The Federal Reserve created quite a bit of turmoil in the stock market on Wednesday when despite cutting interest rates, it signaled to investors that the journey to low rates was far from over and would take longer than initially expected. Fed Chair Jerome Powell noted that “We have been moving sideways on 12-month inflation,” and used the data observation to project two rate cuts in 2025 instead of the earlier four.
In Squawk on the Street’s episode the day after the Fed’s rate cut, Cramer called the latest Fed outcome”a new phase in the process.” He outlined that the Fed might have missed the mark in being data-dependent. According to him “Look I think that they are data dependent. But they made a prediction and the prediction was not right. They should have just stayed data-dependent. They could’ve looked at the long bond and realized, you know wait a second, we’re on the wrong track here. And signal that. And they didn’t signal it.” Cramer was pressed about what Chair Powell got wrong, and in response, he shared that it was “The messaging. Right, because what happened is this that . . .we have a data-dependent Fed, and they chose not to be data-dependant.” Cramer added that the apparent miss from being data-dependant meant that the Fed’s “message was off. They’re not wrong, but all the people who thought that they were gonna be kind and dovish, I mean they were, uh, black dovish.”
The morning show host also shared his thoughts about the current tussle in Congress related to spending bills and electric vehicle billionaire Elon Musk’s role in it. “Look they got a real guy, Musk. Do you want to mess with Musk? I’m not messing with Musk. I tried it once. I was pantsed. You don’t want to be pantsed by this man,” said Cramer. He added “But I do want to make a point that there are a lot of people who are hopeful that he can do something about that. The $36 trillion that we have.” According to Cramer, to achieve the cut maybe Musk and his team “shame people, maybe he shames people who are giveaway guys,” as he believes that “he [MUSK] represents this chain of thought in this country that there’s hope. That this government can get its act together.”
Cramer’s remarks in the morning show weren’t the only ones covering the rate cut. Immediately after the cut, in Mad Money, he commented on Chair Powell “Because he seemed to get caught having to fulfill a prediction of the need for a rate cut, and that need was no longer self-evident. The data didn’t back it up. It would have been much better off if they had explicitly taken a wait-and-see approach before this meeting. This time they telegraphed the wrong thing. Hence today’s meltdown.”
Building on the comments, the next day he outlined “There were some very cogent questions at the press conference about whether, when you study it, after his statement, did they really need a cut? By their own admission? And, I think it confused people. It confused people because they cut rates and then gave exactly the, what I would call the [inaudible] for not cutting rates. David, this is that same problem that I keep saying which is that, if they had not set us up, not told certain people in the media, whatever, that we need a cut, and then they kind of like regretted it. And they regretted it because business is so strong, like GDP, inflation is a little bit higher.” Cramer concluded by stating that he believes the Fed “got trapped, Jay got trapped.”
As for China, the CNBC host didn’t mince any words either. According to him, China has “done nothing but build up” its military. Cramer does not trust the Chinese either. Quoting from the former Trump Administration’s Secretary of Defense General Jim Mattis’ book, Cramer shared that where “the Chinese meet with Obama and they agree to everything and it’s really terrific and then they, a day later, they violate everything with the South China Sea.” Situations like these make him “think that we’ve been taken advantage of.”
Our Methodology
To make our list of the stocks that Jim Cramer talked about, we listed down all the stocks he mentioned during CNBC’s Squawk on the Street aired the day after the Fed’s rate cut.
For these stocks, we also mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds invest in? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points. (see more details here).
A shopper browsing through a discount retailers merchandise aisle filled with a wide variety of items.
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q3 2024: 40
Dollar Tree, Inc. (NASDAQ:DLTR) is a discount store operator that hasn’t thrived in 2024. While it might seem counterintuitive, the underperformance stems from prolonged inflation and slowdowns in consumer spending, which have led to a rise in alternatives to the firm. The competition Dollar Tree, Inc. (NASDAQ:DLTR) is facing comes from mega-retailers like Walmart and others like Temu, all of who have started to stock up with low-priced products. The lower volumes have forced the firm to cut down guidance, as was the case in September when the stock sank by 22% after it cut midpoint guidance to $5.40 from $6.75. Cramer isn’t a fan of Dollar Tree, Inc. (NASDAQ:DLTR) either:
“Dollar Tree. I switched. I don’t know if anyone follows me on X. I switched to Dollar General.”
Overall DLTR ranks 12th on our list of the stocks Jim Cramer recently talked about. While we acknowledge the potential of DLTR as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than DLTR but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
