Dow Hits Record High Despite Apple Pullback, Bracing for the Fed, Oracle's Ellison "Begged" Nvidia 9/16/24

Jim Cramer (0:00)

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

Carl Quintanilla (0:07)

Good Monday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with David Faber here at post nine of the New York Stock Exchange. Cramer's a one mark in San Francisco, ahead of Dreamforce, which gets underway tomorrow. Pre-market is mixed as we come off the S&P's best week of the year. A lot to tackle with retail sales tomorrow. The Fed on Wednesday, 10 year, 365, and Empire manufacturing was a beat. Our roadmap begins with the Fed on deck, with the case for 50 gaining some steam today.

David Faber (0:33)

Plus, we're keeping an eye on shares of Apple with this. Amongst the biggest laggers on the S&P, at least in the pre-market, this follows reports of weak iPhone pre-order demand, that is for the iPhone 16 And while Larry Ellison and Elon Musk are begging Nvidia's Jensen Huang to please take our money, we'll give you the details.

Carl Quintanilla (0:54)

Let's begin with Jim this morning and his very big week in San Francisco. You're going to work hard this week, Jim.

Jim Cramer (1:00)

Oh, I got to tell you, we've got everything from Hock Tan today, Broadcom.

We have Renee Haas from Arm. These right are in the center of what's happening right now. If you look at the crawl underneath us, those stocks are all down. But you know, enterprise software is the real focus and that's Salesforce. And I think, and David, you know this. Enterprise software has been the big bust of 2024 Let's find out why, because it's supposed to be so integral to AI.

David Faber (1:30)

Yeah, all of it. Integral to AI. I mean, I think, I don't know, should we take bets on how often that's going to come up in every single conversation you have or at least, will you say anything but AI, AI, AI? AI, AI, a verb, a noun, AI?

Jim Cramer (1:45)

What's the matter with saying generative AI? Why do I have to limit it to AI?

David Faber (1:50)

It's true.

Jim Cramer (1:51)

It's true.

David Faber (1:51)

I didn't even think of that. More of a descriptor in front of it, which of course is what we're talking about, and we'll be talking about and continue to talk about, and it's going to fuel everything there. What about Salesforce itself, Jim? I mean, when it comes to obviously, the big event that they put on and the questions about, and we dealt with this when the company reported earnings, and then remember that Klarna call that I recounted, and then you had Mark Benioff, of course, the guest on your show that evening talking about, are companies really pulling it out or not?

Jim Cramer (2:23)

Look, I think you're right. Right now, there's a lot of questions about whether Salesforce is as relevant as it used to be. I think that it's new product, it's agent product, it does matter, it's going to be on display here. But I also think that what we're seeing, David, is that other than ServiceNow, which has a huge number of contracts, we've not been able to translate AI into earnings for anyone other than the aforementioned Nvidia. Now, I began to see that with Oracle, and Oracle would make me think that some of these applications are going to work. I mean, Carl, what's happened is that hardware's winning and software's losing. It's been a dozen years since that's been the case. Let's find out, but I have to go boots on the ground here because I don't like it. I don't like the tone of what people are saying about Salesforce. I think Salesforce is doing better than people realize.

Carl Quintanilla (3:11)

Yeah, we're gonna talk about this upgrade of Oracle out of Melius, which I know you like. We'll get to that in a second. Talk some macro and markets, though, to start things off. Bracing for this big Fed decision this week. Jim, Greg Ip in the Journal over the weekend calling for 50 And then Dudley again this morning saying not just that 50 is what we should get, he thinks it's actually what we're gonna get.

Jim Cramer (3:32)

Well, look, I struggle to find out where the actual overall weakness is in the economy, given the fact we just had great earnings. I know we have retail sales tomorrow. That could matter. Look, obviously, job growth is not necessarily what we want. I think that 50 is an overreaction to where we are. Although obviously we're restricted. I know we're so high it's restrictive. It's restrictive, restrictive. But David, when we get a 25, we feel pretty good. There'll be more 25s. We get 50 Aren't you and I going to be saying what's lurking? Is it private equity? David, is it private credit? Is that what's doing it?