As 2017 comes to a close, CNBC’s Jim Cramer has noticed that one of the market’s starkest features is its shortage of stock.
“We don’t have enough shares to go around. That’s how I feel about this incredibly strong year and the uber-bullish reaction to tax reform,” the “Mad Money” host said. “There’s just not enough supply, not enough stock to meet the demand from buyers who had to radically switch their orientation to deal with a much more positive backdrop.”
Ironically, Cramer found that two similar companies — Amazon and Walmart — best explain this oddity.
“When portfolio managers want to reach for a big company that’s a major beneficiary of the tax reform, you know what? They’re thinking Walmart, not Amazon,” Cramer said. “In fact, you can easily imagine them dumping the fast-growing e-commerce play for Walmart here.”
But sellers of Amazon would probably regret it once they saw the online giant’s likely robust holiday sales, and once the tax plan’s benefits to Walmart were priced in, he argued.
“I’d be a buyer of Amazon into any weakness,” Cramer said. “But given that the passage of the bill was a surprise and the analysts are just now putting pen to paper to figured out its impact, my guess is that the out-of-Amazon-into-Walmart trade … could continue for longer than people think.”
Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin may be all the rage, but when it comes to storing your money, Agnico Eagle Mines CEO Sean Boyd told CNBC that they still pose some unaddressed risks.
“One of the things about bitcoin and the cryptocurrencies is, is there really an unlimited supply?” Boyd said to Cramer on Thursday. “We’re gold miners. We mine deposits. I think, over time, the question will be: are these cryptocurrencies and the developers of these cryptocurrencies just mining the public?”
Boyd, also the vice chairman of Agnico’s board, echoed some technicians’ sentiments that gold prices are turning and could be headed higher.
In a fireside chat on Thursday, Cramer told a caller that in the cryptocurrency markets, bitcoin seems to have a slight leg up against its fast-growing rival, Litecoin.
The “Mad Money” host said that the future of any cryptocurrency will hinge on the depth of its market and the disparity in futures prices.
That’s why Cramer found it “crazy” that bitcoin futures, which are now listed on different exchanges, are so differently priced on each exchange.
“You can’t have futures be that off,” he said. “What you’re looking for is a market that is more transparent and has one price to it. I think the Lite[coin] market is probably going to be less deep than bitcoin because of the first-mover advantage.”
Simulation software platform Ansys is used in much more than building engines and household appliances, President and CEO Ajei Gopal told Cramer on Thursday.
The company, whose software serves as a high-level engineering aid for designers and manufacturers, also works with companies like Ferrari to fine-tune their racecars.
“When you’re in the business that they’re in, where performance really matters, every millisecond makes a difference. And that millisecond makes a difference between winning and just being an also-ran,” Gopal said. “With Ansys technology, they can win.”
Ansys’ software can create what the CEO called a “digital wind tunnel” in which it can simulate what the car will do on the racetrack in certain conditions.
“It’s completely on the computer and it’s built using Ansys technology,” he said. “In that digital wind tunnel, they can go through all of these what-if scenarios: what happens if I change the design of the car, how do I become more aerodynamic, how can I shave those few milliseconds of performance off, how can I improve the outcome?”
As the federal government begins to implement the newly passed Republican tax plan, Paychex President and CEO Marty Mucci shared his take on what it means for the country’s payrolls.
“Probably, this’ll happen in the February checks, because it’s going to take them a few weeks to identify everything,” he told Cramer regarding the impending tax code changes. Our systems are ready to go, but I think it’ll take a few weeks, three or four weeks, to get it ironed out.”
And as the United States creeps closer to full employment, Mucci predicted that wages will need to go up as companies come to terms with the tax cuts they are likely to receive.
“As you get close to full employment, you’re having more scarcity of resource and therefore [are] going to have to raise the wages a little bit more,” Mucci said. “And now with tax reform, we may see more wages go up because there’s more ability to hire and pay a little bit more.”
In Cramer’s lightning round, he zoomed through his take on some callers’ favorite stocks:
Switch Inc.: “It does have an impressive client list. That’s actually a really good way to look at it. And it’s come down and I like the data center group very much. I happen to be partial more to CyrusOne. I think that they’re really good. CoreSite [too]. But this is OK.”
Pure Storage: “It’s good, but I like Nutanix more. And, by the way, just in terms of that general rubric, obviously VMware’s my fave.”
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Source: Tech CNBC
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