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Bank of America Representative (0:00)
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Jim Cramer (1:03)
My mission is simple to make you money. I'm here to level the playing field for all investors. There's always a bull market somewhere and I promise to help you find it. Mad Money starts now. Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Crane America, I believe. Friends, you know me, I'm just trying to make you a little money. But my job is not just to entertain, educate, put in perspective. Call me 1-800-73-CBC. Tweemy Jim Cramer I've got a good sign that the beaten down tech stocks rallied and rallied hard. At one point after a lot of time lost in the wilderness while the recession proof stocks, well, they finally got clubbed and you can see in the averages. We rebound in the afternoon before pulling back again near the close. Dow, home of many defensive stocks finishing off 478points.s&p declining points of 5 cents. The NASDAQ where tech lives losing only 0.18%. Although one point in the afternoon we had a wicked rally going before faltering into the bell. I like the Nasdaq rally, even if it petered out toward the end of the session. It came a little too early which left time for sellers to ring the register. That's what yet to start these things a little later, but we got a trade war going with Canada. Here's what happened. They announced a 25% tariff on electricity in our country earlier today. Immediately President Trump announced some hard retaliation, doubling the tariffs on aluminum and steel. Take that Canada. The steel side can be dealt with aluminum. I don't know more on that later. But it's bad news. Canadians producing huge percentage of that stuff for our airline makers, for trucks, for cars. A 50% tariff would be very inflationary and could destroy the profits of the automakers. Then at 1:30pm The Canadians suspended the electricity surcharge. At the same time, Ukraine said it was willing to have a 30, 30 day truce. Now if you take a look at what happened here, all of a sudden, boom. The market flew up like a spring loaded cannon. It's like this. Everyone was just thinking this thing's going down here, okay? But no, it went back. Opportunistic. Investors did take profits right here. But as you can see, we had a nice rally at one point. This is up 1%. That was super. Who thought that could happen? Of course, there's no predicting that President Trump will roll back the extra steel and aluminum tariffs. Sounds like he's considering it. The uncertainty worried people. And many, many people were so happy to rid themselves of stocks like in video or Apple. The latter now engaged in a real hideous rollover, even as Nvidia was able to bounce for a disappointing close. But you can see just for a second when the Canadians got constructive, that this market truly does want to go higher. When the turn came, it came to the technology stocks, not these safety stocks because they're the most beaten down. Consider, let's just use this, this is almost a trillion dollar company. Broadcom, this semiconductor company, it's on the verge of being right there. And like, you know, Maggie, whatever you want to call it, reported an amazing quarter just this Thursday. Yet its stock had barely gotten any credit. Came back hard today. Rally as much as 10 points and then giving back five. But that's still a very good sign. Of course, no matter what this market is about, tariffs. Canada's suspension of his like electricity tariff, that changed everything for the better. That's what made things work in the afternoon. So let's talk about stock prices in the White House now. This weekend the President said he's not focused on the stock market. Maybe if you're in power, you're not up for re election. The stock market could be ignored. That's just one problem. This is what the President's forgetting. The stock market serves a dual role. Yes, it makes rich people richer, no doubt, at least when it's going up. But when it goes down, it can also be a signal, a signal that things aren't well in the economy, that business could be getting tougher and that layoffs could be on the table. Now, big picture. I most agree with President's attitude toward trade, even if I disagree with the details, and certainly don't like the angry ways handling it. For years, many countries have feasted off our nation's economy. It's been a raw deal for a lot of towns across our country. As factories shutter, people get thrown out of work. President Trump ran on fixing that, among other issues. One of the best examples is what happened in aluminum in our country. We used to have a lot of smelters here, but roughly half of our aluminum is now imported. Vast majority come from Canada. We've been closing smelters for years in this country. Canada's been making up a lot of that at closed capacity. But Canada does rip us off on so many different things. When it comes to international trade, nobody's hands are clean. It's just that the White House hasn't bothered to explain it. That's why it feels like Trump's beating up on the Canadians for doing nothing other than supplying us with cheap aluminum that doesn't pollute our communities. Still, if the White House bothered to explain rather than just being angry, I think most people don't understand why the President is going after Canada. Of course, the details matter, too. A 50% tariff on Canadian aluminum doesn't work because there's no new source to replace it. Wherever we, wherever we get aluminum, it's going to be a lot more expensive, right? Raising the price of cars and trucks dramatically, really hurting GM's profits. Sting Fords too. I don't think it's a mistake to say that the auto companies are in real trouble. With a 50% tariff on Canadian steel and aluminum, you certainly can't own their stocks. Now let's talk about what's happening. The real world. Because of the President's tumultuous approach to trade, these tariffs beginning to scare people. Regular people. You, me, and that's what the stock market has been saying. Before the Canadians blinked, we momentarily avoided real trade war. We're still seeing a pronounced decline in small business optimism. It's a cliche. Small business backbone of the economy. Big business always trying to trim costs. Small business hires. We're starting to see large shortfalls, many different industries. Delta, Great airline. But it's going to miss the numbers. Big Same with America. We got a real ugly read about the state of telecommunications day from Verizon. Stock fell 6.5%, 3 points. Wow. We're hearing disconcerting things from Retail Dick's Sporting Goods, terrific company reported excellent numbers, but its CEO Lauren Hobart gave a very downbeat forecast. Why? Well, here's what she had to say. We are not seeing a weaker consumer now. We're coming off fantastic Q4. Our guidance reflects that. There's so much uncertainty in the world today in geopolitical environment, macroeconomic environment, we are just being appropriately cautious and quote that's much of a sport. Then consider the case of Kohl's, a former jewel of a chain that's fallen on hard times, cutting its dividend today $0.50 to 12.5 cents. Not good. Kohl's is still making some money, but they're forecasting a huge reduction in earnings, 10 to 60 cents versus A$24 the analysts expect. More important they see same store sales down 4 to 6% when the analysts were expecting only to be down 1%. Ouch. That's very bad. Now we're not a manufacturing economy or a service economy. That's why it stings when you see these retailers, telcos and airlines linking the negativity of their customers to political actions emanating yes from the White House. I don't be a complainer. I like to be constructive. We want more good factory jobs replace the ones have been lost over the years. The President's been terrific at getting commitments from foreign companies to build factors here. But modern day factories they go into and they don't employ a lot of people. The issue is that again we're service. Most of our business is service. And that economy starting to roll over because consumer confidence is declining as people worry about impact these tariffs, they don't understand them. Sure, we have plenty of room for layoffs so to speak because we have very low unemployment. But the stock market saying the tariffs will be inflationary and the White House hasn't explained the American people why it's worth it. We also have plenty of room to reverse the mood though to make people less worried to stop the decline of retail, which is a heck of a lot bigger than manufacturing. We can stop the increase in price of cars and homes. We can lower interest rates and oil prices. All good. But the stock market is being to say to President Trump, look, it's just not worth even if you want to bring back jobs to market manufacturing jobs, there's a way to do this without causing collapse in consumer confidence in the service economy. Bottom line, right now the stock market saying that President Trump needs to change course on how he tries to implement the tariffs. It's screaming that we have the wrong Approach. And the president should not ignore that scream because that's how you end up in a recession. Let's take calls. Let's go to Robert in New York. Robert. Hey, Jim.
