With scandals and pseudo-scandals swirling at Facebook, Tesla and Amazon, CNBC’s Jim Cramer wanted to inspect each household company to gauge the potential negative impacts.
“With all three names rebounding nicely today along with the rest of the market, … I think we need to conduct a damage assessment,” the “Mad Money” host said on Tuesday. “Can these three titans keep bouncing or should you be afraid that they’re going to get clobbered all over again?”
Since Axios published a story titled “Trump Hates Amazon, Not Facebook,” Amazon has been the target of a firestorm launched from President Trump’s Twitter account.
Trump has railed against the e-commerce giant for its tax treatment and what he considers to be an unfair deal with the U.S. Post Office, but most market-watchers assume his frustration stems from his hatred of the Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
“Even though the company’s facing intense criticism from the leader of the free world, I think the stock’s a buy, plain and simple,” Cramer argued. “At the end of the day, it’s hard to see how this will impact Amazon’s earnings.”
The “Mad Money” host reminded viewers that Amazon started collecting state and local sales taxes years ago, and that if the Post Office pushed back on their deal, Amazon could simply take its business to FedEx or UPS.
“Long story short, the punishment of Amazon’s stock doesn’t fit the non-existent crime,” he said. “This is not a real scandal. I think it’s a buy into any additional weakness.”
Cramer knows what’s currently driving the stock market, and it’s not earnings, the Federal Reserve, FBI raids, congressional hearings or even price-to-earnings ratios.
“No, it’s about China, specifically how well we get along with China,” Cramer said Tuesday. “Last night when President Xi [Jinping] spoke in favor of a more open market with lower tariffs on imported cars [and] better intellectual property protection, it was as though he gave us a green light to roar higher.”
Combined with President Donald Trump’s tweet thanking the Chinese leader for his speech, the seemingly eased tensions sent stocks soaring, with the Dow Jones industrial average surging 429 points, the S&P 500 rising 1.67 percent and the Nasdaq jumping 2.07 percent.
Cramer had a fairly simple explanation for why friendlier rapport between the two presidents helped the market pole-vault: nostalgia.
As the averages bounced back on Tuesday after a late-Monday decline, Cramer noticed a particular commodity roaring with them: oil.
“I’ve been telling you repeatedly that we need to be more cautious on fossil fuels in general as there’s a whole new generation of money managers who views all these companies as kind of the moral equivalent of tobacco,” the “Mad Money” host said. “But there’s no denying that crude oil is doing very well here as the Middle East heats up.”
To make sense of the action and find the best investments in the energy space, Cramer turned to technician Bob Lang, the founder of ExplosiveOptions.net and part of TheStreet.com’s Trifecta Stocks newsletter team.
Finally, Cramer reminded viewers what the stock market and his job are really about.
“While we’re fretting about FBI raids on presidential lawyers or the latest chatter out of China or Mark Zuckerberg’s senate testimony, let’s not forget what the stock market is really about: it’s about companies. You know, those pesky little things we trade pieces of every single day,” he said.
That’s why every morning, Cramer looks at the Wall Street research — not the president’s Twitter account — for key information about the companies he follows.
The analysts often offer a smart, though not always correct, take on the goings-on at top companies, and their reports can give investors clues about how the underlying stocks will perform that day, Cramer said on Tuesday.
“This business is all about trying to divine which companies are doing better than we think, so that we can pick the stocks that have the most potential to outperform the rest of the market and throw away the others,” the “Mad Money” host said. “Long-term, that’s always going to be more useful than speculating about what’s happening at the White House.”
In Cramer’s lightning round, he zoomed through his take on some callers’ favorite stocks:
3M: “The company gave an analyst conference. At the analyst conference, they indicated the month of March may not be as strong as people thought and that was pretty much all she wrote.”
Granite Construction Inc.: “No, don’t [take a position in Granite Construction]. I’d rather see you in Martin Marietta Materials. I think GVA is just OK.”
Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable trust owns shares of Facebook and Amazon.
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