Friday is the time to start buying stocks again, Jim Cramer said during a CNBC special show on Thursday evening.
U.S. stocks fell sharply on Thursday amid fears of rapidly rising interest rates and a possible global economic slowdown.
“I saw that whoosh happen,” Cramer said, referring to the market breakdown in the afternoon.
After that, stocks came back and then tried to go back down again, he added. “We are oversold.”
After seesawing through the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged over 500 points, bringing its two-day losses to more than 1,300 points.
President Donald Trump is blaming the Fed for the market sell-off. He doubled down on his attacks on Thursday, saying Chairman Jerome Powell is being too stringent with monetary policy and is making a mistake. On Wednesday, Trump said the Fed is “going wild.”
The Fed has raised its benchmark rate three times already this year, most recently at the end of September, a move that has helped send Treasury yields to multiyear highs in October. The central bank meets two more times this year and is expected to hike rates one more time. It also has projected three hikes in 2019.
One name Cramer likes is Amazon, even though the stock is trading at over $1,750 a share. So if someone wants to buy 10 shares, they should buy two, he said.
“I don’t know when you buy Amazon other than it’s when down big and people are really scared,” he said.
If that name is priced too high, then he said there are other “interesting” tech situations like Cisco, which has a good yield, and Verizon.
“The time to really be aggressive in selling happened. If we get anything good out of China … or if we get any news that [Fed Chair Jerome] Powell agrees with my view, we’re going to say why didn’t we do some buying,” Cramer said.
Cramer has also been critical of the Fed in recent days, saying Powell should look more closely at economic data before announcing its lockstep interest rate hike plans.
However, the “Mad Money” host doesn’t agree with Trump calling out Powell, even though he believes the economy is further along in the cycle then the Fed thinks
“I just wish the president would cool it in terms of saying ‘they know nothing’ to Federal Reserve Chairman Powell and therefore maybe Powell could walk it back a little,” he said. “The current data is not as strong as it was and the economy looks stronger than it is.”
In fact, he thinks the “collateral damage” of the Fed continuing to raise rates while the economy starts to cool is far worse than that of Trump’s tariffs.
Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable trust owns shares of Amazon.
