The stock market didn’t end the holiday-shortened trading week with a bang on Friday, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 index both logged their highest closing level since August. What’s more, not only did all three major averages secure a four-week winning streak, each are on the cusp of reaching new 52-week highs.

With investors returning from Thursday’s Thanksgiving Day break, Friday was an abbreviated session with both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq closing at 1 p.m. The Dow rose 117.12 points, or 0.33%, to close at 35,390.15. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 inched higher by 0.06% to end at 4,559.34, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.11%, closing at 14,250.85. But amid the lighter volume on Friday, there were still plenty to the thankful for with stocks rising since the start of the month.

For the week, the 30-stock blue-chip index gained 1.27%, while the S&P 500 added 1%. The Nasdaq gained 0.89%. As noted, this is the fourth consecutive positive week for the major averages. For the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, this is their longest streak since June. The Dow, meanwhile, hasn’t enjoyed a weekly run this long since April. As it stands, all three averages have reversed sharp declines that began in August and ran into October. The market recovery in a span of just three weeks has been nothing short of impressive.

In fact, the S&P 500 index has risen roughly 10% in about two weeks. As of Friday’s close, the S&P 500 index is up 18.75% year to date, while the Dow and Nasdaq Composite index has returned respective gains of 6.8% and 37%. However, the strong three-week rally has prompted some analysts to wonder if we’ve moved too hard and too fast? Fueling the rally is also the possibility that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is done hiking interest rates.

Pivoting from its hawkish stance has been a poorly placed bet since early parts of the summer. Will it finally come to fruition? I believe we are already here. We will get confirmation this week when the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the personal-consumption-expenditures index for October, along with other data, are released. That said, if Friday’s three-month high close in the Dow was any indication, investors are are betting the Fed will do exactly as expected and pivot. Time will tell if we are right. Here are the stocks I’ll be watching this week.

CrowdStrike (CRWD) – Reports after the close, Tuesday, Nov. 28

Wall Street expects CrowdStrike to earn 74 cents per share on revenue of $777.38 million. This compares to the year-ago quarter when earnings were 40 cents per share on revenue of $580.88 million.

What to watch: The global cybersecurity market is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 10.5% to over $58 billion by 2031, compared to a market size valued at more than $20 billion in 2022, according to Straits Research. This growth bodes well for CrowdStrike and its next-generation endpoint security technology platform that is aimed at stopping data breaches before they can inflict damage. The cybersecurity specialist has consistently outperformed the overall cybersecurity industry when it comes to growing revenues and profits.

Offering a diversified suite of IT products, the company continues to benefit from its leadership position in various cybersecurity categories, and thus is expected deliver more growth on both the top and bottom lines when it reports results for the quarter that ended October. Investors are expecting another strong quarter, evidenced by the stock’s strong performance. Its shares have risen 100% year to date, including 43% over the past six months, compared to a year-to-date rise of 18% for the S&P 500 index. But don’t think about cashing in your chips just yet, according analyst Adam Borg at investment bank Stifel Nicolaus who recently raised his rating on the stock to Buy from Hold with a 12-month price target of $225.

“CrowdStrike is building out a broader cybersecurity platform across adjacent cybersecurity and IT use cases, which we think makes CrowdStrike one of a handful of vendors well-positioned to capitalize on cybersecurity platform consolidation in coming years,” said Borg in a note investors. Its management has done a solid job executing on the company’s stated objectives of dominating the cloud security market. That’s likely to be the case for the foreseeable future.

Salesforce (CRM) – Reports after the close, Thursday, Nov. 30

Wall Street expects Salesforce to earn $2.06 per share on revenue of $8.72 billion. This compares to the year-ago quarter when earnings came to $1.40 per share on revenue of $7.84 billion.

What to watch: The market has fully reversed the pessimism that once hurt Salesforce stock. On the heels of its annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco in September, which included a heavy focus on artificial intelligence, Salesforce has enjoyed an almost 15% rise in the stock. Currently up 70% year to date, besting the 18% rise in the S&P 500 index, the Marc Benioff-led company has received tons of praise for having successfully navigated the highly competitive enterprise software landscape thanks, in part, to its AI investments, in particular, the company’s AI Cloud, which provides real-time generative experiences across its applications and workflows.

Salesforce understands it is still in the early innings of the AI race. As such, these AI investments, when combined with its CRM focus, will enable their customers to be more efficient by identifying cost-reduction opportunities, ways to increase productivity, and ultimately grow their businesses by becoming more connected to their customer through AI. For Salesforce, however, while its SaaS business model and its customer relationship management continues to be industry standard, the question is whether it can seize enough market share from the likes of Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL) and others to then sustain a long-term competitive advantages in CRM with AI. On Thursday that question will be answered in Salesforce’s billings and booking metrics which underlines the strength of the business in the quarters ahead.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

Original: Earnings Feed: Earnings to Watch This Week (CRM, CRWD)