space as investors remain concerned about the potential disruption agentic AI will bring to the seat license model.) Street deals : Goldman Sachs will team up with asset manager T. Rowe Price to create private-market products. The partnership will focus on target date funds and model portfolios, giving individual investors, financial advisors, and plan advisors more exposure to alternative assets such as private credit vehicles. As part of Goldman’s deal, the bank will also purchase up to $1 billion in T. Rowe Price shares as well, with the intention of owning up to a 3.5% stake. T. Rowe Price stock jumped more than 6% on the news. Club stock Goldman gained more than 1%. The alliance comes as many Wall Street firms have been pushing for ways to make the opaque asset class , which has typically been reserved for the ultra-wealthy, more accessible. Elsewhere, Citigroup will entrust Club holding BlackRock with $80 billion of client investments as it looks to outsource more of its wealth management operations. Citi will continue advising these clients on market strategies. BlackRock will manage the strategies. The companies told Bloomberg the deal could also open the door to BlackRock managing private assets for Citi’s wealth clients down the line. This enhanced arrangement would further BlackRock’s private markets ambitions, which is a great secular growth area for the firm. Looking ahead : Club stock Broadcom reports after the bell, and we expect the chipmaker will prove the doubters wrong with strong results, including profit margin performance, thanks to demand for AI networking and enterprise software (VMWare). Lululemon , DocuSign , and UiPath also report results after the bell. The main even Friday morning is the release of the August nonfarm payrolls report. The market is looking for an addition of 80,000 payrolls, unemployment to remain at 4.2% and wage inflation to come down from the 3.9% in July to 3.7%. (See here for a full list of the stocks in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) 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Behind the pop in Amazon shares, Goldman makes another push into alts
