Salesforce advances toward fifth consecutive session of gains

• Salesforce stock has risen since announcing 1,000 new hires.
• The hiring is intended to help sell its new AI agent product called Agentforce.
• Stifel predicts product segment could be "multi-billion" opportunity.
• Daily chart shows CRM stock completing bullish Golden Cross scenario.

 

Salesforce (CRM) stock is having its best rally of the year. Since closing at $291.37 on October 31, CRM shares have advanced 17.3% thus far in November. Shares of the software bigwig have risen another 1.7% on Tuesday morning, which could make this the fifth straight day of gains.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), of which Salesforce is a member, started the week off on its front foot, closing up 0.69% on Monday, well ahead of its peers — the NASDAQ and S&P 500 — which only gained marginally. At the start of Tuesday trading, the DJIA was once again leading the pack, up 0.15%, but then sold off by midday and is down more than 0.5% at the time of writing.

Salesforce stock news

A clear reason for making headway is the US presidential election win by Donald Trump last week, which has sent waves through Wall Street as money managers expect the administration to ignore regulations and oversight duties and allow far more mergers and acquisitions.

Software stocks have been ignored much of 2024 as Wall Street took a dismal view of the sector’s growth prospects, but that view seems to be changing under a Trump presidency that begins in late January 2025. 

As recently as September, Oppenheimer Asset Management was telling folks to sell Salesforce as the stock had moved below its 200-day Simple Moving Average (SMA). Post-election though, banks from UBS to Citi have been telling their clients that software could outperform semiconductors since it won’t face headwinds from export controls expected under a Trump administration.

Salesforce has been sailing much higher since Friday, when the company announced it would be hiring 1,000 new employees to market its new generative AI platform called Agentforce. 

Released quietly in late October, the new platform allows businesses to create “autonomous AI agents”. The company claims that these digital agents can carry out customer service, sales, marketing, and even healthcare tasks, reducing employee headcount and thus costs.

"Go beyond copilots and deploy limitless AI agents that take action across your business 24/7—from resolving cases to qualifying leads," Salesforce said in a post on the X social media platform after the initial launch.

The hiring announcement is large enough to have the market predicting a vast new segment of growing revenue in 2025, which has in turn pushed up shares. Analysts at Stifel said they were still waiting on more details but that Agentforce could become a multi-billion dollar operation. However, both Microsoft (MSFT) and ServiceNow (NOW) are thought to be working on similar products.

Salesforce has partnered with Nvidia (NVDA) and Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google Cloud segment to optimize these AI agents. 

Salesforce stock forecast

Since last Thursday, Salesforce stock has easily blasted through resistance from the prior range high near $318 in March. This type of rally typically has legs, so it will be interesting where the rally decides to call it quits. But Tuesday sees yet another all-time high for CRM stock.

After falling below the 200-day SMA back in early July, the 50-day SMA crossed back above it at the start of November. This is a bullish Golden Cross signal and typically tells traders that a long-term uptrend is in the making. Everything looks up for CRM stock at the moment, so it is unsurprising to see more retail traders jump into the fray.

Support sits at the moment with its SMAs between $274 and $281, but this range will likely continue to rise in the final weeks of the year. Traders will note that the Relative Strength Index (RSI) is quite overbought above 83 and should expect a pullback momentarily that will offer another entry point.

CRM daily stock chart