While the fatal effects of Hurricane Harvey continue to dominate headlines, CNBC’s Jim Cramer pointed out that the storm’s financial impact was not top-of-mind for Wall Street traders.

“If you want to talk about the themes that dominated today’s session before this North Korean missile, Harvey’s just not one of them,” the “Mad Money” host said. “Instead, we got some very specific data points that colored the action, the biggest word being that Apple may be launching its new iPhone as soon as September 12. That’s much earlier than Wall Street had expected.”

Shares of Apple closed up 1 percent on Monday as technology analysts wondered what could come of the product meeting. Cramer, however, urged investors not to over-analyze its impact.

“Don’t overthink the question of who wins from this new iPhone iteration. Apple wins,” Cramer said, nodding to his long-held belief that investors should own the stock of Apple, not trade it.

With Apple’s stock inching towards a new high and billionaire Warren Buffett, a huge investor in Apple, talking to CNBC’s Becky Quick later this week, Cramer expects enthusiasm about Apple to abound in the coming days.

That said, shares of Apple’s suppliers remained fairly tepid on Monday. Micron’s stock rose over 2 percent because the semiconductor company’s memory are in short supply.

But shares of Cirrus Logic, which makes audio chips for Apple iPhones, were practically flat, while the stocks of Skyworks Solutions, which makes wireless components for Apple, and Broadcom, a key intellectual property provider, actually fell on the news.

“I think that’s wrong. They could be both buying opportunities,” Cramer said. “Let me specifically spell out the possibilities for Broadcom. That’s been a horrendous stock for the last couple days. It makes the most intellectual property in the iPhone of all the suppliers mentioned.”

Considering Broadcom’s third-quarter earnings report, in which the tech company was careful not to raise its forecast or offer specifics on future business, Cramer compared Broadcom’s ties to Apple to the rules of David Fincher’s 1999 drama “Fight Club.”

“The first rule of Apple is that you don’t talk about Apple,” Cramer said. “Given that we’re at the eve of a new launch, I believe that if Broadcom had raised its forecast commensurate with what Apple expects as a possible sell-through, it would’ve been violating that first rule.”

Following that, Cramer thought that the sellers who emerged in the wake of the otherwise successful earnings report were simply mistaken.

“The pullback in Broadcom is a clarion call to buy it if you don’t own some already,” he said. “Broadcom is an amazing company and its stock is just too cheap considering that the Apple ramp is about to occur.”

Cramer noted that the Apple report also triggered a rally in some other big-cap tech names including Facebook and Netflix, despite the lack of news from either company.

Another trading theme was Gilead’s $11.9 billion deal to buy Kite Pharmaceuticals, a cancer immunotherapy company with what Gilead’s management considers promising growth prospects.

Given Kite’s lack of profitability, Cramer understood why some investors might wonder about why Gilead paid so much for Kite in the all-cash deal.

“The answer? For years now, Gilead just sat on a considerable cash hoard generated by its Hepatitis C cure. … As long as it did nothing with the money, the stock was stagnant. Now that it’s doing something the stock can climb, and I think it’s got more room to run,” Cramer said.

The “Mad Money” host added that this deal marks the start of consolidation across the drug industry, as biotech players seek to develop new treatments while cutting costs.

“So here’s the bottom line: while Harvey dominates the headlines, takeovers and an accelerated iPhone launch explain a lot more of today’s gyrations than the storm of the decade,” Cramer said. “Always remember that what matters to normal people isn’t necessarily what matters to the stock market.”

Source: Tech CNBC
Cramer: Why Apple matters more to the market than Hurricane Harvey