"7th Heaven" for Stocks, the Fed and Jackson Hole, AMD's $4.9B Deal and Battle Against Nvidia 8/19/24

Carl Quintanilla (0:00)

Market moving insight and analysis. Join Jim Cramer, David Faber, and me, Carl Quintanilla on the opening bell hour of CNBC Squawk on the Street. Good Monday morning.

Megan Casella (0:09)

Welcome to Squawk on the Street.

Carl Quintanilla (0:10)

I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer at post nine of the New York Stock Exchange. Faber has the morning off. Futures are steady after the best week of the year for Dow S&P, Nasdaq, a big and consequential week ahead. Jackson Hole, the DNC, retail earnings, some benchmark revisions to payrolls. A roadmap begins with the market's seven day win streak, though, looking to build on the best week of the year. Fed's in focus ahead of Jackson Hole later in the week. And of course, AMD today, escalating its battle with Nvidia by acquiring server makers ZT Systems for nearly five billion in cash and stock. Let's begin with the rally, though, as we do kick off a new trading week, Jim. It wasn't just about equities. Cross rally ETFs last week, the JNK, the LQD, the TLT.

Jim Cramer (0:55)

We're more linked than we realize. Obviously, we went down on Japan. No, we went up on Japan. Now, this is somewhat reminiscent, by the way, of 1987, where we would, if Japan was up, they'd come over and they'd flood us. Sometimes they didn't care whether they, they used to buy these stocks, used to buy Waste Management and Browning Ferris. Don't ask me. I mean, the old days, things were, when I was at my hedge fund, what you would say is, well, why is Browning Ferris up? And they would say, large buyer, large buyer, large buyer. And eventually, you go out for a beer, and it's like, it's Tokyo. They had such, they liked the rails. There was such craziness, but we seem much more linked. And it's interesting because the dollar keeps going down. So it's good that we're linked for a company like, well, any of the package food companies that sell overseas, Coca-Cola is what I was thinking of. And it's also, I don't want to, it's an enjoyable time, because what's happened is that, if there's good news, stock goes up.

If there's bad news, people say, well, Jack's at home, maybe it'll go up. People are looking for reasons to stay in. And it used to be, I think, that they used to look for reasons to stay out.

Carl Quintanilla (2:04)

It's a good point.

Jim Cramer (2:05)

It's very, you know, the stay-in crowd is kind of like, all right, well, what's the downside here? We have a good quarter or we have the Fed bail us out. Now, it's a little simplistic, but it's what's in play.

Carl Quintanilla (2:15)

Yeah, interesting. On that note, RBC today, Laurie Calvicina, increased conviction, August 5 was the low in the recent pullback. We're feeling good about 5,700 year end.

Jim Cramer (2:25)

Well, it's funny, you talked about last week, September, bad month. So maybe we get there circuitously.

I know that when you single out a month, that's the when it doesn't happen. But I also know that we are up big, that last week seemed odd. I mean, for instance, we made a lot of chatter about Nvidia. Now Nvidia reports next week, and somehow Nvidia is, as David would ask me, it's the key to the market. Now, it shouldn't be. I mean, there is an absolutely terrific piece we've got about Google, where Google is up 7,661 percent since it came public on today, August 9th, and what I say to myself is, okay, do I really like Nvidia? Do I just judge it by next Wednesday or do we look at the body of work of Nvidia? Somewhat like Olivier, we look at the body of work. We don't just look at his final, you know, is it safe? Not that he was better, and I think that we have to remember that the great wealth is created by not reacting to a given month. Right.

Carl Quintanilla (3:27)

Although as you point out, 18 percent gain last week, right? A note on Friday out of Goldman saying, do we get that normal post-Labor Day gross up, right? If we did some of that work in August.

Jim Cramer (3:39)

Yeah. But look, one of the things that I was dealing with, someone who is integral to the, trying to fill in for David, M&A process. He said, look, it's August and it's busy as I can recall. I also, I had a nice talk with Lisa Su. We're going to talk about that acquisition. But I just want to point out that we talked this weekend about what time I get up. The absurdity, my wife thinks I get up at 4.30. You kidding me? I get up a quarter of four. I got to get the jump on all the bad guys. But one thing that was very clear was Nvidia was down $1.70. Now, since this, what's come out at 6 a.m. was Lisa Su's somewhat competitive acquisition of a company, ZT. We'll get into it, but Nvidia then goes up. So Nvidia is a true oddity. It had a huge week last week. And I'm kind of hoping, as someone who's owned it forever, for my child, I don't want to come in hot. You want to come in cold. But this thing is its own animal. There are people who are doing this work who just say it's very cheap. We'll look back and think it's very cheap. So Carl, we have Google, we have an Apple piece by Moffitt and Aethelsten, which is this great cash flow, but then it says maybe it's finite in terms of its growth. I don't think so at all. I think that he did, I happen to love Moffitt's work, but he underestimates the service stream. So we have Google Celebration, we have Apple underestimate services, as far as I'm concerned. There's a piece about Amazon this morning, which is just playing out positive, talking about how Amazon is going to start monetizing much better the local stuff, the stuff that my wife buys incessantly, and that I told Andy Jassy to stop sending my wife, because I've had it. Enough already. I mean, this thing, what it is, of course, is you get into this habit of buying. Well, you'll say, I need Q-tips. No, it's like 10 minutes away.