China’s Housing Hail Mary, Reddit/OpenAI Deal, Gaming Woes 5/17/24

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 Friday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer at Post Night of the New York Stock Exchange. David Faber's on assignment. One day after Dow 40K, bulls look to close out a solid week with futures pretty steady. S&P aims at a fourth positive week in a row. That's the longest streak since February. A roadmap begins with China's housing, Hail Mary, attempting to end its property crisis with an historic rescue package. Reddit shares the surging, striking a content and advertising deal with OpenAI. And as Dom just said, GameStop shares tumble as Q1 sales preliminary, at least fall. Take-Two cuts its bookings forecast in what it calls challenging times.

Let's begin though with the markets the day after the Dow did hit 40K for the first time ever on pace for its fifth straight week of gains on the Dow. Jim, what did you make of all of the fuss yesterday?

Jim Cramer (0:55)

Look, I actually thought that this was one of the broader attempts at a major milestone and what led it was just incredible. I mean, you're dealing with a level of broad that I, what I thought was, let me just tell you, the most important thing was rates had only, something to do with only the first, with one stock out of 10, you could pin on rates and I think that's very important.

I do believe that most of these companies are just, are run by CEOs that don't get enough credit.

It's amazing to me that we simply are always willing to consign, and I think that's because of this nonsense risk on risk off, which was a tip. That's just something that came up to just confuse the viewers, I'm not crazy about it. I think that what's happened here is that when you get a guy like Solomon and he realizes, you know, Goldman's not being run right, he makes a change, Satya Nadella, when he decides to go all in Azure. Wait, I mean, Uncle B, Uncle B decided, you know what, we can't make cat boomer bust anymore. We gotta make it so it's a secular grower. Let's be linked to data centers. Let's be linked to oil and gas.

These guys, most important, Steve's query up 100%. He says, you know what, we are not gonna just cater to the older demographic. We're gonna go after Gen Z, we're gonna go after millennials, and they are lifetime value customers. These are CEOs who matter. Even though we are all stuck in a world of macro, micro, and what the Fed's gonna do, it didn't make you money. It was great to talk about, I think it fills up the hour, and you know you gotta fill up an hour. Jesus, like, 47 minutes, we're having sex.

Carl Quintanilla (2:24)

Almost 60

Jim Cramer (2:25)

Yeah, I mean, when you have almost 60 minutes, you gotta fill it up. But I like to say, let's make some money for people, and if we do that, then you know what, Mester, whatever, Bark, I'm a nice fellow, this body lead will bark it out.

Carl Quintanilla (2:37)

We're glad to have him on set, yes.

Jim Cramer (2:38)

Sea of Love, was it?

Carl Quintanilla (2:39)

Steve's a good title.

Jim Cramer (2:40)

Oh, Steve, right, right. But I just think that in the end, we gotta help people make money, and the answer is Steve's query comes in America Express, blows up the model, comes out, and Rob Davis, okay, had he just to key Truda without two acquisitions to be able to make it so when the patent comes off, a la Bristol Mars, we wouldn't have Merck be one of the top stocks, would you say?

Carl Quintanilla (3:00)

Jim's referring to the names that added the most to the Dow since 30K, Goldman's first, Microsoft's second, UNH third. Really, the laggards, Jim, were 3M, Nike, and Disney.

Jim Cramer (3:10)

Yeah, I got UNH to the Lord. Now, I gotta tell you, 3M, Mike Goldman came in, and he was giving a real bad hand.

And, wow, he's come back with a vengeance, and he's created a company that's ready to accelerate, and that's all on him, because he got a bad hand. It looked like a good hand. I mean, it looked like, you know, he was playing, people looked like the twos and sevens were wild with that hand. It turned out they weren't wild, so he had a real bad hand, but he's really augmented it. And, you know, I take a look at some of these guys, like, let's take a guy like Mike Worth, okay? Now, Mike Worth's an oil guy, but Mike decided, capital discipline, and let's give back a dividend, and let's not blow the company up on buying Anna Darko, and then hope to have Warren Buffett come in and save me.