9AM Hour: Global Bond Sell-Off Weighs on Stocks, Home Depot Beats, Meta Heads to Trial 8/18/26

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Jim Cramer (0:59)

It's Jim Cramer here. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC Squawk on the Street. Don't miss a minute of the action.

Carl Quintanilla (1:06)

Good Tuesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla, Jim Cramer, a post-9 of the New York Stock Exchange. David Faber has the morning off. This global bond sell-off has upset the pre-market a bit. Our 10-year gets to four and three-quarters. Long bond 532, import prices for capital goods almost 6.6 year on year. That's a multi-decade high. Brent's above 91 Iran has now attacked a ship in the Strait for 16 straight days.

Our roadmap begins with yield spiking around the globe amid concerns about inflation and a surge in AI bond issuance. Depot with a quarterly beat though, despite what the company calls frozen housing market conditions. And some opening arguments set to begin state AGs take Meta to court over child safety and privacy issues.

Let's begin though with the markets and the global bond sell-off, Jim. You listed a bunch of reasons why it might be better just to go back to bed.

Jim Cramer (1:58)

Yeah, well, I mean, one of those moments where pretty much everything that could happen overnight was bad. You sit there, you think, well, hold it, Home Depot. You're not part of the script at all. What are you doing? What are you doing? Changing the narrative. Thank you for Klarna to bring the narrative back. With Germany being weak, Germany is suddenly the epicenter of everything, except that everything isn't the cost be, which was up five and it finishes down. I don't know, Karl, look, we are in the grips of a bad bond market, but I want to take it the other way, just for a second.

5.3 is actually kind of interesting. You never hear people say, including at Gardenia in my life, you never hear anybody say, you know what?

I've been looking for rates to get to a point where I actually want to invest in them. Well, you're not going to get 7% here, I don't think, but you might get 5.3, 5.5. You get 5.5, it's not that big for 5.3. So you actually might have investors, investors looking for it. Now, that doesn't help Google if it's trying to raise a gazillion dollars, but if you're not thinking about 5.3 as an investment, I think you got to think you're a little too optimistic. That's a good, that's a good term.

Carl Quintanilla (3:04)

Yeah, well, you said you would buy 30-year paper yesterday, or last week, right?

Jim Cramer (3:08)

Yeah, I mean, 20-year paper, 5.3, I like that.

I kind of like it because I got a piece of paper coming to do from a five-year piece of paper, it's like I'm getting two and a half. I'd like to get double, but you have to remember where we were. And things do run off for individuals and institutions, and you say, hold on, I was at 2.5, 2.6, now I can get five, but everyone's suddenly anti-the-bomb market, but I'm not buying at the top, obviously, and there's going to be people who come in and buy it. Now, for instance, if the president were to not, let's say the president were to stay quiet for a couple of days, we might actually have interest rates come down.

Carl Quintanilla (3:44)

So you think it's about his posts or his rhetoric?

Jim Cramer (3:48)

Yes. I mean, because he takes oil up every day with saying these things, and it really isn't algo, you know, Trump, oil rates.

Carl Quintanilla (3:57)

This morning he posts that the Strait of Hormuz is a US territory, that was on Truth Social about an hour ago. Denny, to your point, does think that the 10-year can trade between four and five without any adverse consequences in his view.

Jim Cramer (4:11)

I think that's right. I just think that, look, let's say what you'd be doing right now, you should be saying, listen, when it gets to five and a half, I had two and a half, now I get five and a half, I'm going to make my move. This for 20 Yeah. The 20-year never traded that low, but I do have to say that we always have to remember there are people who want to buy at this level, and we always just think that everyone wants to sell. We had a lot of hot money in for the 30-year, that's not big. You figure the president does something positive because he's always been doing things negative, maybe he says something positive like, I've been talking to so-and-so and it's looking better, and you make a quick couple of points on the 30 Instead, they got walloped by a Fox News omen.