Transcript
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Homes.com knows that when it comes to home shopping, it's never just about the house or condo, it's about the home. And what makes a home is more than just the house or property, it's the location and neighborhood. If you have kids, it's also schools, nearby, parks and transportation options. That's why homes.com goes above and beyond to bring home shoppers the in depth information they need to find the right home. And when I say in depth, I'm talking deep. Each listing features comprehensive information about the neighborhood, complete with a video guide. They also have details about local schools with test scores, state rankings and student to teacher ratio. They even have an agent directory with the sales history of each agent. So when it comes to finding a home, not just a house, this is everything you need to know, all in one place. Homes.com, we've done your homework.
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This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information packed daily market Preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe@schwab.com Market Update podcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Cramer. Other People My friends, I'm just trying to make a little bit of money here. My job is not just entertain, but to put it in context. Call me 1-800-743-CBC. You can tweet me at Jim Cramer. I never thought I'd say this, but the United States increasingly feels like a command economy where you better accept the President's terms without complaints or suffer the consequences which could be severe. Of course, not all negative. We would have had a session where The Dow lost 49 points. But wait. S&P advanced.41% to a record high and then as that gained a whopping.91%. But let's start with the bad stuff. Or at least the stuff that's bad for the stock market today. The health insurance companies sold their stocks. Get crushed. That's UnitedHealth Dow stock, by the way. That's why the Dow is down so much. Humana cvs, which owns Aetna. Why? Because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services increased rates for the lucrative Medicare Advantage programs by just 0.09%. Normally these rates keep up with or exceed inflation. Wall street was looking for about 4 to 5% increase, just brutal for the industry or Wall street was totally blindsided. This was the work of Dr. Mehmet Oz, who's long wanted to stem the endless rise in health care costs. He told me about ways to cut our health care costs all the way back in 2018. It's an obsession of his and this is meaningful, which we know because the stocks got obliterated. UNH fell 19%. Humana plummeted 21%. The House of Hate CBS tumbled more than 14% of I'm honestly surprised it happened because both parties have checked off on these price increases for years. It's like by road. This president does not mind inflicting pain on even the most powerful of companies who quiver quiver at what he says at the same time. Last 24 hours we've seen the President's policies bolstering some domestic manufacturers. Gm it reported a huge profit boost today, sharply better than expected. Some of that's because GM has a great car truck lineup. They've had the highest full year market share in a decade. But GM has also been a huge beneficiary of less stringent environmental regulations allowing the company to sell popular gas guzzlers. No fines, no purchases of EV credits. And while it wasn't stressed, GM certainly benefits from tariffs on imported cars. GM CEO Mary Barr Listen, time for you to take a victory lap. You're offering the best cars and trucks at the best prices. You deserve a huge amount of credit. And I agree with Barr when she says 2026 will be even better. And we have to credit this business environment, the President's support for some of that success. Shareholders did well. GM stock jumped almost $7 or 8.75%. What else? Last night Nucor, our largest steel company, reported a mixed quarter. Its shares pulled back today, but the stock was up at its 52 week high coming in the quarter and the actual print wasn't nearly as good as the stuff underneath. I think there were many positive factors, but I also what's key? Nucor's being protected by steel towers to block farm products from being dumped on our soil. Remember what that means? They are making it and selling it for less than their cost of production and wiping out our steel industry. No more. As CEO Leon to Pallian said on last night's call, quote, what we've seen out of commerce in USTR is a very supportive trade environment that's pro market and pro US manufacturing. Topalian told me that the import picture is best in his 30 years at Nucor. On the other hand, though the defense contractors saw Their bottom lines print by the President's efficiency crackdown. He's demanding quicker results for the Pentagon. Boeing had to take a hit on a big tanker contract where the government wants to time more timely product. As CEO Kelly Orberg pointed out, quote, as you know, the Department of War is super focused on us make first of all making investments to support growth and also ensuring we're delivering on time. And so we took that decision, albeit a big gulp, and to have to take a charge here on the tanker program. End quote. Ouch. It killed the stock. It was down. It would have been up big if it weren't for the charge. But so what? It wasn't at the same time that Wartburg did credit the President for a hefty increase in Boeing's backlog. Still, the charge brought out the sellers. Some are just too tired of the company's missteps. Now it is a big position for our travel trust. We told club members at our morning meeting, which is broadcast at 10:20, stick with the program. Then there's RTX, which had been singled out by the President for being least responsive of the defense contractors to the part of war's demands for quicker, better munitions of pure buybacks. That was in a true social post. The company addressed these concerns several times on the conference call. It was very responsive. I've known RTX to be a huge repurchaser of its shares in the last five years. A serial buyback company. Not this time. The key contractor for the Golden Dome project, it didn't buy back any shares. This quarter. Saw its share count grow, which should cause a 5 cent per share earnings head win this year. They got the message. As CEO Chris Calhoun explained, quote, we fully support the Department of Work's transformation objectives to significantly increase capacity and accelerate production over a sustained period. End quote. My conclusion, the true social post works. Now RTX is on board. The stock rally nicely going to keep the dividend, but wow, buyback hardly. The others buy when we don't see some government intervention in the economy. Yesterday I spoke to Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia. He was in China. Chancellor likes to visit China during the Lunar New Year. He seemed confident that he could win some meaningful Chinese business. But he said he preferred to keep the potential contracts out of any earnings estimates for the time being. We ran out of time in the interview before I could ask him how Nvidia would account for the 25% of China sales that are supposed to go to the US government as part of the bargain the firm struck with the President, is Trump being greedy when it comes to the semiconductor industry? The government bought 9.9% of intel at $20.47. Even after last week's shortfall. President has more than a double on his $8.9 billion investment. Now, the government technically didn't write a check, okay? The investment came in part from a conversion of unpaid grants left over from Biden's CHIPS act and a classified black box program it had with the Pentagon. Nvidia stock, by the way, finally showed signs of Life. It's only up 1% for the year. I think that that's ridiculous. I think it should catch up with the rest of some of these big Mag 7 names. And how about Salesforce? Yesterday winning a $5.6 billion 10 year contract from the US Army. To streamline procurement and cut costs, the Pentagon is turning to commercial software loaded with artificial intelligence like Salesforce's Slack product. It's an out of nowhere contract that few thought Salesforce was even going for. This company belongs though to the bleagard software as a service segment of tech. It's a group that is so in the doghouse that the stock of Salesforce actually fell $0.87. Despite this obviously great news, I don't know what it'll take to get that group moving. Maybe when ServiceNow reports tomorrow and it can change the narrative. But that's a tall order given that the competitive threat from General ve got all these hedge fund managers spooked. Still, what I want to talk about is all this government intervention. Of course. Yesterday Uncle Sam made an investment in money, losing heavily short of USA Rare Earth Inc. Then there was the canceling of $4.8 billion in Treasury Department contracts with consultant Booz Allen Hamilton for failing to install adequate privacy safeguards. Put it all together and you have to factor in the government's both a positive and a negative matter of what you do. And we know the President isn't done with trying to get that one year cap on the credit card rates at 10%. How do we know this? Because the banks relying on credit cards have seen their stocks shellacked again, while those that don't have credit cards keep rallying. It might go away, but the stocks say don't count on it. The bottom line. It's an amazing and a preposterous time in so many ways, good and bad depending upon how you look at things. But one thing is for certain. We have a level of government intrusion in private enterprise that I haven't seen since before the Reagan administration. Makes me feel like A kid again, back when I had a full head of red hair. Rebecca in New York. Rebecca, hi, good evening.
