Bracing for Jobs Friday, Costco Same-Store Sales Drop, Perlmutter Speaks Out on Disney 4/6/23

Carl Quintanilla (0:00)

Market Insight and Analysis. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC's Squawk on the Street.

Good Thursday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer, at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. David Faber has the morning off. Pre-market a little wobbly after jobless claims come into the highs for the year on these revisions. Challenger layoffs higher than expected, all ahead of the jobs number tomorrow, when stocks will be closed. Tenure yields still near that six month low. Our roadmap begins with markets bracing for tomorrow's key employment report, as jobless claims jump well above 200K. From jobs to the consumer Costco, falling after posting its first monthly comps decline in almost three years.

And Disney's restructuring rolls on. The streaming chief is out, and former Marvel chair Ike Perlmutter telling the journal he was fired, not laid off.

Let's begin with the markets though, as we look ahead to tomorrow's jobs number. The NASDAQ coming off its third straight day of losses. Goldman last night, Jim said, don't be surprised if you get a bounce on these jobless claims because of these seasonal adjustments are rolling off.

Jim Cramer (1:01)

Well, I do think that we got to start thinking that the last week of March was weak. I think April's weaker. I think that the banking crisis resonated with a lot of, many crisis, resonated with a lot of employers. I think that we're going to see a lot of reductions in forces. I think that there's a lot of companies that were built for an aggressive, let's say for a pretty decent year. And I think that the table of employment is too high for a lot of different companies, except for companies that are in restaurant and travel, which is just continuing. There's a great MasterCard survey out today, restaurant travel, restaurant travel. When we look at Costco, what are people not buying? We're not buying anything that's discretionary, any hard goods.

It continued long after people thought it would be over. People are still long on money and short on time, and they are still traveling.

And it is just resonating with a lot of the companies that make things are kind of stalled here. I mean, look, autos are still okay.

But there's a lot of, although I think Toyota, I'm hearing, and Stellantis both having problems making a lot of cars and trucks, supply chain. But I just think that we're kind of at this moment where a lot of employers are thinking, wow, you know what, not just stock-based compensation for Amazon, but maybe we just don't need to hire coming out of school. I mean, I think coming out of school is a bad time to come out of school for the first time in a very long time.

Carl Quintanilla (2:23)

Yeah, I've seen worse, but yeah.

Jim Cramer (2:25)

Well, yeah, I applied to 52 newspapers when I got out in 1977, all 52 rejected me and I saved every one of them. And believe me, I'm still here, but 52 of those are gone.

Carl Quintanilla (2:35)

Those recruiters are gone. To your point about growth, JP Morgan last night, they're still looking for a three-handle on Q1 GDP, but they think that goes to one in the current quarter. And they say, look at the survey data we got this week, the downshift is underway.

Jim Cramer (2:50)

Yeah, I really think that that is very true. You know, I'm a big follower of David Coste and stuff. I think he's fabulous at Goldman. You have him on. And you know, you read the tea leaves there, I think you start thinking, wait a second, we've got a lot of buybacks.

We've done a lot of issuance, but we have a lot of people leaving the market because it's just, you get such a great rate. You get a great rate in treasuries. It's almost unjust. It's like, if you're a rational investor, you've pulled your money out and you're getting forward treasuries. I just think that there's a lot of people who hate this market.

And I think that there are companies that are gearing up to have, if they're in, I know that this artificial intelligence, people can say, Jim, stop it already. No, no, there is just, this is a great time if you're a company to reassess how many people you really need, given the fact that the artificial intelligence products is equal to or better than what your people produce.

Carl Quintanilla (3:45)

Right, so we talked about Costco yesterday. There had been some revisions to forecasts on the comp number.

UBS today asks, is Costco the canary? And they do say, they think it's a signal for what retail will tell us later.