The worst isn’t over, and regional banks are still vulnerable, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Monday, after a bruising few days that saw Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Silvergate Bank all shutter.
But the bottom line for investors? “We dodged a major bullet,” Cramer said, thanks to timely intervention from federal regulators who stepped in to backstop depositors’ money, with no regard for Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation limits. If they hadn’t, Cramer said, we might have had a “full-blown” recession on our hands.
With the dollar falling alongside long-term interest rates, it’s a potential boon for multinationals, even if it comes off the backs of a difficult day for financial stocks like Schwab and Citigroup, according to Cramer. It isn’t a boon for big banks, though, with what Cramer called an “alert” Federal Reserve keeping an eye out for smaller regional banks losing out to J.P. Morgan‘s gain.
“Part of that’s because the Fed expressed a commitment to keeping as many regional banks in business as they can. Now, we don’t want to be like other countries where only a few major banks control the entire market,” Cramer said.
That is what’s driving the Fed’s desire to support regional banks with favorable lending, and what propelled federal regulators to backstop deposits.
“If you believe there’ll be a stay of execution on the Fed’s rate hikes because they’re finally getting major disinflation in the form of these bank failures, you should be pretty sanguine about the stock market,” Cramer said.
