Hotter-Than-Expected PPI, Cisco CEO on Earnings and AI, Deere Drops 8/14/25

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

Carl Quintanilla (0:38)

Good Thursday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer here at Post Night of the New York Stock Exchange. Faber has the morning off. Futures take a bit of a tumble as July PPI is a barn burner. Biggest monthly jump on headline and core in over three years. Services actually track hotter than goods, but the 10 years still below four and a quarter.

A road map begins with the future for rates. Fed officials weighing in as the Treasury Secretary does suggest a half point cut. AI demand fueling Cisco's quarterly beat. Chuck Robbins is going to be with us in a few moments. Then Deere shares under some pressure. The company trims the high end of its full year guidance. PPI though is the story of the morning as we watch the market reaction here. Jim Shordan is higher this morning, but people are looking at portfolio management, some of the inputs that sometimes move this number.

Jim Cramer (1:25)

Well, I go through it once again now, a lot more skeptical than I was after what happened in the previous one. I look at things like machinery. I'm just going to reel off some say tariff, no tariff. Machinery and equipment way too hot, tariff. Truck transportation or freight bogus. There's been a freight recession that makes no sense. I don't know who they're even talking to. Why don't they call JB. Hunt, get a little information there. A diesel fuel index. How are we going to control diesel fuel? Diesel fuel is actually going down. I don't get that one bit. And then, warehouse services. Well, that's why we have robots. So give me a break. The ones that are really bad are going to get better, which is one of the reasons why I think that the bonds are not going crazy. When they look through it, and I think people just say, where are they getting this information? And I don't think that's such a bad question to ask after what happened. Where are they getting it? When you talk about the freight recession that the trucking companies have, and you see the freight rates are up, I don't know who they're talking to.

There's no freight increases, there's a recession.

Carl Quintanilla (2:27)

How do you explain the services, which like with CPI, is not acting like an offset?

Jim Cramer (2:32)

Investment services are up? Well, I mean, how is that possible, unless you're talking about jamming people with private equity or something?

Carl Quintanilla (2:40)

Well, this is normally a function of asset prices, yeah?

Jim Cramer (2:43)

Yeah, well, I mean, I think that's the case. You can do that at the same time.

Am I going to change my outlook because BlackRock is able to make a little more because they have more money under management? I just, look, I didn't use to look through these things. I would just say, okay, that's the data, the data is better than my anecdotal. I no longer feel that way. I think my anecdotal is more empirical than theirs is, and I think that we're discovering the flaws in the system where many people are laid off and the different divisions are not as accurate or as good as they used to be. I think that if we were to bring someone on here in pure candor and say, how did you get that freight number? How did you get that warehouse number? I think they would say, I'm not really sure.

Carl Quintanilla (3:27)

When did you change your mind about the veracity of the data?

Jim Cramer (3:30)

I think that the whole doge and then the firing, I think the firing was handled very poorly by the president because he was worried about looking bad in numbers. I was worried about the numbers not being accurate. I thought that was a reason to be able to have maybe a change at the top. But I have been saying now for two years that this can no longer be handled by the public sector. We have the ability to model, we have algorithms, we have people that could tell us exactly what the real numbers are, and we just have to hire them. If I brought in, yes, the stock that actually reversed yesterday in criminal faction, just kidding, Palantir. I think Palantir with its ontology, its ability to be able to figure out an organization would have much better numbers.