Cramer's Morning Take: Consumer Spending 8/15/24

Jim Cramer (0:02)

Hey, it's Cramer, and this is my morning take on the market from today's CNBC Investing Club Morning Meeting. All right, so Jeff, this is one of those things where the, we have to start with the macro, and then we can go to the micro. And the reason I say that is because the macro backdrop that we had is about as good as you can get.

Jeff Marks (0:20)

Sure, I mean, look, coming into the week, we needed to see inflation data cool. We needed to see some signs of resilience in the economy. That was the big fear ever since the jobs report that the labor market was falling off a cliff. And we kind of ran the gauntlet this week. We had PPI, CPI, cool in line. And today you got a really bullish retail sales report, jobless claims lower than expected.

Jim Cramer (0:46)

And explain to people why it's a bullish report, because...

Jeff Marks (0:48)

Well, it was strong. Good news was good news.

Jim Cramer (0:51)

Right, okay, because that's what I wanted to point out.

Jeff Marks (0:53)

We shift. For so long, it was bad news, it was good news, because we needed to see inflation come down.

Jim Cramer (0:59)

Now we don't want to have crash landing.

Jeff Marks (1:00)

We don't want a recession.

Jim Cramer (1:01)

Right, and that retail sales number is pure no recession.

Jeff Marks (1:04)

We don't want an emergency, you know, three quarters of a basis point, of a percent rate cut. And we're seeing that in the data that maybe we're not going to need that. And, you know, it's part of the reason why last week when the market was so concerned about the economy, we actually were trimming proctor because that was rallying on those concerns to buy Wells Fargo.

Jim Cramer (1:28)

I didn't really have it at 110 I mean, remember what's happening here is you have to do the exact opposite of what happened Monday. Monday was a tell, I call that. Meaning that Monday was just a trade that had to do with margin calls getting out of stocks, which then led to Tuesday and Wednesday being belief that we're having recession, which then took up stocks that should not have gone up like a proctor, which did not have that good a quarter.

Jeff Marks (1:50)

No, it did not. And we wanted to buy stocks of companies that had great quarters.

Jim Cramer (1:54)

Well, Wells was good enough. I've done some more digging on Wells, and I think that that, obviously, they had the same problem.

Jeff Marks (2:00)

You gave them a tough grade yesterday. You gave them a tough grade yesterday on your gradings of the quarters.

Jim Cramer (2:06)

I had to do that.

Jeff Marks (2:07)

But, you know, we can parse through retail sales as well. So up 1% month over month, first 0.4% expected, the largest increase since January 2023 So obviously, signs of resilient consumer. But if you parse through the data, you had electronic and appliance stores up 1.6 month over month.

Jim Cramer (2:24)

Wasn't that an interesting figure?

Jeff Marks (2:25)

I think that's pretty good for Best Buy. Now, Best Buy hasn't reported yet. I know Evercore earlier this week put a tactical underperform on Best Buy.

Jim Cramer (2:33)

Yeah, I thought that was harsh, given the fact that we just saw.

Jeff Marks (2:35)

But you're seeing that stock up nicely today. Building material, garden equipment, supply dealers, that was up.

Jim Cramer (2:42)

Different from Home Depot.

Jeff Marks (2:44)

Different, but up 0.9% month over month. So maybe some good read-throughs into Stanley Black and Decker.

Jim Cramer (2:49)

I think there's a great read-through to that. Start your day with my outbook on the market every morning. Visit cnbc.com/morningtake to become a CNBC Investing Club member at a special rate today.

SPEAKER_3 (3:06)

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