Jim Cramer has noticed that there are times when investors decide that certain stocks are not worth owning regardless of their fates, and a lot of the time, it is because of Amazon.
“Yet, as is so often with this market, you can’t really see the losses on the surface because the money simply rotates from one place to another. It doesn’t leave the house,” the “Mad Money” host said.
Cramer started by unpacking the huge declines in the stocks of Home Depot and Lowe’s, which got hammered in response to two unfavorable pieces of news: slowing paint sales at Sherwin Williams, and Amazon’s deal with Sears.
“You can take your time and wait until this rotation runs its course, but you need to understand that the ‘guilty until proven innocent’ taint has been very difficult to shake if your company finds itself in Amazon’s sights, which is why it’s so difficult to own anything that tries to compete with them,” Cramer said. “However, if you stay away from retail, there’s still plenty to like. And remember: retail’s a very small part of the entire stock market.”
After KeyCorp’s second-quarter earnings beat Wall Street’s estimates, the stock declined over 3 percent on management’s somewhat tepid full-year guidance, so Chairman and CEO Beth Mooney wanted to clarify the company’s prospects and goals.
“We see strength in our company, strong balance sheet, and I do believe, if there is some more clarity and some fiscal stimulus added to this economy, that there’s almost a coiled-spring effect that has not yet come through in expenditures for capital expenditures or other kinds of business investments,” Mooney told Cramer on Thursday.
Mooney said the company’s forecast of the rest of 2017 was based in part on a slower-than-anticipated first half of the year and in part on falling consumer confidence.
KeyCorp also finalized its acquisition of First Niagara Financial just a year ago, and Mooney said the company was still in the throes of integrating the two entities to create the best value possible for KeyCorp’s shareholders.
Some investors wonder how the FANG stocks, Cramer’s acronym for Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google, now Alphabet, can go higher without good news driving their runs.
“Is their recent rally just the greater fool theory writ large, where you buy them today, confident that someone will pay even more for them tomorrow simply because they’ve got momentum?” the “Mad Money” host asked. “In this particular case, I think the answer is an emphatic no. The truth is that these companies are constantly innovating, always giving you new earnings-additive reasons to buy their stocks.”
To support his thesis, Cramer pointed to recent news from all four companies worthy of sending their stocks higher.
Finally, Cramer sat down with Vincent Qiu, the chairman and CEO of Chinese e-commerce solutions provider Baozun, to find out how the company helps clients like Haagen-Dasz and Nike refine their online sales strategies in China.
“We are in the middle of a brand and the platform, like Alibaba and Tmall,” Qiu told Cramer on Thursday, referring to Alibaba’s business-to-consumer online retail platform. “Today, we are a one-stop solution provider in China, or we can call this full-service.”
Baozun, which went public on the Nasdaq in 2015, works with brands large and small to help them up their e-commerce, logistics, and fulfillment capabilities. The company charges a service fee and makes a commission from each client it serves.
Qiu told Cramer that Baozun helps businesses “from the very, very front end to the very back end,” assisting with everything from digital marketing and promotional advertising to sales to actually shipping their products to Chinese customers.
And while Cramer is known for only recommending one Chinese stock — that of Amazon equivalent Alibaba — Qiu was hopeful that his $1.6 billion company would eventually make it into the “Mad Money” host’s good graces.
“I hope that, in the future, we can be the second [Chinese stock] you recommend,” the CEO said.
In Cramer’s lightning round, he shared his take on some callers’ favorite stocks, including:
Cheesecake Factory: “Well, first of all, it’s [trading at] 17 times earnings. Second, it’s actually profitable. Let’s not make it sound like it’s not. It was not a great quarter, I do prefer Darden, but I’m not going to short a company that’s actually done a pretty good job over the years.”
Blackberry: “It’s got intellectual property, it’s got cash, but it doesn’t have momentum. I think it’s probably correctly priced is the way I would look at that.”
Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable trust owns shares in KeyCorp, Facebook and Alphabet.
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Source: Tech CNBC
Cramer Remix: Amazon is king, whether you like it or not