As Amazon encroaches on nearly all aspects of retail, CNBC’s Jim Cramer found himself asking a key question: “To be Amazon’ed or not to be Amazon’ed?”
“It’s almost eerie that one company could play such a huge role in both the economy and, yes, for Cramerica, the stock market,” the “Mad Money” host said. “As the legendary cable operator John Malone told David Faber yesterday, Amazon is a ‘death star’ moving in ‘striking range of every industry on the planet.'”
Yes, Amazon has seemingly unlimited capital, a laser-focused founder, CEO and proverbial “evil emperor,” Jeff Bezos, and a lack of exposure to the struggling brick-and-mortar landscape, rife with steep rents and crushing labor costs.
But Cramer said that its chief driver is that the consumer loves Amazon, which, which Prime, provides the most convenient and quickest way to get practically anything.
“For now, Amazon is indeed the death star,” Cramer concluded. “As long as they continue to provide better goods at a better service, every conceivable competitor is right to be afraid. Be very afraid.”
As stocks drifted down from their highs on Friday, Cramer urged investors not to blame earnings action for the market’s failure to rally.
“Even the amazing numbers and the stock moves from Foot Locker, from Ross Stores, from Gap, even from Abercrombie & Fitch, they weren’t enough to prop up the averages,” Cramer said. “But no one ever said the stock market had to be rational, and in fact, market irrationality often gives us exactly the kinds of great opportunities I talk about because we can try to make money by going against the grain.”
Cramer said a lot of the market’s moves have been mirroring overseas markets, a trend he called “stupidity” because foreign stocks often slide on a weakening dollar, which is a boon for U.S. companies.
“That said, while blowout earnings reports can’t always save the broader market, a beat-and-raise quarter will almost always produce higher prices for the stock in question,” Cramer said. “It’s another reason why you have to pay attention to the individual earnings reports.”
With that in mind, Cramer turned to the stocks and events he’ll be watching next week, which include Lowe’s, Salesforce.com and Deere.
Applied Materials President and CEO Gary Dickerson told CNBC on Friday that “there’s never been a better time to be an investor” in his company in its 50-year history.
“The future of competition is going to change,” Dickerson told Cramer. “A.I. and big data are transforming major industries. We see this in retail today, health care, transportation, many, many, many different areas. And at the foundation of that technology is Applied Materials with materials innovation.”
As companies invest in competing digitally via smart devices, better displays and streamlined service, Applied Materials, which provides key components to these products, is a direct benefactor, Dickerson said.
Initial public offerings seem to be coming back in style on Wall Street, so Cramer wanted to zoom in on one part of the market that caught CNBC’s attention in recent weeks: Chinese IPOs.
“Now, it’s not just that Chinese IPOs have been surging. According to the IPO experts at Renaissance Capital, we’ve had 149 deals so far in 2017, up more than 53 percent from this time last year,” the “Mad Money” host said. “By my count, 11 of those IPOs were for Chinese companies. More important, we’ve gotten nine Chinese deals in just the past nine weeks.”
Six of the eleven Chinese IPOs have gone up from where their deals priced, while five have gone down. Cramer examined them all and gave his final take for homegamers.
Owens Corning Chairman and CEO Michael Thaman told Cramer on Friday that as people spend more on their homes, one of his company’s key drivers is bouncing back.
“The big news in roofing is that re-roof has come back,” Thaman said. “We’ve had all these years of very weak re-roof demand where storms were defining the marketplace. Now you’ve seen home equity improving, people are investing in their homes, people are putting new roofs on their house, and as a result, we’re seeing that core roofing market, which is our bread and butter, really come back and sustain great performance.”
Still, storms are a major business driver, and though rebuilding in Texas inevitably slowed the supply chain at first, those disruptions are now gone — to Owens Corning’s benefit.
“Once those disruptions go away, you’ve got to go back in and rebuild,” the CEO said. “Initially, they were churning out a lot of drywall, they were churning out a lot of insulation, that’s got to go back in. There’ll be roofs, and then we’ll get new construction back on its feet in Texas as well.”
In Cramer’s lightning round, he zipped through his take on some callers’ favorite stocks:
Kinder Morgan Inc.: “No. No. You’ve got enough problems. The pipe stocks are very weak and I don’t want you to buy ’em.”
Transocean Ltd.: “I think it’s got 3 or 4 [basis] points of upside, but let’s not overstay our welcome because oil needs to be at $70 before they make a lot of money. $60 at least.”
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Source: Tech CNBC
Cramer Remix: Amazon is the Death Star