Cramer's Morning Take: Apple 4/29/24

Jim Cramer (0:01)

Hey, it's Cramer, and this is my morning take on the market from today's CNBC Investing Club Morning Meeting.

With the biggest week of the year for earnings, now I don't want to go too crazy here, because all that really matters is that we have a Fed meeting, and we have the employment numbers. So those are going to be the prison that people look through Amazon and Apple, except for Apple got distorted today by an upgrade by someone whose story has been incredibly wrong.

Jeff Marks (0:30)

Well, why don't we just jump right to that upgrade? So it was Bernstein, their lead analyst Tony Sacanegui, upgrades to Apple, points out the stock is derated.

He's kind of with the idea that buy it when it trades at 25 times earn it, trim it when it trades at 30 times earnings. He makes a call to Buffett in saying that he does the same. I don't know if Buffett really is a big seller. Maybe he trims around the edges every once in a while.

Jim Cramer (0:59)

I've dealt with Tony for a very long time. He's been really probably one of the worst analysts on it. Now, just so you know, there are two components to being an analyst. There's good lesson, we're working lesson. There's actually the cerebral notion about what the company is going to earn. And then there's the decision of what direction the stock is going to go and what the earnings are. Tony's been spot on on everything when it comes to how the company is doing, except for how to pick a stock. That's something he's not good at. So what you would do, let's say you were at a hedge fund, you would say, good, he'll have all the good information, but he will not be able to give you the direction. Here he gives you the direction today, and I wish he'd stay away from that. It would have been a very good call had he just said it's a little de-risked. Because he went positive on it and everybody feels he must know something, which he does not, believe me, it's jacked it up to a point where if you were a trader, you'd probably sell some.

Jeff Marks (1:46)

So it sounds like there's a little bit of art and science when it comes to these analyst ratings, right? The science part being how much the company is going to earn, the modeling, but the art is actually how the market will react to those numbers.

Jim Cramer (1:56)

Yeah, and that's why, I mean, if you take a look at his work on IBM, it's spotless, but he did not catch it. He didn't catch it because that's not what he does, which is why it's such a shame that he went on a limb and did this ahead of the quarter, and it made no sense. All he had to do was say, look, this is what I feel, and people think that maybe it's de-risk, because 25 times your earnings is not. I mean, think about it, if it actually goes up and it gets to his level where he doesn't like it, then he's going to have to downgrade it.

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