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Hey, I'm Kramer. Well, welcome to MAV Money. Welcome to Cramerica. Other people make friends. I'm just trying to make you a little bit of money. My job is not just to entertain, but to do some teaching. So call me at 1-800-743- CNBC. Tweet me imkramer Wall street has concluded that companies involved in artificial intelligence are paying too much money to build out the data centers. The hundreds of billions of dollars that they're all spending has turned off money managers and driven them toward other tech companies, other growth companies from different sectors, including industrials, drugs, anything that has nothing to do with data. In fact, the data center is now a scarlet letter. And Wall street loves industrials that have zero contact with these money pits. And that's the setup for today, where The Dow dipped 302 points, S&P declined 0.24, but the Nasdaq advanced 0.23%. Honestly, it does seem pretty hopeless for the data center stocks. Consider four out of the five top performance s and P500 this year are tech. But listen to this kind of tech SanDisk, Western Digital, Seagate, Micron. Why these? Because they're plain old fashioned data storage companies with an immense amount of demand and not nearly enough supply. And the storage companies are inherently boom and then bust. Always have been, always will. Right now, there's not enough capital equipment to relieve the tightness in the market, so these companies can put through endless price increases. But the moment there are enough machines to manufacture these products, their stocks will indeed plummet, as they always do. Micron reports have to close tomorrow night. And while it is one of my absolute favorite stocks, and I think it'll have an amazing quarter, there will be analysts who try to call a tie the House of Pain. But how about the rest of tech? The data center, the hyperscalers, the. The proprietary semis, the ones we loved for so long. What happens to those? The answer can't be found here in a trading desk. Not in this room. The answer can arguably be found in the greatest movie of all time. The answer can be found in the Godfather. You don't hear about it much on business shows, but then again, how many one man business shows are there? How is the Godfather relevant here? Right now you got five big tech companies that five families, so to speak. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and OpenAI in partnership with Oracle. They're going all out to build these data centers anywhere they can. They're even in space. They're each trying to outspend the competition, if not dominate everything, then at least to keep rivals for snapping up their own core businesses. Meta, which many people feel is actually falling behind, is trying to protect its social turf. Amazon's trying to block out anyone from doing retail. Microsoft wants to block companies that might intrude on both their lucrative consumer and business applications. Nobody wants to come in against Windows because they know they'll be crushed though. And OpenAI, they want to come after everybody. With a budget of at least $300 billion for Oracle alone, and many other commitments made to many other companies, totaling a whopping $1.4 trillion, this reckless improved data center spending has been collapsing the value of all the stocks. Many have tried to rein them in, but to no avail. A lot of that's because Open Air is funded by venture capitalists. Copy seems to be willing to spend itself to death. The strategy is almost suicidal, but they're private. I have good news though for the heavy hitters in AI, which brings me to the Godfather. In the movie, Don Corleone agrees to a peace with the other five families to end the war that killed his hot headed son, Sonny Corleone. Now that the Toll bridge scene. That one from Jones beach is. It's really something else. Even if it was really shot in an abandoned aircraft field. Now, in my version of what's going to happen here right now, Oracle and Open Air, they represent the renegades here with a show of force that's totally unnecessary. In fact, Open Air CEO Sam Altman, he kind of reminds me of Sonny Corleone because he's too impetuous to lead the family. He. He's using Oracle and a $300 billion power play to outspend everyone else and take on all comers. Sam is perhaps $50 billion in the bank. He arguably needs about 25 times that to make his dreams come true. True domination dreams. I don't know. Okay. That's a bad news because as long as Altman spending like crazy, everyone else has to spend to keep up with them. But there's something lurking here that could end the war that and allow these stocks to come back to life. And it's called discipline. In September, Oracle raised $18 billion and in a bomb the bond market. Okay. Their bond issuance has drawn scrutiny in the form of aggressive buying of credit default swaps. What does that mean? It's basically insurance that pays off the company defaults on its obligations. Oracle. Except you don't need to be a bondholder to buy these insurance policies. These people are betting against Oracle itself because of the stupid amount of money that it's spending. Oracle already has a huge amount of debt. Their balance sheet is not that good. At some point, they'll heed the warning of the bond market and slow things down. Or else. And they don't want the or else. These data centers cost a fortune and even the best builder stumbles. We saw when if you saw the story of Core we've today. Oracle can't risk blowing up its balance sheet. For Sam Altman, that's when and how we're going to get out of this morass. Oracle blinks once Oracle shows discipline and it must. Because the bond market is a cruel taskmaster. That's when Sonny gets shot up at the toll bridge and Don Corleone calls the disputing families together and says this must all end. And it does. Now we live in a country where companies aren't supposed to collude or fix prices. I get that. But if Oracle starts showing discipline, I think every other hyperscaler the families would slow down and we get a more reasonable place pace. It would be one of these things where you would barely notice all the spending rationality would return and we wouldn't be reopening Three Mile island or trying to build some small nuclear power plants that may not work because we're just that desperate for electricity. This way, Oracle stays alive and OpenAI is forced to choose which businesses it truly wants to target. Because he who defends everything defends nothing. Frederick the Great. Now, you may think that the five family truce would be bad news for the big data centers, but you would think wrong when it comes to Broadcom or Nvidia. Both will get plenty of business. The truth is it was never feasible to build all these data centers that are needed. That's why everyone hates the stocks. It's exactly why these two stocks keep going down. Not until Oracle blinks, and it will. And given how its debt is trading, they have to. Well, we feel really good about owning anything connected to the data center for a run. Let's face it, anyone who has the fanciful build out baked into the numbers right now is overestimating themselves. But here's the bottom line. Listen to me. I'm not saying it won't be rocking. I am saying that it will end better for OpenAI and Oracle than it did for Sony co orleone. And the truce that follows will allow everyone to skate in their own lanes, cut their capex budgets, make a huge amount of money and then see their stocks really fly. Meta Microsoft to the moon. But things could get uglier first without that five family truce that must be called by Oracle in conjunction with the perpetually sunny open AI or we're still going to go lower. Kathy in California. Kathy.
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Professor Kramer, this is California.
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Thank you.
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Second, what's going on? Active club member for 20 years. My question to you is on TJ AX year to date, the stock is up 29%. And before I start a position, should I wait for a pullback or buy now?
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I want you to wait for a pullback. It just actually did a kind of a pirouette today. It spiked up and then came down. That's usually a sign that's going to go down tomorrow, the next day, and perhaps even next week. And that's when you'll pull the trigger. It's a great situation we're going to Brian in Illinois. Brian.
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Jim, it is a pleasure to speak with you. I wanted to start by saying that I used to subscribe to the Motley fool and I lost a lot of money. But then I started watching you about a year ago and that's changed. And just about a month, a little over a month ago, I bought your book and I take you on my weekly audiobook. I take you on my weekly jobs.
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Oh, okay. Thank you.
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And as of last week, I am now part of the investing club.
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So yes, I love it. We had a good meeting last week, me and Jeff Morse.
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Yeah.
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How can I help you?
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So, yes, I, I've read that you have some positive sentiment regarding this stock and I've purchased a sizable portion of it and it's, I bought it kind of its peak and now I'm kind of at a break even point. So I can, I, I can get out and I know from your November meeting that you said that's not your typical strategy, but.
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What stock is is.
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DraftKings and I want to.
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Okay, DraftKings is down on stock right now just because it's had some highly unusual losses. But those are going to end. The statistics favor them coming back to even when it comes to those losses. And I think DraftKings is a very well run company and I think the industry's in consolidation and I like it very much. Okay. I'm hoping that there will be a truce among the AI5 families but that's only going to work out of Oracle and OpenAI blink or they have a kind of sunny Corleone resolution. Oh man, we've got another big data dump following the end of the government shutdown. I think this stuff is important enough that it deserves some extra attention. I certainly didn't do it at the top. I'll reveal my takeaways then. The real pain in this market is in the commodity market, especially in oil. So I'm going off the the charts. Get a technical read on where the things stand. And Texas is one of the fastest growing economies in the country. So I'm sitting down with the CEO of Texas Capital. Get a better sense of what businesses are really doing with their money in the Lone Star State and whether you should be in to the bank itself. Stay with Kramer.
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Don't miss a second of Mad Money. Follow imKramer on X. Have a question. Tweet Kramer. Madmentions. Send Jim an email to madmoneynbc.com or give us a call at 1-800-743-CNBC. Missed something. Head to madmoney.cnbc.com.
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We've had a little more than a month since the government shutdown ended and we're finally catching up on our state issued economic data. This morning we had another big data dump and this stuff is important enough that it warrants some extra tension. Especially since remember, we're always trying to figure out if the Fed's willing to cut interest rates some more because does drive stocks up. At last week's Fed meeting, we learned that the median open market committee member believes the federal funds rate should sit at three and a quarter to 3.5 at the end of next year, which that only applies just get 1/4 point rate cut next year, 4 members expect zero rate cuts next year and 3 members are even expecting a rate hike soon because of course they're worried about inflation returning. But Wall street seems to have a very different view. If you look at the Chicago Mercantile Exchanges Fed Watch Tool, which tracks the Federal Fund's futures, where traders more or less bet on where that rate is headed, the market is expecting a nearly 75% chance that we get two or more rate cuts next year. Nobody's betting on rates going higher. Hardly anyone's expecting zero rate cuts. If you look at the prediction markets data, these those people are even more bullish. On Cal Sheet, the most likely outcome for next year is three rate cuts. Really at odds with what we're hearing from the Fed. That's why I'm really focused on economic data, because we're getting, because it can help us figure out who's right about the Fed's next move. What does the data really tell us? All right, let's start with the non farm payroll support that came out this morning, which included numbers for both October and November. The US economy added 64,000 jobs in November, which was technically better than expected. But that's after non farm payrolls declined by 105,000 jobs in October. Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate ticked up, but that also caused the unemployment rate to rise to 4.6%. And hourly earnings growth also disappointed in November, up 1% month over month and up 3.5% year over year. Good news if you're worried about inflation, but not good news if you work for a living. Maybe that's why rates went down this morning. This morning I spoke on the street. We spoke to Kevin Hassett. He's the National Economic Council's director and top candidate to be the next Fed chairman. He described an environment where the private sector still adding jobs to pretty much the same pace that we've seen all year. But that was. That was offset by declines in government employees as the DOGE employee buyouts took effect in October. That's what skewed things. So that's the positive take on the morning's jobs data. Overall though, it was a mixed report. Weaker than expected. Not probably, but probably not weak enough to make the Fed more willing to cut interest rates. Next up, let's talk about retail sales. So important we got October retail sales at the same time as the jobs report and they were slightly weaker than expected. October retail sales were unchanged month over month. And September retail sales growth was also Revised downward by 10 basis points. However, some of the alternative readings for retail sales were a bit better. October retail sales, excluding autos, grew 0.4% month over month, better than the expected 0.25% excluding both autos and gas. October retail sales were up 0.5%, also better than expected. That's nice, but frankly, who cares about October retail sales? Mid December, we got to worry about the holiday. As I've mentioned before, the retailers generally had more positive things to say about the state of their businesses when they reported November. Aside from a few one off cases like Target wasn't so good, Brolington stores and then one that the trust owns, Home Depot rates are too high for them. Plus the post Thanksgiving holiday shopping season got off to a strong start in the end. I still believe that the consumer is not feeling great but still spending a decent clip, at least for the holidays. Maybe what what what today's retail sales report shows is that people are saving up in October in preparation for good deals during the holiday shopping season. I'm not ready to sign on to the idea that we'll have a weak holiday shopping season because the consumer struggling that totally contradicts everything we heard from most of retailers during Earnings is not going there the final big readings were this morning were the Flash Purchasing Managers Index or pmi must be global because this data comes from the private sector and not the government. These were current December readings, though this is only a flash number. We don't get the final December PMI readings until the first few days of January. What we saw though was incrementally negative. The flash US Composite PMI output measuring all business activity came in at 53.0 below the expected 53.9, down from 54.2 in November. In fact, this flash December PMI number represented a six month low for the index, even though above 50 still indicates economic activity is spanning but the pace of expansion is slowing. Wall street expected better. Me, I'm not nearly as negative as Wall Street. Below the broader composite number, we also got PMI readings for both services and manufacturing and both of these were disappointing to the flash US services. PMI was 52.9. Wall street was looking for 54 and also a six month low. The flash US manufacturing PMI came in at 51.8 for the that was below the expected 52.1, representing a three month low. What does all this mean? Well, here's how Chris Williamson, the chief business economist at S and P Global Market Intelligence, put it. Quote the flash PMI data for December suggests that the recent economic growth spurt is losing momentum. End quote. He goes on to say, quote, Although the survey data points to annualized gdp expansion about 2.5% over the fourth quarter, growth is now slowed for two months with new sales growing waning growth waning especially sharply to the lead up in the holiday season, economic activity may soften further as we head into 2026. Ouch. So where does all this leave us? Here's the bottom line the stock market didn't seem to love the data and the aggregate, especially those PMI readings as the averages tumbled lower shortly after 10am but bond yields also move lower, and that's what I care about. And if you're looking for a silver lining from this data, it might mean that the readings could help move more Fed officials from the zero or one cut camps into the two or three rate cut camps that we need for 2026 to be a good year because the economy looks a bit worse than it did yesterday. Remember when bad news is good news mode, the weaker the economy gets, the easier it is for the Fed to cut rates. Rate cuts are what this market wants and needs their money's worth. Back at Food.
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Coming up, Is oil finally set to break through into a bull market? Kramer's going off the charts to see if it can erupt again.
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Right now, everybody's worried about the state of the economy. If that big uptick in the unemployment Rate. But I got to tell you, that's the wrong thing to be afraid of right now. The real pain is in commodities, especially oil, which has been a slow motion train wreck. That may be a not good sign for the global economy. That's why tonight we're going off the charts with our resident commodities expert, Carly Garner. She's a brilliant technician, co founder of the Carly Trading and the author of Higher Probability, Commander Commodity Trading. Got to get a better sense of what's happening here. Let's start with the monthly chart of West Texas to be overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by this because it's really important. Texas Intermediate crude. See, the oil market's been in a seemingly perpetual decline since it peaked in March of 2022. Right as the Fed, of course, started raising rates. That does it, right? Ironically, at the peak in 2022, traders were incredibly bullish on oil. You know what, that is very similar to what happened in the 2008 peak back here. Very, very bullish, right at that level. Garner points out that both these historic peaks in oil were accompanied by the most bullish fundamental story imaginable. 2008 analysts were preaching about the gospel of peak oil, the idea that fossil fuels are a finite resource, so eventually production rates will fall and the price will soar. Remember, this was back before the fracking revolution transformed the entire industry. Between the peak of oil theory and the hot economy, the price of crude surged all the way to nearly $150 a barrel. @ the time, many analysts were sure we'd see $200, maybe even $250, possibly sooner rather than later. Then the financial crisis hit, the economy collapsed, the price of oil plummeted, and eventually the market was flooded with new supply. As fracking technology unlocked a ton of previously unusable oil deposits in our country, oil would never get close to 150 again in 2022. Oil Spike thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So you can take a look here. And that caused the west to impose sanctions on Russian oil, setting the price of crude to $130 a barrel. Again, some traders thought that would be permanent. And when that happens, got to be worried. Garner says you tend to see a reversal, which is exactly what we got in commodity. She believes it rarely pays off to bet in the same direction as the herd, which is what happened in 2008 and what happened in 2022. It's the norm, not the exception. Unfortunately, when it comes to the current bear market in oil, Garner thinks we get more downside before we see a meaningful bottom. In previous bear market cycle. She points out that the low didn't occur without capitulation in both mood mood and price. With the relative strength index down here, an important momentum indicator sinking below 30 on a monthly chart, right now it's still near 40. Basically, Garner says that there's not enough people who have given up on oil yet. You don't get a real bottom until pretty much everybody throws in the towel. And yet all I heard about today was how oil has just broken down at critical levels. It hasn't. It's got more to go. At the same time, look, we understand this is drill, baby, drill, White House. And while oil companies love that policy, it tends to depress the actual price of crude. During Trump's first term, oil prices spent most of that time below $65 a barrel. And the President does have him control over this. I mean, look, when Biden began draining the Strategic petroleum reserve in 2022, that helped slaughter the oil bull market right there. Now, in the past two decades, Garner points out that we haven't seen oil trade meaningfully below $65 without making a move down to the low 40s first. For example, in 2008, oil prices fell below 65, eventually plunged to 32. With the bull market that followed, oil didn't break down below 65 again until 2014. The following bear market then held support in the low 40s three times for succumbing to a capitulation sell off that reached a low of $26. The next bull market traded above $65 briefly before breaking below in 2018. It too found support in the low 40s before finally collapsing to $20. Well, that was Covid in April 2020. Then we had the true oil crash that briefly sent us to sub zero. That was an odd moment. In other words, if history is any guide, Garner thinks oil is headed for the low 40s before it finds a bottom. And that's the optimistic scenario. We could potentially go a lot lower, maybe twenties or even to teens. Now, you could flip the whole thing and say, listen, this is great for inflation for the consumer. That's where I come out. Now she's not convinced that this will be the case. After all, it would truly take some horrific, something really terrific horrific to send oil that low. But with West Texas intermediate crude at $55 right now, wouldn't take all that much for us to revisit the low mid-40s. In the meantime, Garner expects that we'll have a ceiling of resistance over our heads at $65 a barrel. So we're not going to be running and running back and forth. Now that said, she also notes that late year rallies are pretty common here. Short term seasonality could trigger speculative buying. But if that happens, Garter's adamant that it just doesn't, that it doesn't mean that we bottom. She's betting we simply get another failed rally, the kind we've seen often over the past four years. The look, in 13 of the last 15 years, crude oil futures have rallied in the final two weeks of the year. Just look at the seasonal pattern right here. You can see this is what you're up against. You're going to be going to this rally right here. So I mean if you think that oil at 55, that is going to go right here. Remember where we are in the calendar. That does matter. Oil prices tend to weaken from October through early December. We did that right. Then post a two to four week rally around the end of the year. Again, she thinks that'll be a temporary lift. All right, how about the daily chart? Garner noticed that whenever prices test the current trend line on the daily chart and the Williams percentage r oscillator is in oversold territory, okay, the buying tends to produce a short lived rally. And that's what again, she's expecting that. But again, the move will have a ceiling probably around $61, maybe closer to 70 if people get get really excited. Now let's talk about natural gas. It's the, the way we heat most of the country down. A lot of these data centers like the $65 mark in crude oil. Garner notes that natural gas futures have habitually reacted to the 360 price level. If that level holds, natural gas is fine. But if we break down below it, natural gas tends to plummet. We're still more than 30 cents above the key level which currently coincides with the 200 week moving average. And you can see where we are right here. Garner says natural gas could see $6 in the not too distant future. But if we get a breakdown at 360, then she thinks it could go to 240. So this one's more of a push for me. Now there's been some chatter about commodities making a comeback here, but Garner says that's really driven by gold, silver and copper. If you look at the Bloomberg commodity index and you remove the metals, it'd be trading near the levels where it's consolidated from 2016 to 2019. So nothing. Not too impressive. Here's the bottom line. The charges interpreted by Carly Garner suggested crude oil will bottom eventually, but not yet and probably not until we see a nasty decline down to the low to mid-40s. That's when the oil companies will slam the brakes on production and turn things around. But if the history any guide Garner believes we need more weakness before that can happen. Remember the other side. The idea that we could have low inflation is terrific for the US Economy. Now we're going to go to Jerry in Missouri.
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Jerry. Hey, Jim. Thanks for taking my.
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Call. Of course. Jar. What's going.
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On? Jim, back in July, you made a recommendation that I loved. Since then, I've been loving my return, which is up over 70%. And I don't think that this is a year of magical investing stock or a bubble stock. But I want your take. Are you still loving.
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Applovin? Okay, Applovin. I'm not loving as much. It's had a very, very big move to the point where it sells at 77 times earnings. I think you have to sell half of the stock when it gets there. There's just too much risk. Up 77% with all these stocks that are. Even though this is a company that makes a lot of money, I just don't like that price earnings multiple. And if you go to how to make money in any market, it'll explain exactly why I said the multiple is too high. Let's go to Lauren in Florida.
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Lauren. Yeah.
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Jim. Big booyah from Jacksonville.
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Florida. I love Jacks. What's going on? The Jags look real good this year.
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Et. Well, we did beat the Jets. That's not saying much low buy there. I'm a longtime Chevron shareholder and I also track Exxon since they're one of Chevron's main competitors. And I've noticed that over the three and five year period, Exxon has outperformed Chevron stock. And I'm just wondering what Chevron needs to do to try to replicate some of the results that Exxon had. And do you think Chevron can actually achieve the results that Exxon has been putting.
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Up? I think that Mike Wirth is going to be able to do it. He's got look, he could get Venezuela that government if someone gives that guy 100 million, maybe leave the country. I do think that what he's done off Africa is good. I'm a believer. My point, I think he's the real deal deal. And I think that that's a good stock with 4.6% yield and a gigantic buyback. And I would stick with it. All right. The charts as interpreted by Carly Garner suggests oil will bottom eventually. But we're going to see some more weakness until we get there. Much more made money at good. Next was the Texas Capital. The bank stocks seem to be back in style in the Wall street fashion zone. So where does Texas Capital fit in? Well, maybe you can guess. I'm checking in with the CEO and we've seen a migration of money as the year of magical investing has come to an end. And I'm sharing where the funds are flowing and how you can position your portfolio for the end of the year. And of course, all your calls. Rapid fire and tonight's edition of the lightning round. So stay with. Lately the bank stocks have finally come into their own. That includes the regionals take Texas Capital bank shares, that's the parent of Texas Capital Bank. But the stock is up 23% in just the past two months. In January of 2021, Rob Holmes took over as CEO after three decade stint at JP Morgan Chase. He pushed through an ambitious turnaround plan to transform Texas Capital into a full service financial firm that does more than just commercial banking. Since then, get this, the stock, the Stock's up nearly 43% trouncing the 16% gain you have gotten from the State Street SPDR Regional Bank ETF+ when the company reported October, the results were phenomenal. So can the stock keep running? Let's check in with Rob Holmes, the chairman, president, CEO of Texas Capital bank shares to find out. Mr. Holmes, welcome to Mad.
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Money. Thank you, thank you for having.
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Me. Okay, so Rob, people always say to me listen, Texas is the most robust place in the country. How do I invest in Texas? And I think with your bank I found the answer.
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You. Maybe so, maybe so. Thank you so much. Thanks for having.
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Me.
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Sure. Look, Texas is an incredible place to be and invest and it's the eighth largest economy in the world. It's a diversified economy. No subsector in Texas takes more than 10% of the GDP. Now that's very different than years past when, when energy dominated it. We have 10% of manufactured goods of the U.S. 10% of the GDP of U.S. 10% of public companies. We've had more corporations come to Texas in 2015 since the other state. And we're not, we're not concentrated by metro areas either like a lot of other states. And so it's a hugely diversified, growing economy. And the workforce there, there's more people working in Texas that live in 46 states. It's the second largest workforce, it's the youngest workforce and it's educated 16 tier one universities. State of Texas, that's More than any other.
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State. Now at the same time, I imagine there are people who are Texas Pride. They, they understand the bank that you used to work at, JP Morgan, and they've got other banks, bank of America. But there's a lot of people who just want to be local. Right. And it's working to your.
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Advantage. Well. Well, it is. So thanks for saying that. We set off on ambitious plan three years ago as you said four years ago. And over the last four years of any bank in the country 20 billion or above in assets, we've improved profitability as measured by roa, by more. We've improved change of common equity to assets any other bank in the country that size by more 247 basis points. So we're, we're on our way. We, we started a whole new treasury platform. We ripped out the payments platform. We have a new payments platform, new lockbox, new merchant, new card. That business grows at 2% if you're really good at it. It's been growing over 20% every quarter, quarter over quarter year for about 10.
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Quarters. Okay, so tell me about what your previous experience has done to really inform warm what you do.
A
Now. Well, my previous experience I was taught to be hyper conservative and risk off as it relates to financials. So we've done just that. We sold the business in November 22nd for three and a half billion dollars, which fortified us. And so if you look at our tangible common equity assets, it's peer leading. If you look at our CT1 capital is peer leading. Actual capital is peer leading. So we're safe and sound and you have to be that. We used to be criticized before our turnaround for not have enough capital. Today the analyst calls Texas excess capital. And I'm okay with.
B
That. Okay, so how about investment.
A
Bank? Investment banking is what they said that couldn't be done.
B
Right? Right. No, I mean, honestly, I have to tell you, I didn't think you had.
A
It. Yeah, well, you're not alone. You know, a big crowd. But what we did is we took a really bad business which is a mortgage warehouse, which is 42% of earnings. So we do with a bad business. We have great clients. We took the back book of our mortgage warehouse, which is $110 billion a year, and got open with every primary dealer on Wall street, gave us distribution. So we have a top 10 mortgage desk on the street now, our debt desk. We led the largest sole managed debt deal in the country each of the last two years. We placed about $25 billion of the debt that's private credit, bank debt and institutional debt. We're a top eight arranger of middle market bank debt in the country. We within did public finance. We opened that desk January 1st. We're way ahead of schedule. And then lastly I think you'll like this last day of second quarter we started trading equities. Third quarter started making markets and equities. We we've been on the COVID of some IPOs. We have our first lead left IPO mandate in the first.
B
Quarter. Possible research.
A
Coverage. We have research coverage. 100 companies under.
B
Coverage. Now you do. And how many are.
A
Texas? The vast A.
B
Lot. So we should be using you as the source when we're looking at.
A
News I would love you to use now. And by the end of the first quarter we'll have another.
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50. This is our corporate access.
A
Team. We've since that corporate access team got here, which is kind of February, we've arranged about a thousand meetings with investors for our corporate.
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Clients. Now people may not realize but in the 80s and 90s Texas had a huge number of banks but they didn't.
A
Succeed. And that's why we're the only full service.
B
Firm. This is a Glass Steagall.
A
Glassview. And you're right. So what we try to do is we try to global the local banks. We could do anything a money center bank can do except a hedge commodities which I don't want.
B
To.
A
Okay. But we actually out local the global banks. So if you want local decision making, local decision making, not just local people where policy is decided and global products and services, you bank with.
B
Us. Now when a bank, a new company decides to commit to Texas, I would imagine they want to commit to.
A
You. I get a lot of.
B
Calls. You.
A
Do. We do get a lot of.
B
Calls. And your plan ultimately what to do? How big can you be? What's beyond Texas or no need. Well you have to with some of these, with some of these companies.
A
Right. So what we do is we have a tie to Texas. So we have companies all over the country country we bank but they're owned by a Texas private equity sponsor or a private equity sponsor in L A has 10 companies in Texas. We don't have enough scale. We're not big enough to be something to everybody. We have to pick and choose. But like we're structured like a money center bank. So we have a health care vertical TMT, fig, diversified energy, mortgage, government for profit. We want all the best health care companies in the country to be in Texas but they're not. So we do have to bank companies Outside the state, state of.
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Texas. And you've gotten people from all over the country to work for you that you will. You've known people because of your. Your previous experience and they're coming.
A
In. We have and we've. We've had some of the people that worked at the largest and most successful desk and businesses on Wall.
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Street. Well, I got to tell you, I'm very impressed. I. I know the bank from, from 2020. It's a different.
A
Bank. It's a very.
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Different. And is it ever successful. That's Rob Holmes. He is the chairman, president, CEO of Texas Capital and may have Bunny's.
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Backyard. Coming up, Kramer takes your calls. And the sky's the limit. It's a fast fire lightning round.
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Next. It is time. It's time to go white round Christmas. Of course not. Question everybody temperature. Play the sound. And then the lightning round is over. Are you ready, Ski daddy Tunnel right on camera, Mike. Let's start with Lauren in California. Lauren. Booyah. Jim.
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Hey.
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Booyah. Lauren. What can you tell me about umac? Unusual machines, man. Drone technology. Highly expected of losing a lot of money. Let's be very careful. Let's go to John in.
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Sakana.
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John.
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John. Hey, Jim.
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Booyah. Booyah. John. What's going.
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On? Not much, buddy. I have some bld and I'm.
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Think, okay, well t. You know what? It's 20 times earnings. It's insulation. That's a good market. What can I say? I still want to take a little off the table because it has had such a run. Now we're going to Michael in Arizona. Michael. Hey, Jim. Booyah.
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Brother. How are you.
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Man? I am doing well. How about you, partner?
E
Good. Hey, listen, just want to say thank you for the high energy and entertainment education every night, brother. You.
B
Have. Well, thank you for understanding. That's the plan. I mean, a lot of people figure I had some clown tell me, hey, listen, why are you trading people to death? I said like, you know what? Just shut up. Go ahead, tell me why not? Why not? I am in an age where some clown accuses me being a traitor. I don't want to reason with them. I just want to tell them to shut the hell up. All right, go ahead. I'm sorry. All.
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Right. No, you're fine. Hey, listen, I was looking for. I was looking for high dividend yield stocks and I went to, you know, I looked at Pfizer, I looked at Verizon and I came across this one. Horizon Technical Finance. Can you tell me anything about.
B
That? Yeah, I have no idea what they own. And I will never recommend a stock where I do not know what's under the hood. I don't trust it. Let's go to Sean in Iowa.
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Sean. Hi.
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Jim. Thank you for taking my call. Thank you for everything you do and your team at Mad.
B
Money. It's awesome. They're good. They have a great team. Great team.
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Yeah. Great read too on your new book. It's.
B
Phenomenal. Oh, thank.
E
You. My question is on Lumen.
B
Technologies. Yeah, okay. I mean, look, this is home business technology. I think the stocks run too much. I know an $8 stock people think can't get, can't hurt you, but it can. I say be careful. Let's go to Steve in Arizona.
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Steve. Hey, Jimbo. Greetings from the warm.
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Arizona. Ah, you're lucky, man. It's so cold here. It's ridiculous. It's dark, it's cold, it's miserable. I'm unhappy. How can I help.
E
You? I don't know about either agrees in December. But anyways, I bought the stock at about 5. It dropped it 2. It ran to like 48 on Friday and touched that down a little bit. Stock is turns.
B
Pharmaceutical. Man. You just, you know, right now the. The lottery is at 1.2 billion. You have won the lottery. You do not need to win it again. Here's the sound. It tells you everything. Next is Annette in New Jersey.
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Annette. Hi, Jim. I just wanted to know what you think of Cal Maine.
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Foods. You know, Eglant. No, no. This one is. This one is a wild trader. It has never interested me. I even like Tyson Foods more than Cal Maine Foods. And that's saying something. Don't forget, Walmart's the real winner when it comes to selling food. Well, we're so not done. Let's go to Mike in New York.
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Mike. Hey, Jim, I'm calling about the message Medical pharmaceutical company.
B
Tilray. Yeah, but I got another one for you, Tilray. It's a kaching, kaching. I want you to sell half and if they approve it, then you sell the other half, you see, because what they lack is earnings. And that, ladies and gentlemen, conclusion of the Lightning.
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Round. The Lightning round is sponsored by Charles Schwab. Worried about a potential AI bubble burst, Kramer's got tips on how to find sustainable growth in your.
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Portfolio. Next. Booyah. Jim, I love you.
E
Man. I've been watching you from day.
B
One. Thank you for all the wonderful advice that you provide.
E
Us. I'm learning so much watching your show, watch your program every.
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Day. I love it. Always wanted to say Booyah on your show. Thank you for being the greatest in the.
E
World. We consider you the money market maker and we thank you for all you.
B
Do. I love your.
E
Show. A long time fans of your.
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Show and we think it's the most entertaining program on tv. When I was writing how to Make Money in Any Market, I tried to isolate growth stocks where I could find them. I was concerned that if every growth stock I highlighted was linked to the data center, you'd end up with a portfolio that could crush you the moment the data center story went out of style in the Wall street fashion show. Which of course is exactly what happened. So I looked at health care and tried to figure out which growth stocks would come from that typical double digit growth sales cohort. I thought about aerospace because the insatiable demand for travel. I thought of growth retailers and how they can keep expanding. There were the much beloved fintechs. Like a firm see that stock, whoa, we're square. Which never seems to go out of fashion even though it's now called block. There is lemonade into it. And I saw growth in all sorts of resource based companies like gold and silver. These groups were the salvation of this market. When the year of magical investing ended and the super speculative stocks started coming back to earth, they're still doing it. Followed by the data center plays. These were the groups that saved you. We don't talk about this migration much, but all you need to know is just to look at the stocks of Merck and Johnson Johnson since the data center collapse and you'll know exactly what I mean. I could easily argue that nothing good has happened to these companies that can explain their last 10% upside. Except that Meta and Microsoft and Nvidia have all peaked out. Perhaps for now, perhaps for a long time. And the money rotated to other growth areas. These all growth stocks have been pumped up by the collapse of the software as a service stocks too. The much beloved Enterprise Software group which ended yesterday when the bears finally got to the 11 left ServiceNow. Why is this migration so important? Because you have all these people saying that a bubble may be developing in the data center and anything connected to it. But anyone with two eyes can see that the bubble burst two months ago for all but Google. And that's because Google won. Now it's time to compare this situation to dot com collapse in 2000. Back then there were two trends that converged. You had a huge amount of builds that the underwriters pumped out 330 failed IPOs and you had the retreat of the individual investor who simply fell vanished because of bad investments and margin calls. They own those bad IPOs. This time you had plenty of retail investors involved and they began to get blown out. In September, with the pace of the bubble burst accelerating, most of these people should be gone soon. I say with some chagrin. They got picked off by those silly double and triple leverage ETFs. A run of momentum like that was like anything we've ever seen. And the following the data center story itself a combination of a lack of resources to build all things and OpenAI's insane, inane and irresponsible spending plans. The good news is this time is that there's a lot more money sloshed around. A lot more money indexed to the S&P 500, which means that it wasn't all destroyed like it was in 2000. That's the saving grace of this market, people. Hence the great broadening out after the bubble burst. Remember, lots of ill informed commentators are still waiting for the bubble to burst. They already they don't know it already has. That's why I'm more sanguine than most about this moment. I remember 2000. I was trading then. I remember there wasn't enough money to buoy the growth stocks. Everybody, everything collapsed. Now though, we're seeing a great deal of strength in the very stocks that tried to save us in 2000 but fail because there wasn't enough capital around to rotate to them. Too much of it was destroyed. Or to sum up institutional money, institutional memory fled the bubble stocks months ago and move into all sorts of non tech growth plays. That's the strength of this market. That's why the deflating of the mag 7 means much less than the bears told you it is in 2000. It's what I call 2025 with an orderly migration back to old sustainable growth. That's a beneficiary of AI, not a maker of it. I like to say there's always more markets on my Promise event just for you man Money. I'm Drew Kramer. See you.
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Tomorrow. All opinions expressed by Jim Cramer on this podcast are solely Kramer's opinions and do not reflect the opinions of cnbc, NBC Universal, or their parent company or affiliates and and may have been previously disseminated by Kramer on television, radio, Internet or another medium. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Jim Cramer as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. Kremer's opinions are based upon information he considers reliable, but neither CNBC nor its affiliates and or subsidiaries warrant its completeness or accuracy, and it should not be relied upon as such. To view the full Mad Money disclaimer, please visit cnbc.com.
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Madmoneydisclaimer before the trophy and bragging rights are rightfully yours. Before your sleeper turns In a season no one saw coming, before stats and projections turn into points on the board and your lineup falls perfectly into place, you flip the lid on a can of on nicotine pouches. And as you make your first pick, you know this is the season where fantasy's going to surpass reality. It's on. Products for tobacco consumers 21 years of age or older. Warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive.
In this episode, Jim Cramer dives into the ongoing challenges and rotations within Wall Street, particularly surrounding data center and AI spending, the fate of tech and industrial stocks, commodity markets (with a focus on oil), and the movement of money into more sustainable non-tech growth stocks. Cramer uses vivid analogies (including a “Godfather” parallel), interviews the CEO of Texas Capital Bank, and delivers his trademark Lightning Round of rapid-fire stock opinions. The episode is marked by Cramer’s candid, high-energy style and a focus on positioning portfolios after 2025's tech shakeup.
“Sam (Altman) is perhaps $50 billion in the bank. He arguably needs about 25 times that to make his dreams come true—true domination dreams.”
— Jim Cramer (06:50)
“Those are going to end. The statistics favor them coming back to even when it comes to those losses. And I think DraftKings is a very well run company…”
— Jim Cramer (11:26)
“The flash PMI data for December suggests that the recent economic growth spurt is losing momentum.” — Chris Williamson, S&P Market Intelligence (19:24)
"It rarely pays off to bet in the same direction as the herd...not enough people have given up on oil yet."
— Jim Cramer, referencing Carly Garner (25:40)
"We actually out-local the global banks. So if you want local decision-making, not just local people...you bank with us."
— Rob Holmes (38:12)
Cramer answers questions about dozens of individual stocks. Key notes:
Notable quotes:
“I will never recommend a stock where I do not know what’s under the hood.”
— Jim Cramer, on Horizon (41:40)
“You have won the lottery, you do not need to win it again.”
— Jim Cramer, on holding a highly volatile pharma stock (42:48)
“It’s what I call 2025: an orderly migration back to old sustainable growth that’s a beneficiary of AI, not a maker of it.”
— Jim Cramer (47:26)
Jim Cramer’s December 16, 2025 episode is a master class in market adaptation and investor psychology. Wrestling with tech’s boom/bust cycles, overextended AI/data center spending, and rotating capital flows, Cramer argues that healthy, sustainable growth lies beyond the data center echo chamber. Viewers are urged to seek value and growth in diversified sectors, heed technical and macroeconomic warning signs, and continue learning from the past— all while keeping a keen eye on risk and opportunity in a rapidly-changing market.