Jim Cramer

I host CNBC's "Mad Money,” write daily market commentary for TheStreet's Real Money, and run Action Alerts PLUS, my charitable trust. There is always a bull market somewhere, and I want to help YOU find it.

[jimcramer]

Let's look beyond the ballot box

So the markets love Hillary Clinton?

No, the markets were building in a Trump victory and the news from the FBI that there would be no indictments from these new emails makes voting for Hillary seem less futile, which is why we rallied.

Today Joe Kernen asked me in my morning crosstalk with him before "Squawk on the Street" whether I missed just talking about earnings.

What a blessing of a question because I sure do. I long for the market to be, well, the market again, where we value companies on how well they are doing, not as part of a vast basket that goes up or down depending upon how certain we are about the White House.

I admit that for the first time in about 30 years I didn't even crack open the charts book, or at least didn't bother to download the charts that the S&P 500 sends me each weekend.

What was the point, I figured? We don't know who is going to win so we don't know what we should be looking at.

But if the futures are right, and there is a lot of money betting that way, and this isn't like Brexit where so many people got it wrong, then we are going to return as we normally would after this week and ask, "Ok, who had good earnings and who didn't?" That's right, we will begin to make judgments about companies themselves, not about the ballot box.

So who did the best so far, keeping in mind that we still haven't heard from the retailers, which is this week's business?

First, hands down, it was the banks. They simply generated much bigger profits than we thought possible. JPMorgan Chase delivered a stellar quarter with excellent loan growth, good sales and trading and some excellent merger and acquisitions advisory. Just superb.

Bank of America blew out the numbers and built out a ton of capital. I thought that both loan growth and credit concerns were about as great as you can get. Deposit growth remains strong.

Citigroup may have been the biggest upside surprise, both in earnings and in prospects for the future. It has a book value that is scrubbed clean and it's got $15 points of upside just to catch up to the rest of the group.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley delivered excellent numbers and can still travel far before they run out of gas.

The regionals had extraordinary numbers and I would highlight Key KEY as having the best growth and the best net interest margin. BB&T was no slouch either.

In fact the only disappointment came from Wells Fargo, which not only had one of the most lackluster quarters but is now regarded as the most scandalized of banks. I am grateful that my charitable trust, Action Alerts PLUS, owns shares in Citigroup but horrified that it has a big position in Wells Fargo. We have told club members to Action Alerts PLUS in our bulletins that it can do well in a raised interest rate environment and that's what we will get in December considering the strong employment number that printed on Friday, with the non-farm payrolls report.

Of the soft financials you had to be impressed with numbers from Visa, MasterCard and American Express. All of them were much better than I was looking for and remain reasonably valued given their excellent earnings and guidance.

The second group that performed well? The social mobile and cloud stocks, including Alphabet/Google and Facebook and Amazon discussed elsewhere, but also Adobe Systems, Workday and in many ways, the best of the best, ServiceNow. Best of the best meaning fastest growing. These stocks are widely perceived as not hostage to politics, even as we know that if Trump is elected president we have to presume that some of their international business could be in the line. Let's not forget that the semiconductor companies, with the exception of Intel, had uniformly fabulous quarters and are subjected to oodles of mergers and acquisition talk.

One other darling: Accenture. This consulting company has become the "Teflon Don" of the group.

The next sector's a puzzler: the transports. I can't think of a single rail or airline that made its numbers but I can't think of a single one that won't be better next year and when it's November that's what we care about. I like United Continental as a comeback kid in the airlines and I think that Norfolk Southern truly impressed as a carrier that should have had far worse numbers than it did.

The basic industrials surprised in a lot of ways, but three that stand out are for an increase in Chinese business, a turn in Europe and a robust airline cycle. Boeing was the leader here and I think it can go higher. United Technologies and Honeywell also delivered good numbers.

We got mixed numbers from the consumer packaged goods group and I would call out only PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble as two that really were compelling, both because of excellent top-line numbers, the latter really surprising. They are both buys here.

Energy was profoundly mixed, too. If you had fantastic growth as EOG Resources in the independents or Chevron in the majors you were saluted with higher prices. But if you had no growth or spent too much, think Exxon Mobil XOM and Occidental respectively, you did yourself no favors.

Now let's talk disappointing. The restaurants were miserable. Other than Cheesecake Factory the results were simply nothing to write home about. The group seems to have very little upside. Starbucks was mixed last week. You didn't get the upside surprise we were so spoiled by but it wasn't disappointing. It's being carried up by the tape, I fear, though, and could drop back if the futures take a header. Domino's? What can I say, best in show but it really is a technology company that delivers speedy pizzas. (Visa, Alphabet, Facebook, PepsiCo, Occidental and Starbucks are holdings in Action Alerts PLUS.)

The home improvement thesis took a huge step backward this quarter with weak numbers from Masco, Sherwin-Williams and PPG Industries. I was very let down by that group. I know that Home Depot is still a long-term buy but let's face it, the luster seems lost for now. My charitable trust picked up some Newell Brands after CEO Mike Polk's presentation on "Mad Money" but it seems like only the futures are powering it higher today. I don't sense real buyers, meaning funds that want hundreds of millions of dollars in Newell's stock, just managers who want exposure to equities via the futures.

The apparel segment got hit hard led by Nike and Under Armour, which have gotten into some weird Claymation death match without winners.

And then there's health care. We are getting a nice snap-back rally in the group, which got severely oversold, but it is time to recognize that there are winners and losers in a group that had formerly just had the former. Of the drug stocks Merck delivered the best that I saw and was understated about the possibilities of Keytruda being a true anti-cancer blockbuster franchise. I am still reeling from the lack of respect given to Celgene, although it was able to put up some reasonable amount of points today. Johnson & Johnson reported eons ago and it was fantastic, totally undeserving of the punishment meted out to it. Valeant which reports tomorrow, remains a total mystery.

The cost containers, meaning the health maintenance organizations away from UnitedHealth and the pharmacy benefit managers and the generics, were almost all universally miserable and any lift to me means that you have to examine how yours did in the current quarter but there were more losers than winners.

So, if you look at where the money wants to go, and you figure that this election will pass and a week from now we are going to talk about companies again provided there is no contested election, I think that the above description of the earnings season to date will hold up until year-end. It's where the justified gains are. It's where they will be.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on NOV 07, 2016. 

[jimcramer]

Could Netflix keep Amazon in check?

If Apple didn't like Netflix when it was worth $25 billion, why do people think Apple would like Netflix enough to acquire it at $45 billion?

It's a legit question given that the stock is up 10 points from where it was before this chatter began.

Is the chatter ridiculous? I think every company in Silicon Valley wants to blunt Amazon, and given that Amazon is pressing into content and more and more people are watching video on Amazon Prime, perhaps Netflix can be one of those companies that keeps Amazon in check. (Apple is part of TheStreet's Action Alerts PLUS portfolio. Amazon is part of the Growth Seeker portfolio.)

Without a bid, though, Netflix isn't worth this much unless you knew domestic has accelerated.

Oh, and there is something else that should be considered: Why would Netflix CEO Reed Hastings want to sell? He is having such a good time. He would be out in a few months if the wrong company makes a bid that can't be refused.

But let's understand that this thing's going lower on an Apple denial or a partnership that doesn't really move Netflix's needle.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on OCT 05, 2016.

[jimcramer]

This oil math does not add up

This alleged freeze of OPEC production seems to me like the final act of desperation on the part of these oil-producing countries to keep oil from breaking back below $40 on its own weight.

Think about it from their point of view. Once again, going into the OPEC meeting this week, we heard from the Saudis that they weren't going to cut back unless Iran cut back. Iran had been threatening to go from 3.6 million barrels a day up to 4 million with the addition of foreign capital.

The alleged deal -- and I say alleged because the Saudi oil minister Khalid al Falih specifically exempted Iran, as well as Nigeria and Libya, from the November agreement -- left the Saudis no choice but to cut back, or oil would most surely crater when these three intransigents got to their new levels. Remember, both Libya and Nigeria have seen their oil production cut by rebels.

You just need to do the math. Libya was producing 470,000 barrels per day two years ago. It had recently fallen to 292,000. Nigeria had been at 1.9 million barrels a day before the insurgents cut production to 1.4 million. The Iranians are at 3.6 million going to 4 million perhaps in a matter of months. So, OPEC was on target to produce about one million more barrels per day by year end than they did in August. So 33.2 million -- the current production -- was going to go to 34.2 million without some sort of a deal, which would most certainly have crushed the market.

Now, why do I think this deal is more talk than action, and why did oil only go to the $46 region on the deal announcement -- back to where it was before the most recent foray down to the low 40s?

Because if the oil production freeze beginning in November of 2016 is 32.5 to 33 million, and Iran, Libya and Nigeria have not agreed to freeze production, than who is going to cut back the minimum of 1.2 million barrels needed to get to the 33 million minimum target?

I don't think the Saudis will give up all that share. I don't see the Iraqis cutting back.

We haven't heard from the Russians who are going full out. The U.S. has stabilized at a production level that is 1 million barrels lower than its peak of 9.6 million -- and is about to go higher because of lower production costs.

So, the deal by itself is just chimerical. But, by saying it, OPEC managed to keep the price from plummeting -- as it was about to.

What could actually make the production freeze work? Higher demand.

It's in the interests of all producers to have oil higher. So they are going to keep up the talk.

But the physical market, where demand is stable to slightly weaker, is not going to comply without real cuts -- and we know that no country is talking about cutting production to the point that oil could get anywhere near the 33 million mark from the 34.2 million that OPEC was about to produce.

That's why I am calling it a desperate action to stop oil prices from collapsing again. They can't reveal the details because there are none.

So, don't get too excited. If you want to profit off it, go to the oil companies that have continued to lower their breakeven: Pioneer Natural Resources, EOG Resources, Apache, Parsley Energy, PDC Energy and SM Energy. They would be the beneficiaries of anything that keeps oil in the $40s, which this statement might have done.

But remember, by November we will know the target can't be hit without a big pickup in demand -- and once again crude will be fighting to stay above the $40 level, where production from the U.S. keeps coming back on line because of the 43% increase in rigs in the Permian since the country's rig-count low earlier this year.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on SEP 29, 2016.

[jimcramer]

When long term is the best term

When is long-term just a cop-out and when does it make sense? At what point should you just say, "Forget about it, there's nothing there." Or should you say, "Look, I know the near term is bad, but it can get better," and hang on?

There are a host of stocks that make me think of this dichotomy and I want to spend some time on them because they say, "Don't give up the ship so quickly because you could be wrong."

For example, you could have easily given up on T-Mobile and Sprint not that long ago. Sprint had a terrible balance sheet and needed to invest fortunes to stay competitive after the government blocked its purchase by AT&T. T-Mobile seemed like a ridiculous also-ran, an afterthought of Deutsche Telecom, its majority owner. (AT&T is part of TheStreet's Dividend Stock Advisor and Trifecta Stocks portfolios.)

But then Softbank saw something it liked with Sprint, took a long-term view and bought 83% of it. Then it installed the incredibly aggressive Maurice Claure as CEO and improved the balance sheet. Now it is growing again, it has $11 billion in liquidity and it is growing with higher pricing and the lowest churn it's had in ages.

How about T-Mobile? When John Legere became CEO in September 2012, T-Mobile was the fourth-largest of the carriers. The stock was at $14. Since then Legere has doubled its customer base from 33 million to 66 million and its stock has more than kept pace at $45. I think a huge reason why T-Mobile has succeeded is because Legere is a wild-man rebel among the staid AT&T and Verizon. Younger people like rebels. It's working.

I have liked both stocks longer-term, and so many times I felt stupid about it, but I had a belief that there was room for four carriers and that cellphones are growth markets. T-Mobile always had a deep-pocketed partner and Sprint got one with Softbank. They had the capital to ride it out and they've been terrific investments if you held them long term even as they were pretty written off by almost all the analysts I know. Now the question is will T-Mobile be bought out by someone who wants that growth? Will Softbank buy the rest now that Sprint's turned? Those are high-quality problems.

Which brings me to the next stock that I hear being written off over and over again: Disney. Here's a company with a stock that's gone from $120 to $91. It's down 12% for the year. All I hear these days is that Disney's pretty much done because ESPN's no longer growing and the company basically is ESPN. (Disney is part of TheStreet's Trifecta Stocks portfolio.)

I got a call yesterday from someone who owns Disney and was clearly tired of holding it through what has become a real house of pain. I told him to think about the long term, not short term, and hold on.

Cop-out? Not willing to just throw in the towel? No. Let me tell you how I thought about this answer. I had sat next to Sprint's Claure yesterday morning and congratulated him for the turn. It might not have happened, though, if Sprint wasn't able to fix that balance sheet. Once it was fixed, though, you had to be in it because it's in a growth market and it has good leadership.

You could have written off Sprint or T-Mobile very easily. I think that you could write Disney off very easily. I say, wait a second, look at what the company said today at a conference. First, there's no consumer slowdown. Second it's got a terrific slate of films and ever since it acquired Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm, the average global box office from each film is slightly less than $800 million. The company is creating a Star Wars universe like it did with Marvel and has a new Star Wars film coming out in December. People still love live sports and it has what it calls a treasure trove of digital rights for sports that isn't being monetized. Plus it is very encouraged by the recent purchase of MLB BAMTech as an extender of its digital presence.

Yes, fewer people are taking ESPN. But you know what's being left out? The balance sheet. Disney has the balance sheet to change its fortunes like Sprint and T-Mobile have. It has tremendous intellectual property. It's got great leadership. How can this company be written off? It can make virtually any acquisition it wants to change its stripes. It can buy other theme parks. Other content companies. Other entertainment and digital outfits like Twitter. How in heck can I write this company off long term because of ESPN issues, as lucrative as ESPN is to the company? No, not a cop-out. More like an admission that if the once lowest of the low, Sprint and T-Mobile can turn, why can't Disney?

This article originally appeared on Real Money on SEP 21, 2016.

[jimcramer]

What competition can do for (or against) you

Competition's a terrible thing -- at least if you are a shareholder. Sprouts Farmers Market has been laid low today by competition. Who isn't in the natural and organic space these days? Whole Foods, Walmart, Target, Kroger -- who needs another player, one where smaller and nimbler doesn't seem to matter very much? Why do I say that? I don't. The flat comparable-store numbers that Sprouts is sprouting tell you all you need to know.

But Western Digital's run? That has to do with a lack of competition. We knew from HP Inc.'s quarter not long ago that prices were tightening for flash memory. In fact, it was an issue that analysts spent a lot of time talking about because it was so unexpected. People didn't seem to realize that supply had tightened. Next thing you know, wham, the new SanDisk division of Western Digital is making good money and the company has to pre-announce to the upside. Believe me, that stock might not be done even up here. That's how much it has been held back.

I marveled last week that neither traders nor investors seemed to think there was a chance there would be legs to this move.

There is.

I say go for Micron as it has a huge flash business that is also benefiting and while it had one up day it wasn't much at all in the scheme of things.

How ruinous is competition? Think about the airlines. They've been bad news forever because many have taken advantage of low fuel costs and added routes and started competing after a long stretch where it seemed like no one wanted to compete with each other. When you saw capacity being added, that was the sign to get out.

Now the airlines are talking about capacity staying sane -- not that much being added, and that declines in revenues per seat miles could be leveling out, something that United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz hinted at when he was on Mad Money last week.

If the airlines don't bring on an abundance of planes, that means lessened competition and, at last, a reason to buy the stocks.

And that's what is happening.

Remember that people want to see higher gross margins, more left over, even if sales aren't spiking. The Western Digital sales aren't moving up, it's the margins that are.

Same could be with the airlines.

It doesn't matter how it gets there.

But it's working.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on SEP 07, 2016.

[jimcramer]

Here's why I don't say 'sell, sell, sell' Apple

"Turning on Apple now?" It was a simple tweet and nothing meant by it. Yet I took it personally.

I'm talking about how on Scott Wapner's Halftime Report and in RealMoney I mentioned that Action Alerts PLUS charity portfolio holding Apple had the worst chart in the book, a real rollover pattern, but that I wouldn't try to trade it.

I answered as courteously as I could, saying simply that I was commenting on the chart not the company. A hideous chart is not enough to make me want to sell the inexpensive shares of a company that makes products I love.

But I totally get where the tweeter is coming from. How can I not turn on the stock of Apple if I think the chart is bad? Isn't it stocks, not companies, that I opine on? If I think the chart is bad, why not just say sell, sell, sell?

Let me answer it in a couple of ways. First, the stock does look like it is rolling over. Given that you have both a European Union tax bill -- one that I think is outrageously unfair, but who cares what I think -- and you have an iPhone 7 launch that does sound totally uninspiring unless you have a cracked screen, the chart is ominous.

Second, the stock's had a terrific run since Tim Cook came on Mad Money after the last quarter and said that the company's products basically speak for themselves. I can see a pullback after any run of this dimension. But as long as the product is the best and the service stream continues to bulk up, it is difficult to say the best days of Apple are behind it and then count the company out.

How good is the product? We each have our stories: the only time I have been separated from my Apple iPhone 5 this summer is when I went into the pool and that's only because it was so hot that I didn't want it to burn out. Otherwise, I would have risked having it poolside just in case.

Third, can the chart be wrong? In my opinion, a pattern as horrendous as that exhibited by Apple's stock is right now is hardly ever wrong. In fact, it is almost self-fulfilling, given the news flow. Now, I have shorted stocks at times off the charts only to be met with takeover bids, short squeezed and negative news that was met by buying because a stock had already rolled over.

So don't get me started on the idea that it has to be sold.

More important, what happens after the news of the "unexpected" tax bill, which is about as expected as anything I can recall? This could be what the chart was signaling, but as big as $13 billion might be, it is not that big for a company with more than $200 billion in cash.

What happens after the ho-hum 7 comes out, which is about as ho-hum as anyone has ever predicted?

What if Apple, instead of endlessly buying back stock, takes me up on my idea of bolstering its service stream by buying Sirius XM? What if the iPhone has something, anything, that we haven't seen? What if there's other news no one has thought of?

What would I have accomplished warning you about the stock's chart? Exactly what I have tried to not have you do: trade it.

Go back to $93, where Tim Cook appeared on Mad Money. The stock looked terrible. If you had traded it, how could you have gotten back in?

What happens if Apple trades down to $100 or $102? Am I going to tell you, after selling it at $106, to get back in at $101? What is this? A hedge fund tutorial? Yes, Karen Cramer, when she was running the trading desk, would have booted Apple the moment I went for a Diet Coke.

But she would scale right back in as it got closer to $100.

And if it went up after the sale? Holy hell.

So my take is this: if you want to trade it, be my guest. The chart says sell. But the company? Bigger than the chart. Worth owning, not trading.

Sorry, I am just not good enough to get you out and then get you back in when the time is right. If you are, be my guest.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on AUG 30, 2016.

[jimcramer]

Paying people more is Walmart's most important strategy

We can think of a dozen different variables about why Walmart can report a terrific quarter like it just did. The leadership team, especially CEO Doug McMillon, is much stronger and centralized. The online business is now very much a part of the operation, integrated in a way that makes the Jet.com deal highly accretive vs. building a similar engine.

The closing of underperforming stores, including 102 Walmart Express stores, shows that the company is no longer going to layer on winning stores on top of losers. It's going to just cut them off, even though, in some cases, they haven't even been opened that long. Talk about being decisive.

But I think those are all losing the forest through the trees.

The single most important initiative that McMillon did was to pay people more. That's right, better pay. Higher benefits. Substantially better than many other companies.

That's causing a monster chain reaction that's keeping good employees rather than losing them, say, to Target, or to a fast food company or any other national chain that could cherry-pick Walmart's best.

It's all part of that plan announced last year to boost wages by $2.7 billion over several years time, to get the wages above the national average -- an amazing thing for this gigantic company.

Why is this so important?

Because the biggest cost to a place like Walmart is training. If you are constantly training new people because the good ones leave, you very well could be spending away all of your gross margins.

That's why, when you see where Walmart improved -- working capital management, significant inventory improvement and time of payments -- much of that may stem from keeping really good people, especially the inventory issues.

Sure, we can say that this is all about sophisticated technology upgrades. And that plays a role. But it also may just mean that Walmart doesn't have that endless turnover that makes the stores poorly run on the ground, regardless of what Bentonville tries to do.

Remember Jim Sinegal, the former CEO of Costco, a stock that is in the Action Alerts PLUS charity portfolio, always said the secret to Costco's success was loyalty and a lack of turnover. That's what mattered. His training costs, he would say, could be as much as 30% lower than Walmart's simply because there aren't nearly as many new people to train because you are not losing older people.

Now, Walmart pays employees far less than Costco, with much lower benefits. So I am not trying to get people too excited about the dollar boosts. But you can't get this kind of huge improvement in free cash flow and operating cash flow, $5.0 billion year over year, unless you are getting more productive, and productivity with Walmart begins at the store level, with more satisfied employees.

And that's just what they got.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on AUG 18, 2016. 

[jimcramer]

Don't lose sight of oil economics

No, I don't think you can call a bottom in oil. Not when our own Carley Garner indicated we could have a bounce before we head down again because there are still way too many "longs."

But the reason I thought that we wouldn't go into the $30s still stands: Almost all drilling is uneconomical below $40, so 1.) why wouldn't the rig count go down, and 2) how could inventories go up if there is such gasoline demand as demonstrated by the pivotal numbers we got Wednesday?

How much I would like to take my cue from the stocks, but they are all over the map. The drillers aren't much help, either.

But the most important thing is that it is very hard for the market to get head-slammed with oil stubbornly clinging to the 40s.

I know that oil has become the plaything of speculators, but the economics do not lie. There's no sense drilling if you are going to lose money drilling. The argument that you need the cash flow makes no sense at these levels.

And always remember how bullish everyone was at $50, so you can keep in mind how bearish everyone is at $40.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on AUG 04, 2016. 

[jimcramer]

Lower oil? Higher rates? So what?

This market would have sold down at one point and sold down hard on a sequence of events like we had today, a one-two punch of lower interest rates and lower oil -- something that used to signal weak demand -- as well as a Fed that seems bent on tightening at some point before year's end.

That's a combination that would have sent us down a percent or two even a few months ago. Oil itself, down a buck to $41, could have triggered that kind of loss in the market, especially when copper's been down for four straight days.

The combination of lower oil and higher rates had been the kiss of death before this quarter began.

Instead, it's being ignored. Entirely ignored. There was a bid under the market the likes of which I haven't seen in some time on a Fed day. Usually the bears can crack the darned thing. Or at least put up a fight.

But there wasn't even as much as a blink, that's how badly people want into this market, and hedge funds seem to want to cover their shorts.

This week's the toughest gauntlet of the year. When you look at the results though the big-cap companies, the Johnson & Johnsons JNJ and PepsiCos, the IBMs and the Microsofts, the United Technologies and the Apples, and now Facebook are all reporting excellent earnings. Sure, some people have picked apart GE and Honeywell. McDonald's was viewed as subpar. Wells Fargo, unlike, say, JPMorgan  only did in-line numbers. Intel INTC wasn't so hot. Nevertheless, it's still hanging in there. Twitter's, well, Twitter. (PepsiCo, Apple, Facebook, GE, Wells Fargo and Twitter are part of TheStreet's Action Alerts PLUS portfolio.)

Face it, you know the big guns have delivered. Still, that hasn't really mattered. The major hedge funds that are programmed to sell on lower oil seem to have disappeared. The funds that view higher bond prices and lower rates as a red flag just don't seem to be operating anymore.

Could they have taken the money away from these people?

You sure have to wonder. Because it is truly a major shift, one that's not being talked about enough, and one that seems, at least for now, here to stay.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on JUL 27, 2016.

[jimcramer]

I urge you not to abandon stocks

My how the mighty have fallen. I'm talking about the standing stocks have with peoples' savings these days. On the first down day in ages, it's worth pondering how stocks, at least according to a recent poll, have lost their appeal to Americans.

According to Bankrate, real estate and cash are the most popular investments these days. That's right, in a survey of 1,000 adults who were asked what they would do with their money if they didn't need it for 10 years, 25% said they would buy real estate and 23% would keep it in cash. Only 16% said they would put it in stocks, the same percentage that would choose to have their money in gold or precious metals.

As someone who has lived and breathed stocks for most of his life, this is a horrendous finding. But it is not surprising. So often, when I am on television with David Faber and Carl Quintanella, my partners on "Squawk on the Street," I will hit up a major stock at, say, 9:45 a.m. and see only 200,000 shares have traded in it.

How do you gauge that's a small amount? OK, I managed a half-billion dollars when I ran my old hedge fund and it would not be unusual for me to put in an order to buy 200,000 shares of a big-capitalization stock like the kind I am talking about and expect it to be completed -- meaning I bought the stock -- within minutes of when I entered the order. Now I would be 100% of the volume of the same stock.

There's not that much volume anymore because there isn't that much interest anymore. The vast bulk of Americans who set up 401Ks and IRAs in the '80s and '90s flooded the stock market with their retirement savings. Many didn't give it much thought. They just bought stocks in mutual funds or with an IRA they bought individual stocks and funds.

I can recall when we used to come in Monday morning and be astounded about the transom money that flowed in pretty much on autopilot. We called it transom money because of the image of money simply being thrown over the transom. Many Mondays were simply up days because the market couldn't absorb the volume of money without moving the stock market higher.

But all that has changed, caused by successive waves of mistrust, abuse and fear that's become ingrained in the American people.

Before I go into whether those allocations make sense, let's go over all of the big reasons why people fled the market.

First and foremost, for 15 years stocks were pretty much regarded as the mainstay of your retirement account. Stocks owned for the long term had always produced above-average returns vs. all of those other asset classes. We used to call it the greatest story ever told, meaning the love affair with stocks in 90 million households.

But then we saw the dot-com crash, the one that took the Nasdaq apart from March 2000 until October 2001when the Nasdaq fell from about 5,000 to 1,100. Even after a remarkable run back to those levels, lots of stocks are still way down from them, or just don't exist. Don't forget there were more than 300 IPOs right before that period and almost none of them survived. Lots of stocks still haven't come back.

Think about Intel, which traded at $75 in 2000 that now resides at $34, down a buck today after a fairly mediocre quarter. Or Cisco, which we think of as on fire these days, making multi-year highs at $30, which hit $80 in 2000, 50 points higher. It was only recently that Microsoft took out its high. Of course, it wasn't just the Nasdaq.General Electric reports tomorrow and, at $32, it's been one of the strongest Dow stocks of late. But it traded at $60 in 2000. So, the destruction was pretty horrendous.

The market enjoyed a good run until, once again, stocks barely held up during the Great Recession with a host of big-capitalization names vanishing and whole sectors, like the banks, which were popular for big dividends, just crushed.

The market bounced back, yet in 2010 we had the flash crash where stocks lost almost 1,000 points in 26 minutes. Then in 2011 we caught an almost 20% decline not because of anything here, but because of Europe. Since then we have had a multitude of big declines, the worst being a couple of days in August where the Dow plummeted from 17,545 to 15,666, this time because of China.

Throughout this time we have had to hear about swindlers like Bernie Madoff, or banks that didn't play by the rules, or mutual funds that invested recklessly, just endless.

In other words, the sector lost peoples' trust and it has never earned it back. That's why the day after Brexit we saw one of the biggest redemption days ever, because, once again, people just plain got scared.

As much as I love stocks both as an asset class and as puzzles to be solved, I know that it's getting lonely out there.

But now let's deal with the alternatives. We see that 25% of the people want to invest in real estate. I find this a rather remarkable statistic because real estate, while perceived as reliable, lost a great deal of value just a seven years ago. Moreover, it's no bargain. There are areas of the country, like California, where it costs $1.3 million for a starter home. I like real estate, I dabble in it, my wife works full time in it and we are hard pressed to find bargains. It helps that rates are low, but they are only low if you can take advantage of them and banks won't give most people the money they need to cash in on remaining bargains.

How about cash? You have a 10-year horizon and you keep it in cash what happens is you are basically dooming yourself to losing money vs. inflation. We all know costs go up. You need you money to work for you. It's working against you in cash. Precious metals? I like them as an insurance policy. I want everyone to own some gold.

But here's the deal. If you can find stocks of companies with good balance sheets that pay good dividends and have a bit of growth, I think, if you reinvest those dividends over that 10-year period, you could crush the returns of these other assets. I just think you will do so much better.

Of course, you can always choose an index fund and I have no qualms with that. Low costs and own for the long term. But I like the hybrid model of investing. That means, if you, too, have a 10-year horizon, I want you to put your first $10,000 in savings in an index fund. After that, try to allocate at least $1 out of every $10 you are saving to picking individual stocks, with a mixture of high-growth and slower-growth, with some income and then higher-yielding stocks with a modicum of growth. Be sure to reinvest all the dividends, to avail yourself of the miracle of compound interest. I am not saying that stocks are the only game in town. I am saying that they are, in the end, a crucial part of your savings and I am urging you not to abandon them for at least some of your money.

I think, given the fairly checkered history of stocks, it really doesn't matter. People aren't coming back. Nonetheless, I am pretty confident that over the next 10 years you will do a heck of a lot better with my allocations than the ones people have chosen in the Bankrate survey and not just because I think stocks are good, but because I see tremendous weakness in the alternatives.

To sum it up, I know that stocks are a disgraced asset class. That's what this survey shows. Yet, I can tell you that while the others aren't disgraced, they aren't the kind of alternatives that can produce enough of a return to rival owning good stocks, the kind we find all of the time, the kind that will earn you more over 10 years if you can just handle the inevitable pain and ride it out to a much better nest egg.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on JUL 21, 2016.

[jimcramer]

All is OK with the world, and that's fine for now

The short squeeze before the storm? Or simply one of those situations where those who got short after Brexit finally had to give in and cover?

I think a lot of it is the latter. I want you to think back to two weeks ago when the world was supposed to end. I want you to remember all who said it was over and that there was no coming back from Brexit, that it was systemic and we would be brought down with it. I want you to remember who came on air and who wrote that this was the worst thing that could happen since Lehman Brothers.

Oh, OK, who remembers? It doesn't matter, right? They will be right back on cue when we need them to scare us out of our wits when we get there.

Two weeks ago Monday I allegedly made a fool of myself going on "The Today Show" and saying that we would not be thinking about this after a while and that, if anything, if the market comes down you might want to buy, which is what we ended up doing, admittedly small, for ActionAlertsPlus.com

I remember thinking, OK, why the hell not, why not just say what I was thinking, and when I came on "Squawk on the Street" I said, "What does Brexit have to do with the price-to-earnings multiple of Bristol Myers?"

It seemed like I was a pollyanna and I spent half the time on Twitter that night defending my "weak" stance that it wouldn't matter or that we would be better off because the Fed was really on hold.

OK, I am gloating a bit, but that's only because of how fed up I am about how many pundits -- and you know who they are -- came on and scared the bejesus out of everyone, scared 'em so badly that that Monday quickly became known as "Redemption Monday" given how much came out, enough that we were now past the amount that came out during the Great Crashes of 2008-2009.

Disgusting how people confuse systemic risk with event risk and get away with it.

Anyway, next week is earnings. We will hear guide-downs. But the banks are down enough that I suspect at this point with this employment number some may be able to tell a positive story and buy back more than announced --think Wells Fargo, an Action Alerts PLUS holding -- and all will be OK with the world.

All isn't "right" with the world because of the uncertainty. But OK? That's fine.

One last thing: For those who say I wasn't aggressive enough in telling people to buy, all I can say is, "Did I scare you? Did we do some buying for the trust?"

The answers to those questions are "no" and "yes," respectively.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on JUL 08, 2016.

[jimcramer]

Here's the game plan for dealing with the Fed, Brexit and oil

One down, one to go. I am talking about how this stock market now has gotten through another Federal Reserve meeting unscathed.

Yep, the Fed agreed to do nothing and that keeps stocks on the agenda as the best place for a return for your money.

I was pleased to hear that the Fed paid attention not to the ideologues who want higher rates so they can be lowered after the Fed threw us into a recession. I am glad that the Fed recognized that the economy only grew by 38,000 jobs and that mattered to the governors. I like that they recognized that the economy is on a real slow growth path and that rate hikes aren't going lockstep.

I like these things because they recognize that job creation has slowed. No, there is no recognition that it might have changed because of technology, because of digitization, because of the ease with which jobs can be transported overseas and taken away from our country. The governors still can't seem to come to grasp with something such as CNBC's disrupters -- companies that are taking away jobs by the hundreds of thousands just by their nature. Look at your cellphone. Look at those apps and icons. They represent millions of jobs taken away, with everything from clerical jobs to calendars to sports programming to P.C. makers and camera companies being eviscerated.

Still, I am glad that they are giving the rest of the economy a chance to catch up, perhaps while the paralysis in Washington runs its course. I also am thrilled that the Fed took no action that would boost the dollar. Right now it is unchanged versus many currencies year over year. That's good news as we wind down the corporate quarter.

Look, I wish that the economy were growing and creating all sorts of jobs. Then we could raise rates and the stock market could handle it. But that sure wasn't the case in December when the Fed raised and the stock market got hammered. And Janet Yellen was on point when she said the job growth has slowed despite some pick-up in the economy, an anomaly that means getting more out of fewer people.

But I think the Fed isn't being clever. The Fed owns trillions of dollars in U.S. bonds. As colleague and writing partner Matt Horween points out, we have a worldwide shortage in all treasuries and only the Fed is sitting on a vast storehouse of them. Why not have the Fed selloff these treasuries, which gradually would allow interest rates to rise from the supply, and it could accomplish what it wanted, make a huge profit for the Treasury and get rid of the craziness of negative rates worldwide.

This could be the biggest win of all time and eliminate the biggest worry the Fed has -- all of those bonds! I have heard talk that this wouldn't be right, that the Fed has to own these bonds to maturity. It's really the opposite, though. If the Fed took the extraordinary act of buying treasuries in the open market to get the economy to a better place, it can take the far less extraordinary act of selling them in the open market to gradually raise rates while ringing the register and solving the dilemma of a dearth of worldwide risk-free assets. There is no rule, no law that says the Fed can't do this.

Sometimes being creative is better than standing pat, and that's what the Fed needs to be to get us out of this jam.

Which brings me to the second of the two hurdles this market has to go through: the coming decision in Britain about leaving or staying in the European Union.

I believe that uncertainty about this issue as well as the price of oil -- more on that in a moment -- explain why we didn't have our usual explosion higher in stock prices after the meeting ended without a rate rise.

Now I think more people are worried about this British vote than they would be otherwise because they sure weren't worried not that long ago. I believe that many of the scary stories we hear about what could occur are being circulated by people who ignored or dismissed this very possibility not that long ago and don't want to look like idiots.

The rhetoric is pretty terrifying. I saw research today predicting that the stocks of the big British banks are going to fall 40% if Brits vote to leave.

Here's where I come out on this. We could have a couple of day buying opportunities in high-yield stocks like the utilities and the real estate investment trusts that could be a godsend. You might get your chance to buy AT&T or General Mills or Bristol-Myers Squibb or Pfizer at prices that are ludicrous. I would stand there and buy all the Dominion or American Electric Power -- which is part of our Action Alerts PLUS portfolio -- or Con Ed there is to buy. I can imagine being at my old hedge fund bidding, literally bidding for a million shares of any one of these stocks if the vote goes down badly. I could see grabbing the phone and shouting, "Seventy-seven bid for one million shares of ConEd, right on the line, come on, hit me."

Yet, I don't hear that kind of talk. All I hear is fear.

So all I can say is when everyone is scared you have to worry that you are going to miss the opportunity, not get a good one. Or, to put it another way, with Johnson & Johnson at $116 it would be gift to get that stock under $110 because of Brexit, but that's a gift I bet you never get. AT&T hit a 52-week high today and it yields 4.74% when the 10-year treasury yields a third of that. The stock is at $40. Now that it owns Direct TV it is more levered to the New York Giants and the Chicago Bears than it is to Brexit. If you can get that stock at $38 either before or after Brexit, take it.

Recall that these big hedge fund managers find it so easy to say there could be a 10% to 20% decline in stocks, but they find it impossible to name a stock that they would buy if it were to come down that much.

That's typical, and it's a sign of how unhelpful these siren singers with their jeremiads really are.

Now, I am not calm about Brexit. I am simply saying get ready for the next day down. However, if we are down 3% to 5% ahead of the vote, I am going to ask you to buy stocks that yield 3.5% ahead of the vote and then buy some more after.

What keeps me from saying get aggressive right now?

Simple: oil.

We were rallying just fine today off the Fed when oil turned down, and I have to tell you that the wall of $50 is less likely to be banged than the floor of $45. When oil goes down, the S&P goes down. There was a moment where the Dow swooned 40 points and I checked everywhere to find out why. There was only one reason -- oil turned negative.

We got our big oil inventory numbers today and they showed a further drop in production in this country, which makes the $45 level one that could provide support. Nevertheless, with the Fed on hold and Brexit not for another week, crude is what matters, which is a variable that's hard to game.

Anyway, with the Fed out of the picture but oil playing havoc and Brexit coming up, we can only remain cautious until oil drops three bucks and the stock market drops 3% to 5% ahead of the vote. That's when you put some of that mad money to work in higher-yielding, all-domestic equities. That's the game plan -- you just have to be ready to implement it.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on JUN 15, 2016.

[jimcramer]

Don't listen to rich people

Stop trading! George Soros is negative. He's rich, he's famous and he doesn't like stocks. He likes gold!

I don't know about you, but I am getting a bit tired of negative billionaires. The stories about Soros being re-engaged at his namesake firm, even as many in the press acted as if he were engaged the whole time, leave me cold on many levels.

First, I read all sorts of stories about Soros and I can't recall any time he wasn't incredibly negative about pretty much everything. If you are that negative, it makes sense that you like gold. I have said for years that owning some bullion or the SPDR Gold Shares or even Randgold, if you insist on stocks, is a good idea. It is an insurance policy against chaos. Bullion's terrific, but you can't keep it in your house or bury it in your backyard. You have to keep in a safety deposit box, which costs money. I like GLD but the real gold bugs hate any paper asset that purports to correlate to the precious metal. Randgold CEO Mark Bristow, frequent guest on Mad Money, admits to having a quarter where some one-time difficulties kept the earnings from flowing through. He's right, the stock's now above where it was when he reported.

More important, though, is that as much as you may like and respect Soros, and that's certainly deserved given his long-term track record, he doesn't work for you or run your money. He can be fickle. Maybe he changes his mind. You think you are going to get the call? No more than you would get the call from Carl Icahn before he dumps his Apple.

We have to start getting realistic about the rich and famous. We can study their homes and see their beach houses, but we shouldn't do what they do with their money.

"Let me tell you about the rich," F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, "they are very different from you and me." They are, he continued "cynical when we are trustful."

That's right. You see, you only need to get rich once. And you don't need to chance it, to have faith in the next Facebook or Regeneron or Amazon if you have made it already. (Apple and Facebook are part of TheStreet's Action Alerts PLUS portfolio. Amazon is part of the Growth Seeker portfolio.)

That's why, again I say, why take counsel of someone so rich just because he is so rich? That circular reasoning could lead you astray, as the last thing Soros needs to do is find a new idea that might be the next big thing, yet that next big thing could be very important to you.

Seriously, other than Warren Buffett, do you ever hear a rich person come on air and be sanguine about the current situation? Occasionally they may actually like something and even talk about their book, but for the most part right now and for the last couple of years, they have been, almost to a person, very negative on stocks and the world.

So remember, they aren't the stewards of your capital. They aren't the be-all and end-all. They are simply people with a view that they are sharing with the media and you should not be blinded by the billionaire light hoping it will shine on you. Do your own work, come up with your own ideas, and if you like them, buy some even if George Soros is negative on the world, as he has been for ages, except this time he, not his staff, is talking about it.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on JUN 09, 2016. 

[jimcramer]

Don't bet against Saudi Arabia on oil prices

You want to buy oil ahead of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting? You want to buy stocks because you think people want to buy oil ahead of the OPEC meeting? You hear that the OPEC ministers want the price up?

I say: "Where did you get that notion? Did the Saudis clue you in?" Don't look now, but there is no OPEC. There are a bunch of countries that want oil higher to pay their bills, and then there are the Saudis, who want oil lower because they don't want to encourage more U.S. production that will hurt their market share.

We know from the work RBN has done -- they are the go-to organization for this kind of information -- that there aren't a lot of shale plays that make money at these levels. But higher? The oil companies can sell futures to raise money to please their real masters:Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America.

You think the Saudis don't know that? You think the Saudis want them to be able to make good on their debts? Think again.

The Saudis are supposed to be our allies in the region, but we are at odds with them on so many things -- not the least of which is oil. As long as oil stays below $50 a barrel, you will not see new wells open up and you will continue to see oil companies go under. (Go read the Fill or Kill team if you want more on this.)

So if you are banking on a gift from OPEC -- which obviously people are, because oil turned around the whole market -- maybe you will get a miracle. Maybe the Saudis are out of spare capacity and can't continue to flood the world with oil on their own. But then again, maybe not.

Bet on the not.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on JUN 01, 2016.

[jimcramer]

The cloud isn't all that's hot in tech

Could the nascent tech rally that began with the spectacular earnings from Applied Materials gather strength here?

That amazing conference call from the semiconductor equipment manufacturer at first went overlooked. The semiconductor stocks have been down so long that nobody seemed to care at all.

The only pulses in tech going into that quarter were from Salesforce.com with an excellent quarter -- but remember that whatever's good for Salesforce tends to be bad for everyone else, given that it is a cloud-based disrupter of traditional enterprise information technology spending -- and from Cisco, but the networking company is taking share from others in its business, so shareholders of Cisco were thrilled there was no read-through or pin action to other companies.

Applied Materials had the exact opposite effect from that of Cisco or Salesforce. It talked about how semiconductor orders for all kinds of chips have been coming in hot, particularly flash chips being used for storage in the cloud. It was a remarkable call in so many ways, including the fact that the company is seeing a dramatic pickup in orders from China.

AMAT matters because it doesn't get a lot of orders if there is no demand for the massive number of devices that semis go into. But it's pretty clear that the semiconductor companies are feeling a lot better about their prospects even if many of the chip companies in China may be making devices that stay in China.

Still, the quarter put into prospective the idea that there could be something else besides the cloud that could be hot. It said demand's very positive pretty much across the board except for DRAMs. When did you ever hear that lately?

AMAT's report quickly ignited the stock of Lam Research, which is merging withKLA-Tencor to create a semi-equipment maker tech colossus. I had interviewed CEO Martin Anstice after Lam's amazing quarter. No one seemed to care, but it was off-the-charts fabulous. They cared after AMAT confirmed the company's trending orders.

Then this week we got the story out of a savvy paper in Taiwan that there are some big orders for chips coming from Hon Hai, the traditional maker of Apple iPhones in China. The orders suggested that there could be as many as 72 million to 78 million phones on order. That says Apple may be seeing some demand for a new phone that few others seem to get, least of all the sell-side or brokerage analysts who have been predicting the iPhone could be a bomb.

When you get Hon Hai doing well, then you are starting to talk about the basic building blocks of an iPhone, namely Qorvo, Skyworks, Broadcom -- which is the old Avago merged with Broadcom, hence its symbol AVGO -- and Cramer fave NXP Semiconductor, which has all sorts of momentum away from Apple, including momentum that merits ordering machines from AMAT. Skyworks and Qorvo are very heavily reliant on cellphones, including Apple's. Broadcom has much broader communications exposure. But my absolute favorite, and a charitable trust name, NXP, is really the one to own even up here. (Cisco, Apple and NXP Semiconductor are part of TheStreet's Action Alerts PLUS portfolio.)

Any time you ever see anything good for these companies, you have to be poised for a rally.

Today added to the possibilities. One of the biggest black holes in tech has come from the disk drive companies. If you take a look at the collapse of Seagate, you will see what I mean as this disk drive company has been on a highway to hell for ages. But its comrade in arms, Western Digital, recently purchased SanDisk, which has the kind of flash memory that is used in the cloud and is one of the reasons why AMAT has so many robust orders. We are getting calls that when WDC speaks on Thursday, it may talk up the combination and say good things. Anything that shows there's a pulse in one of these disk drive makers is going to be very well received.

All of this positive chatter is leading to the possibility that AMD and Micron (MU), both of which have flash, even though both are burdened with commodity lines, too, might be doing better. Again, we don't know who AMAT is getting orders from, but if flash is good there are a lot of companies that benefit.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm gave a very bullish interview to TheStreet's Brian Sozzithis weekend emphasizing excellent demand for its new chipset as well as a resolution in its Chinese licensing disputes. The company has a hoard of cash and it is a very visible positive story that's been down for ages. (Qualcomm is part of TheStreet's Dividend Stock Advisor portfolio.)

Then this morning, Cowen upgraded Microsoft, saying it looks like that both Azure, its cloud-based initiative, and the utility that is Windows may be doing better. This is incredibly important for tech because Microsoft was very important in the decline of the whole tech complex because it had become such a star. Cowen's note implies that things are back on track. That would be something because I think the beginning of the tech selloff came when we learned Microsoft wasn't transitioning fast enough to being less personal computer and ran the risk of being just more tech roadkill.

So let's see, you get Salesforce going for the cloud, you get Cisco hot for networking, Applied Materials moving on up for semi equipment, Apple maybe doing more units out of nowhere, the component makers therefore doing better, Qualcomm talking a good story, Western Digital breaking from the pack of sob stories and Microsoft on the upswing?

That sure seems like a legit tech rally to me!

This article originally appeared on Real Money on MAY 24, 2016.

[jimcramer]

To win, stay with staying power

Staying power is a remarkable thing. Some companies have it. Others don't.

Staying power is dramatically underrated by traders even as it is the lifeblood of long-term shareholders. Increasingly, if you want to make money in a market that's not certain, you have to go with companies that have the wherewithal and the talent to go the distance in a world where trends no longer are adopted glacially. They are adopted with the speed of light.

There's only one problem. On a given day we don't know who is really stuck in a downward spiral or who is just pausing while gathering strength, who is overrun by new forces and who is adapting to them or has the franchises and the balance sheets to withstand them over time.

Let's just use some of today's action to highlight the differences between those who get it or can at least fathom it and those who don't.

Why don't we start with Disney? Right now Disney is in the grips of a discussion about the possible falloff of ESPN, a most crucial earnings stream, because of a change in the way people watch television. There are cord cutters, there are people who won't pay up anymore for ESPN, and there are those who simply feel they don't need SportsCenter and other marque programming because they can call up anything on their handheld devices.

At the same time Disney's broadcast numbers weren't strong -- certainly not as strong as its competition, the likes of CBS -- and it also closed its Infinity console games business and took a $147 million charge on the unit.

These are all subpar. I am not excusing them.

However, I think they mask a much bigger longer-term picture. First, the company did grow 11% on an earnings-per-share basis even if it missed consensus numbers.

Second, management is running the company for the long term, not the short term. Disney has bought enough studio intellectual property to produce a blockbuster every quarter from now until kingdom come. I know I have been tabbed at times as Reverend Jim Bob, the preacher of the Church of Whatever's Working Now. I have always loved the title because it was bestowed upon me from my now-deceased old friend Mark Haines, the anchorman who brought me to CNBC.

But sometimes the church is wrong because there's so much in the pipe at Disney that you just can't grade it on revenue lost by a broadcast network that can get hot or from subs at ESPN that will, in the end, continue to generate fortunes for years to come. I care about Shanghai Disney, which is about to open, but I care about Mickey Mouse. I care about "Captain America," which I believe will have a huge weekend again, but I care about Snow White. I care about "Frozen" 2, 3 and 4 and "Star Wars" 8, 9 and 10, but also I care about Pirates of the Caribbean and the Jungle Cruise and so many other rides at Disney World and Disneyland that my children's kids will love as much as they did.

I guess it's Reverend Jim Bob from the Church of the Future.

But I can't feel the same about Macy's, the department store that reported horrendous earnings this morning and then guided down severely, leaving people to wonder what the future really holds.

I can't think about the Church of the Future here because I can buy pretty much anything I want at Macy's through Amazon, often for cheaper. When I moved to Summit, New Jersey, more than 20 years ago, I prided myself that I was less than two miles from the Mall at Short Hills and could pick up what I needed at the blink of an eye.

That's now way too far to shop at Macy's. I know it seems like an institution. But so did Gimbel's when my father sold gabardines, which is a form of pants by the way, and my mom hawked women's lingerie at Lit's. If you were to tell me that either stalwart of downtown Philadelphia would go away, let along Wanamaker's and Strawbridge's, I would have told you that you were out of your mind.

Now you can only Google them to learn who they were.

And that was before Amazon. As pop would always say, there's no God-given right for a store to stay open, and more than 90% of my father's retail clients were wiped out by Wal-Mart, for heaven's sakes. I remember when one of my father's shirt-store customers -- he sold boxes and bags to retailers -- closed up shop and it really crushed our year. Why did it happen? Because he realized that Wal-Mart was offering the shirts at prices that were below the price he paid the manufacturer. He had no ability to mark-up. Now Macy's has no ability to mark-up because of Amazon, and marking up is the essence of retail.

And I am not even talking about the Staples-Office Depot tie-up that got unknotted by a judge last night. The two were trying to combine to fight Amazon. Now they are left to their own devices. One look at either stock tells you exactly what happens in the future. Doomsday.

But now let's compare that to Apple, which is part of the Action Alerts PLUS portfolio. Here's a company that has changed a billion peoples' lives. That's about how many people have Apple devices, and given Apple's customer satisfaction numbers, it's safe to say the change is for the positive. We've all altered our behavior because of Apple's cellphones, whether it be because of the need to wear make-up when you go outside because of that high-resolution screen that brings out the unmasked blemishes, the ability to watch Netflix on a iPad Pro because it looks better than TV, the way we pay at the register or how we back-up our myriad photos.

Right now, though, Apple missed a quarter. And like Apple board member Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, we've decided that Apple CEO Tim Cook has lost his way and there's no innovation. It doesn't matter what's been accomplished or what's in the works -- it's over.

I can't go there. I see the loyalty, the revenue streams including the bountiful service revenue. I also know when I can't see things, namely the products I will kill for but only after I know they exist.

Apple, again like Disney, has got an amazing balance sheet -- best in the world -- and a fantastic buyback and a roadmap for the future. But it's not hot, so it's regarded as a false idol.

Here's a news flash: There's no idol. Just CEOs and businesses, and both Disney and Apple are well-run fabulous businesses.

The analysis can extend to any industry. It wasn't so long ago that the market just couldn't get enough of the oil companies that had the vision to split into exploration and production companies, such as Marathon and Conoco, and it shunned the integrates that kept the downstream refining and marketing.

Now the managements at those two companies wonder what the heck they were thinking. Every day they have to pray that the oil glut goes away.

But Exxon Mobil and Chevron? They are just sitting pretty, printing money downstream as their exploration and production businesses cause problems, but nothing life-threatening. There will come a moment when both companies can buy any assets they want from those companies that are just E&Ps. Not yet. But it will happen.

So blast away at Disney and blow out of Apple. Take profits -- and you might actually have profits -- in Exxon and Chevron. All I know is that they are resting. The others?

If things go extremely well, they might get you back to a better level than now. And if things go awry?

Let's just call them terminated.

This article originally appeared on Real Money on MAY 11, 2016.

[jimcramer]

Why Apple cannot get away with what Tesla can

Some guys can get away with financial murder. Other guys can't get away with anything. And still other guys think they can forecast wild changes every three months and still have credibility, when they most certainly deserve -- and now get -- none at all.

Welcome to the world of Tesla, Apple -- which is a component of the Action Alerts PLUS portfolio -- and Fitbit, where Elon Musk can say whatever the heck he wants and get away with it, Tim Cook has to watch every last word even as he has repeatedly delivered the goods and James Park -- who seems to think that guidance is for idiots, or at least idiot analysts who follow the company.

At any given earnings season, we have people and analysts who really press the envelope and go for total outrage. But we have never seen the likes of Elon Musk in our lives. Musk makes a total mockery of the process, picking numbers that suit him, and is not the least bit concerned about the consequences of being wrong.

First, he produces a quarter that is in line, meaning that he's losing about $19,059 per car, near a record high -- thank you, Anton Wahlman, for that calculation.

Second, even as he doesn't even make the number of cars he promised for the quarter -- 17,000, below the 19,000 that analysts were expecting -- he's now projecting he will make 500,000 cars by 2018 and a million by 2020.

His transparency is shameless. While he boasts the seemingly impossible -- and I put "seemingly" in there because otherwise I am just calling him a liar, and I think he believes the numbers -- he uses the forecast both to urge you to send more to him and to raise more money from Wall Street.

Who else but Musk could say: "If you place your order now, there's a high probability you will actually receive your car in 2018." He's using the darned projection to sell cars! And then he uses it to give himself a chance to, and I quote, "raise some combination of equity and debt to make sure the company has a good buffer of cash on hand." That way, he says, he's de-risking the company.

I think he should raise all of the money he can to be sure that Donald Trump's defeated, because without government subsidies he might as well file for Chapter 11 right now, with those plans.

Yet, he gets away with it. Why, you ask? Because of demand. Elon Musk can say and do anything, because he has demonstrable demand for his product. Those deposits from thousands upon thousands of people are a fraction of the real demand out there. I am surprised he doesn't offer variable deposits so you can pay the whole thing first to get at the front of the line.

Then there's Apple and Tim Cook. Cook forecasted almost perfectly for the quarter just reported. Yet I defy you to find more than handful of stories that didn't typify the quarter as a huge shortfall. It was right dead in line, for heavens' sakes.

As for the forecast? What was Cook supposed to do? Make up one that showed better numbers than he can deliver? Given what he has in the pipe, and what he can see, barring a surge of orders for the new iPhone SE -- something that's entirely possible if you extrapolate comments from supplier Qorvo last night -- he had to do what he did to reset growth for the quarter.

But he wasn't going to give the analysts what they wanted, which is a pre-packaged Apple iPhone obituary. So somehow the "community" was disappointed. Well, excuse Tim Cook for believing himself. I guess making $10 billion in a quarter gives you some confidence to do so.

Fitbit? What can I say? Park should be banned from making any projections. His stock would be a heck of a lot higher if he were. Here's another one where the headlines are saying he had a shortfall. Wrong. The quarter was huge, much better than expected.

The guidance, however, was inexplicable; as inexplicable as the previous quarter, when he slashed projections dramatically and then crushed them last night. That's right; going into last night's quarter, he had guided down from $0.23 cents to zero to $0.02. So $0.10 was delicious, except he then took next quarter to $0.08 to $0.11 from $0.26.

In reality, these numbers mean nothing to him. In fact, he boosted the year's forecast. My advice: just make the damned product and shut up. Your stock would be going higher, not lower today. But I guess he just can't help himself.

What's the bottom line here, though? When you have too much demand, you can say anything. When you don't have enough demand to meet supply, it doesn't matter what you say, you will be disliked. And if you can't gauge demand or supply? Then, just stop talking, will you?

This article originally appeared on Real Money on MAY 05, 2016.