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Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 12/18/25 - Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer | Wave AI Podcast Notes

Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 12/18/25

Fri Dec 19 2025

Listen to Jim Cramer’s personal guide through the confusing jungle of Wall Street investing, navigating through opportunities and pitfalls with one goal in mind - to help you make money. Mad Money Disclaimer

Summary

Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer – December 18, 2025

Host: Jim Cramer | CNBC

Episode Focus: Market Rotation, Consumer Rally, Housing Sector Trouble, Defense Tech, FedEx, Semiconductor Trends

Episode Overview

In this episode, Jim Cramer takes a fast-paced tour through the latest Wall Street developments, celebrating the resurgence of the U.S. consumer as tech giants falter—heralding the start of a "Santa Claus rally." He dives deep into market rotation, housing market headwinds, the prospects of defense-tech company nLight, and provides an exclusive interview with FedEx CEO Raj Subramanian. Cramer closes with his trademark Lightning Round and an in-depth analysis of Micron’s blowout quarter and what it signals for chips overall.

Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Consumer-Driven Market Rally & Tech Rotation

(02:13 – 08:30)

The Shift: Cramer welcomes the arrival of the "consumer cavalry," noting a jump in consumer stocks at a time when technology begins to falter. He attributes the shift to recent optimistic CPI data.
Inflation Downturn: Core CPI falls to a four-year low, alleviating consumer pessimism and catalyzing spending.
Tech's Holding Pattern: Big tech, led by Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Tesla, and Alphabet, had previously masked consumer weakness. But now, skepticism rises on relentless data center investment costs.
OpenAI & Oracle: Market nerves about Oracle’s heavy data center financing for OpenAI. “There’s now a belief...that Oracle may not somehow be money good for the financing of this massive data center build out” (04:15).
Positive Data: Gasoline, used car prices, and general goods show marked deflation. “Home prices...are really coming down. We’re going to talk more about that” (05:35).
Fed Rate Cut Hope: Lower rates mean more money in consumers’ pockets.
Retail Standouts: Olive Garden (Darden), Texas Roadhouse, Williams Sonoma, Target, and Kohl’s cited as consumer winners.
Quote:
“The CPI number was terrific this morning. Consumer spending looks to be alive and well, and it's a huge win for the stock market.” — Jim Cramer (08:24)

2. Caller Q&A: Boeing’s Long-term Outlook

(08:30 – 10:25)

Diverse Portfolio Concerns: Caller Dustin seeks advice on Boeing amid global tariff uncertainty.
Cramer’s Take:
“I will tell you unequivocally that I think Boeing is bottomed. I thought the last quarter was terrific... We've seen a tremendous broadening of this market over the last few months and I think it's a reminder that we can still have a rally without tech.” — Jim Cramer (09:21)

3. nLight (LASR) Deep Dive: Defense Lasers & Valuation

(12:39 – 18:27)

Stock Profile: nLight (LASR) is a leader in high-powered lasers for defense, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing.
Trajectory: IPO’d in 2018, huge spike during the pandemic’s speculative mania, bottomed out in early 2024, then rallied 480% within the year.
Shift to Defense: Originally telecom/industrial-focused, now over 60% of sales are defense-related—especially “directed energy weapons” (laser weapons for missile/drone defense).
Financials:
- Historic sales weakness in 2022–23 due to transitioning end markets and heavy R&D spending.
- 2025: Return to profitability and 29% revenue growth predicted.
- Stock is up but trades at ~80x forward earnings, making it expensive.
Cramer’s Recommendation:
“I wouldn’t put new money to work [in nLight] at these levels given how much the stock’s run. If you already own it, I say stop—sell enough shares to cover your cost basis so that you’re playing with the house’s money. If you don’t own it and like the story, I recommend waiting for a pullback.” — Jim Cramer (18:20)

4. Housing Sector Woes: Lennar, KB Home & Homebuilder Outlook

(20:15 – 27:18)

Recent Results: Both Lennar and KB Home reported; numbers disappointed across deliveries, average sales price, and gross margin.
Headline Data:
- Lennar’s guidance is weaker than expected across deliveries and margins.
- New orders and average prices are falling—now “real deflation” visible in housing for the first time since pre-Covid.
- Analyst downgrades and CEO admissions of an “affordability crisis.”
Key Quote:
“The current housing market is entrenched in an affordability crisis.” — Stuart Miller, Lennar CEO, quoted by Jim Cramer (25:28)
Cramer’s Warning:
“You don’t need to be a hero in the housing space. If you want to make a bet on a turnaround for the builders, I think you should start small for now and wait for a clear sign that buyers are returning before you make any big bets. And we are most certainly not there yet.” (27:10)
Caller Q&A: (27:18–28:25) Cramer tells John from NJ not to buy Anywhere Real Estate Advisors, saying the market isn’t hot enough.

5. FedEx Post-Earnings Interview with CEO Raj Subramanian

(29:20 – 39:41)

Key Topics

Quarter Beat: 7% revenue growth, 17% profit growth, raised forecasts.
Cost Discipline: $4B cost cuts over 3 years, $1B more targeted.
Shift to B2B: 66% of FedEx’s revenue is now B2B, including growing business in healthcare, aerospace, defense, and moving specialty goods for data centers.
- “FedEx is the heartbeat of the industrial economy.” — Raj Subramanian (30:11)
Data Center Boom: Major logistics role supporting data center builds, “hundreds of thousands of parts.”
Network Transformation: Domestic, international, and digital transformation ongoing.
Global Trade Shifts:
- China–US trade down, intra-Asia and Asia–Europe up.
- “The fact that we already have a scale network globally... allows us to move with precision and agility.” — Raj Subramanian (36:42)
Europe: Progress after operational challenges, upside expected.
Fleet Modernization: MD-11 management, fleet is younger than competition.
Cramer’s Wrap: “B2B is in my heart because I know that’s for big money. But you got to do both and you do a great job.” (39:24)

6. The Lightning Round: Rapid Fire Stock Opinions

(39:51 – 43:50)

Memorable Picks & Calls:

Cybersecurity (Armis/ServiceNow deal): Cramer likes established names—CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks (40:34).
KURA Oncology: Speculative cancer drug plays are OK, but for "majors" look to J&J and Merck (41:00).
BitMine Immersion (BMNR): Avoid—"year of magical investing" is over (41:46).
CREDO Technology: Remains bullish— “a winner” despite insider selling (42:29).
Ciena: Bullish after stellar quarter—“This Ciena is much better than the Ciena of 2000” (43:31).

7. Micron: Blowout Quarter, Memory Shortage, and Chip Sector Takeaways

(44:14 – 48:08)

Stunning Results: Micron’s quarter was “the second largest beat I’ve ever seen,” stock up 10%.
Memory Shortage: CEO Sanjay Mehrotra: “We are only able to meet 50% to 2/3 of demand from several key customers.” (44:32)
Supply/Chain Dynamics: Tight capacity, high pricing power, records for revenue ahead. Manufacturing is in-house (unlike fabless peers Broadcom/Nvidia).
Investment Philosophy:
- Trust “cash in the barrel head,” as Micron’s supply/demand picture is “a world that actually makes sense.”
- OpenAI and other big AI/data center deals are structured more speculatively and feel risky by comparison.
- “Micron’s not paying anyone to take their stuff. There’s just so much demand... When in doubt, you always go with cash.” — Jim Cramer (47:28)

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

On Market Rotation:
“Consumer spending looks to be alive and well and it's a huge win for the stock market.” — Jim Cramer (08:24)
On Housing:
“The current housing market is entrenched in an affordability crisis.” — Stuart Miller (quoted by Cramer, 25:28)
On nLight’s Future:
“If you already own it, I say stop—sell enough shares to cover your cost basis so that you’re playing with the house’s money.” — Jim Cramer (18:20)
On FedEx’s Mission:
“FedEx is the heartbeat of the industrial economy.” — Raj Subramanian (30:11)
On Micron’s Chip Business:
“Micron’s not paying anyone to take their stuff. There’s just so much demand... When in doubt, you always go with cash.” — Jim Cramer (47:28)

Key Segments & Timestamps

Market Overview & Inflation Data: [02:13 – 08:30]
Boeing & Market Breadth (Caller): [08:30 – 10:25]
Deep Dive: nLight Laser Tech: [12:39 – 18:27]
Housing Sector Update (Lennar, KBH): [20:15 – 27:18]
FedEx CEO Interview (B2B Shift): [29:20 – 39:41]
Lightning Round: [39:51 – 43:50]
Micron & Semiconductor Market Analysis: [44:14 – 48:08]

Tone & Style

Energetic, direct, rapid-fire, with Cramer’s usual humor and urgency.
Frequent use of memorable, quotable advice; loaded with metrics, analogies, and quick pivots.
Balanced between bullish optimism (“Santa Claus rally!”) and pragmatic caution (“Don’t be a hero in housing”).

Summary Takeaways

The market is experiencing a healthy rotation from tech to consumer stocks, spurred by declining inflation and the promise of rate cuts.
Housing remains a “battleground”—large builders are struggling and Cramer strongly advises caution.
Defense tech is hot, especially for companies like nLight, but momentum may have carried valuations too high.
FedEx is thriving by pivoting more to B2B and capitalizing on global trade realignment.
Micron’s dominance in memory chips, plus genuine demand-supply tightness, sets it apart from peers doing complicated, riskier AI deals.
Overall message: Embrace market breadth, watch for signs of genuine consumer and business demand, and stick with quality cash-generating companies.

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Transcript

Fidelity Representative (0:00)

Fidelity Active ETFs have the flexibility to shift and transform as markets do the same. So instead of just riding an index, they can seek to outperform it by adapting to market conditions and pursuing new opportunities as they emerge. And while you get the potential outperformance of an actively managed fund, you can still buy and sell it on your terms. Just like any other etf, markets can change in real time. Make sure your ETF can too. Learn more@fidelity.com ActiveETFs before investing in any exchange traded fund, you should consider its investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Contact Fidelity for a prospectus, an offering circular, or if available, a summary prospectus containing this information. Read it carefully. While active ETFs offer the potential to outperform an index, these products may more significantly trail an index as compared with passive ETFs. ETFs are subject to market fluctuation and the risks of their underlying investments. ETFs are subject to management fees and other expenses. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC member NYSE SIPC.

Homes.com Spokesperson (1:01)

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Jim Cramer (2:13)

Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Kramer America. Other people make friends. I'm just trying to make you a little bit of money here. My job is not just to entertain, but to explain. So call me at 1-800-743- CNBC. Sweet me. Jim Cramer, the Consumer Calvary got here just in time to give us what looks to be the beginning of a Santa Claus rally. That's the only way to describe what worked today. Everything involving consumer spending couldn't come as a better time because tech's been faltering. We needed something big to replace it. Even as you couldn't tell from the averages delvacing 66 points. SB jumping point, 79%. But the tech lead, NASDAQ surging 1.38%. Let me set the scene. For most of the year we've had. Whoa, is the narrative consumer right? I mean, oh, consumer doing so poorly. Higher unemployment. True inflation kept the consumer on the sidelines. We kept thinking that they were just decelerating. Retail is pretty awful, except for Wal Mart, which powered through everything as CEO Doug McMillan moved to keep prices low. His own one man war against inflation, a war I think he may have won before he retired. We didn't see the weakness in the averages though, even though the consumer represents two thirds of the economy, because it was masked by the incredible run in technology led by Nvidia, but followed by Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Tesla and most importantly, Alphabet. Behind the scenes lurked Open Air, the creative chat cbt, which along with Oracle, have been huge drivers of the burgeoning tech spend for most of 2025. Those are the stocks that drove the market higher. And that was the narrative we love. Lately, those skeptics have begun to challenge the notion of unlimited data spending, or Oracle raised a huge amount of money in the bond market, $18 billion. But there's now a belief in the market that Oracle may not somehow be money good for the financing of this massive data center build out, something it's doing largely on behalf of OpenAI. That's the private company. You can tell because people have been buying credit default swaps or Oracle's debt like crazy. Now, I do find that somewhat worrisome, I admit it. I am glad to hear tonight though, according to the Wall street journal, that OpenAI is trying to raise $100 billion. And at an $830 billion valuation, that's up from 7, 50 billion yesterday. Not bad, huh? If I can rate. If it can raise 100 billion at that valuation, well, then the company can keep building out data centers aggressively and stocks like Nvidia and Broadcom should be bought tomorrow. I for one, though, I'm delighted, delighted that the attention for the day was away from the datacenter valuations because the artificial intelligence trade has become very hard to fathom. And Wall street doesn't like hard to fathom valuations. So how do we start liking the rest of the market again? Was it just out of revulsion toward the trade? Somewhat. But it all starts with the consumer and what she has to pay. This morning we saw a decline in the rate of inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index, the core cpi, which excludes food and Energy prices fell to a four year low. Inflation had been eroding the consumer confidence and caused all sorts of consumer related stocks to just get hammered. These numbers today show that inflation may have peaked. Starting to come down in a very positive way. So many different costs are coming down. We can see that. We know gasoline's gone down sharply. Used car prices are down high single digits. All sorts of goods coming down to levels where they can move and while it's not in the cpi, home prices they are really coming down. We're going to more on that about from Talk about Lenore but suffice it to say that the average selling price of some houses now below where they were in 2019, I thought that would never occur again again. It's become a self fulfilling world. If the Fed cuts rates, the consumer should spend even more. Hence why so many consumer stocks have been roaring since last week's Fed meeting. Of course you got to ask yourself if the move is sustainable. I don't know tonight Nike looks terrible. That could be a lot of that is China. I think that the trend of lower prices though is just starting. Gasoline will struggle to rally given the glutton oil that gives excess cash to the consumer who can spend it as she sees fit. Retail, such a huge portion of its economy. It can mask the questionable kinds of transactions we've been seeing at the highest level of tech. Consider the retail winners. Say there's Darden. That's the owner of Olive garden evolving nearly 2%. Yes, the numbers from Olive Garden look great. Investor Club Holding Texas Roadhouse gained 1.6%. WILLIAMS Sonoma, we know how much we like those guys. Laura Albert that gained 2%. Target at.46 and Kohl's finished up 1%. Look, you got to start somewhere. Let's not forget there's a lot of consumer intact. Amazon for example is more than Amazon Web Services, even though Wall street only seems to talk about that. Remember they saw this e commerce website that you're on every minute and that's a huge giant tailwind in this backdrop. So does YouTube and Waymo owner Alphabet. Apple might be hurt by higher memory prices from Micron as we heard just last night. More on that later in the show. But a wealthier consumer may also buy more phones. Isn't it ironic that President Trump was railing last night about how Biden had left him with what was perhaps the worst inflation ever? When in reality looks like the inflation story is coming down pretty quickly. The commodities themselves almost all have come down except for cattle. If the President could Give the cattlemen checks. We could take beef from Brazil and bring that price down too. That's something that should be done. The Fed now seems justified in that last rate cut. The new Fed chief love declining prices to allow even more room for easing rates. It's going the President's way. He seems to be so busy trashing his predecessor he doesn't seem to realize when he's winning the war of inflation. Now this whole market spent several years trying to get away from just owning tech. In the last few months we've seen a tremendous broadening this rally. The financials have been incredible. Late Cities Crossing is up 60% for the year. Goldman Sachs is up 53%. JP Morgan is rolling 31%. The autos have been getting stronger and Stronger. Ford's a 35%. GM's gained 52%. Now it is retail turn. Just in time for Santa Claus. The bottom line. The CPI number was terrific this morning. Consumer spending looks to be alive and well and it's a huge win for the stock market. Best of all, it's a reminder that we can still rally big without tech, thank heavens. And when we get tech rallying and open air gets us money. So that story's out of the way, it's going to be all the sweeter. Let's go to Dustin in Oklahoma. Dustin, booyah.

Jim Cramer (12:39)

Whenever you call to ask about a stock that I don't know, I put it aside, do some homework and come back with a more considered and informed opinion. Let's go to work. Back on December 2nd, Ed in New York asked me about a company called N Light. Now it's L A S R or Laser for you home gamers. As you can tell from the ticker, these guys make advanced laser products for aerospace and defense, industrial and micro fabrication applications companies as it leads the world in high power lasers for mission critical defense systems and advanced manufacturing. Pretty Sexy now. And like came public in April of 2018 and after a strong debut, the stock quickly fizzled. Its long term trajectory isn't particularly inspiring either. It caught fire during the speculative mania of the COVID era, peaking at an all time high of $46 in early 2021. But then it quickly pulled back hard from those highs before bottoming at $6.20 at the post Liberation Day lows. April wow. Sentinel and let us caught fire, rallying roughly 480% in the last eight and a half months to just under $36 today. This is one of the rare momentum stocks. It's actually held up just fine over the past couple of months. Why? Because analytics increasingly focus on the defense industry. There's a lot of laser business there. Initially this company was focused on lasers for telecommunications. Then after the dot com bubble burst they shifted to industrial end markets. But in the last few years they've been big on defense and now and like gets more than 60% of its sales from the defense business. I got to tell you, when you're you purely look at what they're doing as a defense contractor. The story is actually very compelling. And Light makes a lot of lasers that basically gather data helping to identify and position objects including missiles and drones. Most targeted weapon systems rely on this kind of technology. At the same time these guys are working on so called directed energy weapons. This is what I find most interesting. Actual lasers like from a science fiction movie. This contract with the Pentagon was upsized to $171 million to the end of 2020. Of course enlightenment needs to keep winning contracts here as as that one should be finished next year. On the latest conference call back in November, CEO Scott Keeney sounded very confident about these directed energy programs because the Pentagon wants a laser that can shoot down drones. Inexpensive drones, expensive drones. Go for the inexpensive. Go for laser to stop the inexpensive. If you bet on the stock here, you're really betting that and like can keep winning this kind of business. And there are plenty of people who are willing to make that bet. Just yesterday, analysts at Roth Capital initiated coverage on End Light with a buy rating and a $44 price target precisely because they believe in this business. I have no idea whether the technology makes sense, but it sure seems like the Defense Department is willing to spend money on it, which might be all that matters now. There's one thing that's been nagging at me with this, with this one. It's a simple fact that Enlight doesn't have a great tracker when it comes to, you know, making money. Company has been profitable for the last three, four years and perhaps worse, its sales peaked way back in 2021 before declining each of the past three years, falling from 270 million in 2021 to under 200 million last year. When you look at those numbers, it's no wonder and Light stocks sunk to an all time low earlier this year. But most of that historical weakness was caused by a combination of poor performance from Enlighten industrial business and the fact that the company had to ramp up spending in order to build its types of directed energy weapons that the Defense Department wants. Plus this year their financials have improved significantly. The year started poorly with pre announcing weak results in early January. And the full results for that quarter were bad too when they came out in February. But in May and late surprise to the upside, a nice revenue beat and a smaller than expected earnings loss for the quarter plus strong guidance for next quarter in August and reported even better numbers with another top line beat and a surprise profit plus again, very robust guidance for the next quarter. And that's why the stock jumped 28% in response to the quarter. When the company turned its latest numbers in early November, they delivered another excellent quarter. The story is entirely now about aerospace and defense growth at this point. That end market was up 50% in the latest quarter and accounted for 68% of total revenue. Now just so you know how important this is, the other two end markets were both down double digits. We deemphasize those according to the full year consensus estimates. And lights put up 29% revenue growth in return to profitability. On top of that, analysts who cover this thing expect the numbers to keep improving for the next few years. Nice. So where do I ultimately come down on Enlight? When I saw the stock's tremendous gains and noticed that the company is focused on laser guns, I was worried that this might be another year of magical investing stock. But after looking into the story in depth, this is a real established company with a legitimate business that has great potential, potential in the future of warfare. The stock's been roaring this year because it should be. The numbers have gotten better and better. Plus, it's very encouraging to me that Enlight stock has held up so well, right as so many of the other year of magical investing names have fallen by the wayside. That said, considering how much the stock has run, I find it very hard to recommend this one up here right now and light selling for roughly 80 times it's 20, 27. 27, not 6, 27 earnings estimates. It was just pretty rich, especially for the hours. Also, and this is more instinct than science, I'm a bit worried that while Enlightenment might not be a year of magical investing stocks, it certainly traveled with many of those names and could get hurt by a broader cool off in momentum stocks. And these keep happening. So so far it hasn't happened. But if momentum names keep getting hit, this one might cool down too. So here's the bottom line. I wouldn't put new money to work in Enlightenment at these levels given how much the stocks run. If you already own it, I say stop. Sell enough shares to cover your cost basis so that you're playing with the house's money. If you don't own it and you like the story, I recommend waiting for a pullback, which seems highly likely to me at some point. But if the pullback comes and Enlightenment keeps putting up good numbers, then you better believe I'd be a buyer. Everybody's back in February.

Jim Cramer (20:15)

We're starting to wind down for the year, but there's still some big reports coming from industries that are real battlegrounds. Take the homebuilders. On Tuesday night we heard from Lennar and then after the close today we heard from KP Home. This is a group that Wall Street's wanted to like for a long time. The iShares US Home Construction ETF that's called the ITB rallied more than 40% from early April to its highs in early September, mostly anticipation of another round of rate cuts for the Fed. But now those rate cuts are here and the situation is not playing out the way the Bulls hoped. See long term rates, the one set by the bond market that actually control the cost of your mortgage. They haven't really played ball. The 30 year treasury currently has a 4.8% yield which is down from around 5% its highs, but not by much. It's actually been trending higher since mid October with only a little bit of support from lower rates. The homebuilders just rolled over in September and kept falling until mid November for finally catching a bid. Once we started to believe that the Fed will bless us with another rate cut at this December meeting. Now that rate cut is also coming on and the builders as a group have lacked clear direction this month. That's why I wanted to see what Lenore and K.B. holmes had to say this week about what they're actually seeing on the ground. What do we learn? Long story short, the builders are still not particularly well. So if you're inclined to Bet on them. You're wagering that things will improve substantially in 2026. And it's not clear that's going to happen. Let's start with Lenore turning a technically mixed but mostly bad set of numbers on Tuesday night. The good news. Deliveries came in better than expected, up 4% year over year. Total revenues also surprised the upside, although they still declined 6% from the previous year. That's not good. Within the core homebuilding segment, revenues and average sales price both exceeded expectations even as they represented declines of 7 and 10% respectively. The bad news? The most important thing. Profitability. Or the lack thereof. The NARS homebuilding gross margin came in at 17.0%. That was down over 500 basis points year over year and well below expectations. I always look at gross margins when I do homebuilders. That's my number one metric. Homebuilding operating earnings were down 52% year over year. Much worse than expected. And $2.03 per share. Most was looking for $2.26. That's an almost 50% decline year over year. That's not good. It gets worse with every quarter. Lenor also gives us some more forward looking metrics and those painted a pretty discouraging picture. New orders. They came in lower than expected. The average sales price for new orders was in line with expectations. That's good. But still below the average selling prices for deliveries this past quarter. And it was down huge year over year. Lenar's guidance for the current quarter. Weak. Company expects to deliver 17,000, 18,000 homes in the current quarter, well below the to 20,089 number that wall street was looking for. That's. That was shocking to me. Magnus says the average sales price for these homes will be between 3 or 65,000, 375,000. And they're talking about a homebuilding gross margin coming in between 15 and 16%. Both of those represent deterioration for the quarter they just reported. How about the full year forecast for 2026? And our guidance for deliveries was also weaker than expected. Man. Now Lenore has been pretty transparent about a strategy. They're focused on keeping volumes up and they're willing to make sacrifices on price and incentives in order to keep moving lots of inventory. Admirable. But their strategy comes with a big hit to profitability. Worse, when you look at the new orders numbers and the forward guidance, it doesn't seem to be working. Even with an are giving buyers great deals, demand still seems to be softening. And you understand these guys are fantastic at what they do. So this was Shocking to me this morning two different analysts, someone else was shocked to RBC Capital and Evercore as isi they downgraded Lunar to an underperform rating. Sell RBC Capital. Mike Doll wrote, quote, we are downgrading Lennar to underperform from sector reform following a weak fourth quarter and first quarter guide with the fiscal year 26 guide and expectations around a recovery in margin later this year still presenting risk to 26 earnings. While numbers may have reset yet again, there is no quick fix to margin headwinds in an affordability constrained soft consumer environment, end quote. That's a tough assessment, but it's hard to disagree unless interest rates come down much faster than almost anyone's expecting. All right, how about KB Home? Smaller. But it reported after the close they also had a disappointing set of numbers. Like Lennar, they did beat on some lines for the quarter. Homes delivered and revenues were both slightly ahead of expectations even as they fell 9 and 15% respectively. I told this group is very difficult. Adjusted earnings per share beat expectations too, even as it fell 24% from the year ago period. But average selling price was down 7% and missed expectations. Homebuilding gross margins were down nearly 4, 400 basis points. What did I tell you? That's the key metric. Fell well short of the street's expectations. And KB Homes Homebuilding operating income fell 49% and came in well short of the consensus estimates. Like Lennar, KB Homes forward looking metrics look well, like the new orders, they're weak. And its outlook for both the current quarter and the year ahead was far below what analysts were looking for. So it's no surprise the KB shares are lower in after trading. I told you this Scoops from hunger. So what should you make of these updates from the homebuilders this week? Especially that disappointing result from Lenore, one of the most important homebuilders in America. Honestly, it's a pretty discouraging picture. On yesterday morning's conference call, CEO Stuart Miller, he's the dean of the whole home bidding industry, said matter of factly, quote, the current housing market is entrenched in an affordability crisis, end quote. He even found his way to talking about socialism and capitalism for a minute. You know, something's a real problem here. We when the CEO of a large capitalization homebuilder seems to be sharing talking points with the socialist mayor elect of New York City. In my opinion, Miller sounded a little befuddled by how long it's taken to get the housing market back on its feet. Lenar has already Cut its prices a great deal at this point. Lenore's average selling price on an annual basis peaked at 4,008 at 480,000 in fiscal 2022. Keep that number in my 480,000. In the past 12 quarters, we've seen a steady decline in average sales price through the 400,000 level, down to the 380,000 in the past couple of quarters. That's real deflation. And remember, they're now talking about three 65,000 to $375,000 per house. Average sale price for the deliveries in the current quarter. So this chart will keep going lower for the time being. These are lower than pre Covid numbers were never helped. Remember how housing it had gone up 40% from its low and everyone was worried about the price of a home. Extraordinary. How much home prices have come down from the COVID spike. Extraordinary. Ultimately, Miller said he believes that Lenore can, quote, keep the volumes moving and quote this strategy he thinks is the correct one. We will find our floor and rebuild our margins as the overall housing market continues to remain short on supply. End quote. But you know what? After. After this week, you got to wonder how low that floor might actually be. A lot of investors and analysts are deciding that they don't want to stick around to find out. And I don't blame them. The bottom line, at the end of the day, you don't need to be a hero in the housing space. If you want to make a bet on a turnaround for the builders, I think you should start small for now and wait for a clear sign that the buyers are returning before you make any big bets. And we are most certainly not there yet. Let's take some calls. Let's go to John in New Jersey. John.

Jim Cramer (44:14)

Yes, it makes sense for Micron, the dean of memory chips, to blow away the estimates and see its stock fly 10% today. This may be the second largest beat I've ever seen, only behind the monster quarter that Nvidia put up two years ago. It was what's magnificent. But you must realize that as great as this is, there's very simple reason for Micron strength. Demand overwhelms supply, just like Act 10. As CEO Sanjay Mirota told me, quote, we are only able to meet 50% to 2/3 of demand from several key customers, end quote. The stock didn't go down even as IT advanced almost 250% from its April lows. Coming to the print because Sanjay said that tightness in memory chips should persist beyond 2026. The kinds of chips Micron makes used to be considered plain humdrum, just commodities. Not anymore. The chips are in such short Supply that the value of memory, especially the high bandwidth memory that Micron specializes in, is higher than ever before. He's already talking about substantial records for revenues, gross margins, earnings per share and free cash flow for next quarter and several quarters after that. Look, there have been many times when Microns have more demand than it can handle. In the 30 years I've found the company, this time seems more, much more lasting because there are extreme shortages for all the machines Micron would need to expand its production capacity. And that's why the stocks of Applied Materials, KLA and most important, Lamb Research, the company's Micron needs to build capacity, all roared too. But the rest of tech took its cue from Micron and broke the recent downtrend. Even though the supply demand situation for most of these companies quite different from Micron. For instance, let's say two of my favorites, Broadcom and Nvidia, both will drop today. They simply do not have the same situation at all. Micron has its own manufacturing facilities, meaning it makes the stuff itself. Nvidia, Broadcom, what's known as fabless companies. They, they make their chips through Taiwan semi. That's who actually does the manufacturing. If demand overwhelms supply, it's Taiwan semi problem. That's why even though Micron's crying about demand, it doesn't exactly translate to Broadcom and Nvidia. Unlike Western Digital and Seagate, which are basically in the same kind of business as Micron, albeit with less intellectual property. I go into this level of detail because the Micron portion, the semiconductor world, is a world that actually makes sense to me. You have a good chip, people buy the chip in short supply. You raise the price, you make money. However, that's not how it seems to be working for some of the hyperscalers these days, especially for a company called OpenAI. This company, which is the pioneer in the AI group, needs tremendous accelerator computing power in order to work efficiently. Metta, Google, Microsoft and Amazon all use in video chips. They pay Nvidia out of cash flow. It hurts, but they do it. OpenAI doesn't have enough money to pay outright, but companies want their business so badly, they come up with novel ways to make it happen. Some companies literally seem to be buying their business by investing in OpenAI with the presumption OpenAI spends that money on their products. Some think it's just going to be a great buy to get in there. I don't know. It's very different from the Micron situation, which is a lot cleaner. Like I told you at the Top of the show. I'm mistrustful of these kinds of deals. I wish the vendors would just insist on actual payment because when I saw these kinds of deals at the end of the dot com era and I was involved with that as a business person, they often misled you into thinking that some companies are doing better than they really were. It was a sign of weakness, not strength. Micro, on the other hand, is the way business should be done. Micron's not paying anyone to take their stuff. There's just so much demand in these memory chips that they can't possibly make enough of. They're trying hard to allocate what they can give the customers. In the end, that makes me like Micron a lot more than some of these other companies that have an air of desperation around them. I'm a simple guy. I don't want to stake in a company that wants my price because I have no idea what that stake might only be worth. I want to be paid with cash in the barrel head Microns, a cash machine. When in doubt, you know what? You always go with cash. The other methods may come back to bite you. Even if you, like me, think the world of the chip companies that are actually doing the selling to these hyperscalers. I like to share as always, but Marcus, I'm right. Problem certified just for you. Right here on Man Money, I'm Jim Cramer. See you tomorrow.