Here's what drove big moves in our top and bottom stocks over the past month

CNBC Finance

5 min read

It's been a rollercoaster month for stocks. Since the CNBC Investing Club's last Monthly Meeting on Jan. 22, Wall Street has been dealt a busy earnings season, concerns that AI will crush the software industry, and speculation around the Federal Reserve's next interest rate decision. A flurry of headlines from President Donald Trump about U.S. trade partners and the Supreme Court decision striking down his emergency tariffs didn't help.Â And yet, over that multiweek period, the S & P 500 was basically flat through Thursday's close. The headline performance masks some major swings beneath the surface. Corning , GE Vernova , and Qnity Electronics were our top-performing portfolio names. Our bottom three names were Palo Alto Networks , CrowdStrike , and Salesforce . Ahead of the February Monthly Meeting at noon ET on Friday, here's a closer look at what drove the outsized moves in these winners and losers. Gainers Corning up 59.4% The glassmaker surged late last month after the company announced a deal with fellow Club holding Meta Platforms. As part of the Jan. 27 agreement, the Facebook parent will pay up to $6 billion through 2030 to Corning for fiber optic cables in data centers. That sent Corning shares up 15.6%, its best single-day performance since March 2020. Quarterly earnings one day later made us even more bullish on the deal and the company's prospects. It's been a banner year for Corning , whose crucial optical communications division has grown tremendously due to increased data center demand. Corning shares have jumped 71% year to date â within the top five for the entire S & P 500 â and hit a record high as recently Wednesday before taking a breather Thursday. We raised our price target to $160 on Tuesday. We sold some Corning last week on the outsized run and booked some profits. GE Vernova up 32.5% It was a similar story with GE Vernova, whose stock has become a major AI winner due to its natural gas turbines that provide electricity to data centers. When the company reported in late January , its fourth-quarter profits came in below analysts' expectations. While shares initially fell on earnings day, the buyers stepped in, and the stock closed higher. It's the kind of bullish trading GE Vernova has seen all year long, not just since our last meeting. The stock benefited from a big rally in industrials, as Jim Cramer noted earlier this month. More recently, earnings from power and cooling company Vertiv on Feb. 11 helped keep the momentum alive in GE Vernova and other power infrastructure names. We raised our price target on GE Vernova to $875 from $800 on the same day Vertiv reported. Qnity Electronics up 26.3% Qnity shares popped after the company's earnings report on Thursday. The specialty chemicals maker reported better-than-expected revenue and profit and rosy guidance. Plus, executives detailed a multi-year transformation plan that is expected to boost Qnity's EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) run rate by $100 million by the end of 2028. Overall, the results showed us that this stock continues to be an under-the-radar winner of the AI boom. Qnity spun off from fellow Club name DuPont last November. Laggards Palo Alto Networks down 18% CrowdStrike down 16% The Club's two weakest stocks for the month were our cybersecurity names.Â Both have been pulled into the selloff in software stocks as investors wonder if AI will cannibalize the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) per-seat business model. Wall Street also feared more competition from AI startup Anthropic, which released a new security tool last week. While AI has hit cyber stocks, it may actually be a big driver of demand. After all, the bad guys have AI, too. Additionally, the proliferation of AI agents used by companies to automate processes exposes them to exponentially more points of vulnerability. That added risk means the products and services of Palo Alto and CrowdStrike are needed even more, not less. CrowdStrike will release earnings after the closing bell this coming Tuesday. Palo Alto reported a strong quarter last week, but there was noise around its guidance , which hit the stock. Salesforce down 12.5% It's no surprise that Salesforce made it onto our laggards list. Shares have been slammed with the rest of the software for some time. The stock has lost down 24% year to date, as of Thursday's close. It was down another 3.8% on Friday. It has been one of the S & P 500's worst performers in 2026. Investors have been concerned about AI disruption. The stock caught a bit of a break this week after the Marc Benioff-led firm delivered better-than-expected fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter results. Management talked about growth in Salesforce's AI platform, Agentforce, which has become increasingly embedded across its businesses. It still wasn't enough to calm our nerves about the stock. We maintained our 2 rating on Salesforce after Wednesday evening's earnings release, but cut our price target to $250 from $300. (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.

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Here's what drove big moves in our top and bottom stocks over the past month

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