Reflecting on his infamous 2007 rant where he accused Federal Reserve members of ignoring signs of potential financial collapse, Jim Cramer reluctantly offered some bad news.
“I’m still seeing loans being made that they should intervene on right now, tomorrow, tomorrow morning, this time by reckless lenders in the subprime auto industry, offering paycation, nothing down against vehicles that are rapidly becoming obsolete because of new technology, cars that are losing value just like houses back in 2007. It’s not as bad yet, but it will be,” the “Mad Money” host said.
But Cramer does not plan to yell about it much on-air anymore, given that the 2008 financial crisis would have happened with or without the rant, he said.
“I’ve calmed since then,” Cramer said. “Ranting didn’t get the job done. I failed. But a decade later, I can look myself in the mirror knowing that, unlike so many others, at least I tried.”
When President Donald Trump tweeted that “business is looking better than ever,” adding that “that just doesn’t happen,” Cramer took the leader of the free world up on his claim.
“It’s worth pondering the question: Is the president right?” he said. “The short answer: Yes. At least about the market, he’s right. I say that because I’ve always been of the exact same mindset as the president: it doesn’t just happen. It takes a very special set of circumstances to have a market be this strong.”
But Cramer values skepticism and acknowledged that stocks are trading at historically pricey levels, giving more bearish investors cause to worry about overvaluation.
To clear the air, the “Mad Money” host decided to look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 10 top-performing stocks in 2017 to see if their valuations are justified or overblown.
As consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble slashes its marketing budget, rival Clorox is leaning into — and benefiting from — its digital advertising strategy, CEO Benno Dorer said.
“We follow the money. The money for us, the returns, are online, and we feel really good about where we are with our investments in marketing on digital and social,” the Clorox chief told Cramer on Thursday.
Dorer said that over 45 percent of Clorox’s marketing spend is for online ads, and while the company’s online sales are still a mere 4 percent of the business, they are growing rapidly.
Facebook, which allows companies and brands to promote themselves on its platform, is particularly useful for Clorox as a strategic partner, Dorer added.
It is not secret that Cramer loves when companies engineer rational break-ups, and in the case of Wyndham Worldwide, his sentiments were no different.
Wyndham Worldwide CEO Steve Holmes told the “Mad Money” host on Thursday that the split would, indeed, be “great for the business,” particularly because Wyndham’s hotel and timeshare components had never truly been integrated.
“We were a very large timeshare company, and we had hotel as well, but the timeshare wasn’t born from the hotel side of the business. So we had these two businesses that were never really completely connected, and over the last couple of years, we’ve been able to connect the dots. We call it the blue thread between the business[es],” Holmes said. “We’ve done things that have allowed us to get to this point, and I think that it’s going to be great for the businesses.”
The split is set to occur sometime in 2018, and from then on Holmes will cede his duties as CEO and become the executive chairman of both entities.
Finally, Cramer sat down with Ward Nye, the chairman, president and CEO of Martin Marietta Materials, to get his take on Trump’s potential infrastructure bill.
The CEO of the construction materials supplier said that with Congress gridlocked over more contested issues, any federal infrastructure policy would take time to pass.
Still, Nye invoked the FAST Act, a bipartisan policy Congress passed under the Obama administration that he said proved infrastructure was a cause that could conceivably be supported across the aisle.
“The concept of how much more they’re going to do and when that’s going to be is a little more elusive right now,” Nye told Cramer on Thursday. “I think we still have confidence that we will see it because there does appear to be agreement on that, probably much more than we see on health care or, broadly, taxes right now.”
In Cramer’s lightning round, he sped through his take on some callers’ favorite stocks, including:
Expedia: “Why would you get rid of Expedia? Expedia’s good. I want you to double down.”
Scientific Games: “They had a great quarter. They did. They had great revenue growth and a great quarter. I can understand it. It’s a little speculative.”
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Source: Investment Cnbc
Cramer Remix: The 'rant' is a thing of the past, but Cramer is having déjà vu