CNBC’s Jim Cramer had a unique experience during the historic market crash of 1987 that occurred 30 years ago Thursday.
“People always want to talk about Black Monday, 30 years ago today where the Dow lost 500 points, erasing more than 20 percent of the market’s value,” the “Mad Money” host said. “But as bad as Black Monday was, believe it or not, it was the next day — Terrible Tuesday, as it was known back then — that really scared the bejesus out of people.”
The day after the crash, investors, traders and fund managers alike could not determine the lay of the land, Cramer said. Stock prices were unclear, equities were falling, and the futures suggested the market had another 20 percent decline ahead.
“It was as if the world had ended and it didn’t matter what you owned, it was going to be beaten down to a pulp by the endless cascade of Chicago S&P futures raining on the New York Stock Exchange,” Cramer said. “I was scared stiff.”
But in the week before the crash, Cramer got a lucky call that helped him save his hide.
As equities slid from their highs after a brief 100-basis-point dip in the Dow Jones industrial average on Thursday, Cramer wanted to reinforce his sell-off strategy.
“That’s when you need to be ready with the playbook,” he said. “That’s when you need to go over all your notes that were written in a calmer moment after watching the show about what to buy, your shopping list and how, if you get a pullback that has nothing to do with the merchandise that you want, damaging just the stock but not the company, you should use it to pounce at sale prices rather than being so confused by the fog of war that you panic like everyone else.”
As the negative news began trickling in before the bell on Thursday, beginning with an earnings miss from Unilever, continuing with a tepid quarter from SAP and ending with a notable decline in shares of Apple, Cramer felt the sell-off coming.
But every sell-off is different, so Cramer decided to review his “targets of opportunity” to see if the stocks he has wanted to buy on weakness were indeed pulling back.
The world is going mobile at a faster rate than most technology companies ever expected, Skyworks Solutions CEO Liam Griffin told CNBC on Thursday.
“We never anticipated what mobile was going to do for this world, for this economy,” Griffin said in an exclusive interview with Cramer. “So what’s happened, by virtue of all of this excitement and this data and the commerce that’s being transmitted, we’ve created a very, very crowded network. Spectrum today is really in a digital traffic jam.”
“Spectrum” refers to the electromagnetic spectrum that telecommunications companies use to transmit mobile signals. Companies like Verizon license parts of the spectrum from the government and use them to run 3G and 4G broadband networks.
But Griffin argued that 3G and 4G soon won’t be enough to handle the number of mobile users in the world.
After Winnebago Industries Inc. reported 73 percent revenue growth year-over-year on Thursday, and CEO Michael Happe said the gains are coming from a revived love for recreational vehicles.
“Winnebago has been synonymous with the RV lifestyle throughout its history,” Happe told Cramer on Thursday. “But what we’re seeing today is really this race for people to get outdoors and create memories and create experiences.”
Having recently acquired towable RV maker Grand Design, Winnebago is on a “high-growth track,” Happe said. Industry experts expect 2017 to see the highest level of RV shipments ever.
But with much of the industry’s momentum coming from the millennial generation, going “off the grid” comes with a little more pizzazz nowadays, Happe told Cramer.
“Some recent research said that almost 80 percent of people who are in the RV lifestyle … want to remain connected while they’re on the road,” the CEO said. “People want to get off the grid, Jim, but they really want to remain connected. They do want to send those panoramic pictures on their Snapchats or Instagrams. They want to share their experiences with people, and so we are trying to place technology into the coaches, the trailers, the fifth-wheelers that enable people to do that.”
In Cramer’s lightning round, he shared his take on some callers’ favorite stocks:
USG Corporation: “People don’t understand, but I know this from Suburban Enterprises’ Michael Haley – he was my best man – that the thing that goes the worst is the dry board. OK? It’s got to be ripped out because of mold. I think people are short-changing USG. It’s going to go up more than it already has because it’s the registered trademark of, yes, U.S. gypsum.”
Enterprise Products Partners L.P.: “If you want to be in one of the better master-limited partnerships, which almost nobody wants to be, it would be Enterprise Products Partners. It’s a very good company.”
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Source: Tech CNBC
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