As the Dow Jones industrial average slid more than 660 points on Friday, CNBC’s Jim Cramer gave investors a playbook for the tech giants that reported earnings on Thursday.
“A couple of perennial winners, Apple and Alphabet, have been transformed into what can only be called underdogs — maybe even losers — overnight, both stocks more than 4 percent today, while Amazon’s become like the Patriots, with Jeff Bezos acting as the stock market version of Tom Brady,” the “Mad Money” host said.
However, Super Bowl analogies aside, Cramer knew that investors were worried about what Friday’s staggering decline meant for the technology names.
But even with Friday’s weakness, Cramer said most of the negative action stemmed from their quarterly earnings results.
In the last few months, Apple, which just reported its best quarter ever, fell victim to negative forward-looking estimates from analysts.
When management acknowledged that its estimates were too high, Apple’s stock got slammed, sinking even more on Friday.
“I still say own it, don’t trade it, but I’ve also been saying, and I reiterate, it hasn’t bottomed yet,” Cramer said.
Despite the fact that Alphabet delivered a strong fourth-quarter report, the Google parent’s numbers evidently weren’t enough for Wall Street.
“[Management] then gave you a kind of rest-on-their-laurels forecast that brought the stock back to earth and then some,” Cramer said. “Wait for more downside.”
Cramer was most bullish on e-commerce giant Amazon after its latest quarter, which he said showed “a trifecta of goodness:” healthy retail sales numbers, a growing advertising business and a seemingly unbeatable web services segment.
“I know it was up nearly 40 points today. Guess what? It’s a buy,” Cramer argued. “Amazon would’ve been up 100 if the tape weren’t so ugly.”
Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable trust owns shares of Apple and Alphabet.
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