In a stock market consumed by news from the Federal Reserve, CNBC’s Jim Cramer was focused on three other events that were domino-like in how they toppled stocks.
“What were today’s dominoes? Well, we got three of them: Apple, specifically issues with the Apple Watch, but also some concerns that the phone may not be that strong, General Mills in what I regard as a flabbergasting disappointment of an earnings report, and still one more miserable quarter from Bed Bath & Beyond,” the “Mad Money” host said on Wednesday.
Apple’s decline was caused by a potential glitch in the new Apple Watch. The Verge discovered that the device had some problems connecting to networks, which occasionally prevented users from making calls, sending texts or using Siri. Apple announced it was working on a fix.
Cramer figured that because the Apple Watch is much less important to the company than the iPhone, the connectivity issue would pass, even with a momentary stall in watch sales.
But Apple’s decline caused a domino effect in a slew of its suppliers’ stocks including Skyworks Solutions, Qorvo, Cirrus Logic, Texas Instruments, and Broadcom.
“My take? If you don’t own any of these stocks, then I would start picking small at one of them into weakness,” Cramer said. “You may not get an instant rally, especially if we keep hearing rumors about some sort of weakness in an Apple product line, but you’re certainly getting a fabulous price break versus where they were a few weeks ago, and these stocks all get cheaper as they go down.”
General Mills’ earnings report, the second domino, also took down key grocery stocks after the company announced a 7 percent drop in cereal sales and double-digit declines in yogurt sales.
All together, General Mills’ earnings declined by 9 percent, a stark difference from the positive picture management painted at a conference less than two weeks ago. Shares of Kellogg, Kraft Heinz, Campbell Soup, Conagra Brands, JM Smucker and Hershey fell in response.
But unlike the technology names, Cramer did not want to defend the consumer packaged foods names, which are all under pressure from the Amazon-Whole Foods entity, Wal-Mart and Kroger.
“They aren’t exactly loved by millennials. And in many cases, their raw costs are going up while their sales are flat-lining or going down,” Cramer added. “However, the packaged food stocks make excellent dominoes because they’re very good at falling.”
Finally, Bed Bath & Beyond’s earnings report evidently told Cramer and others that the company hasn’t been able to compose an Amazon-proof strategy.
The miss took down the stocks of Macy’s, Kohl’s, Target and Costco, all brick-and-mortar-based companies that investors fear are in the path of Amazon’s retail domination.
So as the market frothed over the Fed’s announcement that it would unravel its balance sheet but leave interest rates unchanged, Cramer maneuvered the falling dominoes to find the best investing strategy.
“When this market gets some bad news after its remarkable run, you have to break out the dominoes to explain the sector decline,” Cramer said. “I wish I could tell you the game is now done for these given sectors and the damage contained. Usually, though, we get more than one day as analysts come out and start downgrading. I say if you own no tech stocks, take a stab at one of your favorites, but take a pass on the foods and the retailers because those dominoes actually deserve to fall.”
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Source: Tech CNBC
Cramer pinpoints 3 events that caused sectorwide domino effects