CNBC’s Jim Cramer has been known to take fantasy football way too seriously, and on Thursday, he took it to the next level.
“It’s time for me to show my reality, not fantasy, but reality stock team, the one I drafted in my head last night while I was busily putting together what could be a championship Skidaddy Ski team, which, of course, competes in the Mad Money Schlumpadicka league,” the “Mad Money” host said.
Even though Cramer wouldn’t dare draft a quarterback first unless he was picking Tom Brady of the New England Patriots, he began with his stock market equivalent: Apple.
“If there’s a rap against Brady, it’s that he’s an immobile passer. The rap against Apple is that it’s just mobile. I look at Apple as the greatest consumer products company of all time, just as I look at Brady as the greatest quarterback of all time,” Cramer said.
Then, Cramer went for fleet-footed players, the market equivalents of six-foot-five wide receivers who aren’t afraid of some traffic. He chose the stocks of Amazon, Netflix and Nvidia.
Cramer said that Amazon is a winner in a number of ways — a flex play — with Amazon Web Services consistently delivering points and the retail business bringing the heat.
“I keep waiting for another player to have an answer to Amazon. There isn’t one,” he said.
The “Mad Money” host pegged Netflix as the “Odell Beckham Jr. of companies” because it easily makes one-handed catches and each production ends up as a touchdown.
“Classic, value-oriented investors don’t like the style of Netflix; too unorthodox, too showboat. But I don’t care how a player acts off the field. Netflix is on a whole ‘nother plane, a winner which consistently breaks out when you least expect it to,” Cramer said.
His last wide receiver would be Nvidia, a red-hot semiconductor stock with ties to the video game industry, autonomous cars, artificial intelligence and voice technology.
“It’s tough to keep Nvidia down,” Cramer said, pointing to the stock’s bounce after what Wall Street saw as a weaker-than-expected quarter. “Like all great receivers, Nvidia’s shaken off the drop and is headed back toward an all-time high.”
Alphabet and Facebook were Cramer’s choices for running backs because even though their stocks seem overvalued, investors won’t regret paying those prices later, he said.
Despite Alphabet’s recent struggles, Cramer said there was still hope for its stock to break out and urged investors not to give up on the opportunity to buy shares of the Google parent.
“Facebook’s a stud. I don’t even know if there’s an analogue in the NFL as I’ve never seen anything like this company,” Cramer said. “Facebook’s one of those backs that gets all-purpose yards for doing nothing but being a platform for two billion people. No NFL player has ever had that kind of pull.”
Cramer chose Boeing, the strongest stock in the Dow Jones Industrial average, as his defense play because the aerospace giant simply won’t quit. For a tight end, the “Mad Money” host went with UnitedHealth.
“Why UNH? Because great tight ends not only catch, they block,” he said. “I think that Optum, its amazing data business, is the authority on catching — what’s flawed in the system, that is — and nobody blocks wasteful costs like UnitedHealth. They should call UNH ‘Gronk.’ Got me?”
Cramer’s kicker draft was the stock of Visa, a financial technology company that he said is the most consistent of any of its competitors.
And for his bench, he’d have Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba as a back-up quarterback, and stocks like Celgene, Autodesk, 3M or Honeywell as additional flex players.
“As you can see, this is a team that’s built for the ages, not just built for the season. Yes, it’s a bullish team, I acknowledge that. It’s not as defensive as some would like. You can keep some cash on the sidelines for a decline,” Cramer said. “But if you wanted a playoff-ready team of stocks, it is this one, and it’s seasoned, it’s ready, it’s stacked, it’s loaded and it’s in total beast mode.”
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Source: Tech CNBC
Cramer drafts a dream team of stocks in the spirit of fantasy football