Inflation Day 2 After the Sell-off, Amazon CEO Jassy's Message, "Cities of Success" 4/11/24

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.

David Faber (0:07)

Good Thursday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm David Faber. He is Jim Cramer. We are live from Postline at the New York Stock Exchange. Hey, look, there's Carl Quintanilla. He's in Boulder, Colorado. That's ahead of tonight's premiere of Cities of Success, Denver and Boulder, which airs at 10 p.m. Eastern. Let's give you a look at futures right now. Of course, we get ready to begin trading 30 minutes from now. We're looking for, I don't know, what do you want to call that? That's barely a higher open.

Jim Cramer (0:32)

PPI scooped.

David Faber (0:33)

PPI, yeah.

Jim Cramer (0:34)

Yeah, it scooped all the bears, man.

David Faber (0:36)

That's where our roadmap begins this morning. The inflation picture, of course, is what we're talking about there. We've got wholesale prices increasing less than expected, as Jim just said. Two banks also lowering their rate cut expectations. That's off of yesterday's CPI news. We're keeping an eye on Big Tech as well.

Nvidia shares, they're bouncing ahead of the open. JP Morgan lowering its Apple price target. And you just heard from Amazon's Andy Jassy saying so many different things, including the fact that he's committed to cost cutting while investing in AI. Plenty of other stocks to track this morning. Nike, Airbnb, Chevron, Occidental. We'll go through all the upgrades and downgrades.

But let's get to the broader market here. First, just let's get a reaction to PPI after yesterday's sell-off on the CPI.

Jim Cramer (1:26)

Well, I mean, there was a lot to like. I think there's a lot of confusion about these numbers.

I find that what's happened is that yesterday there were a lot of mistakes in the data.

David Faber (1:38)

What do you mean by the mistakes?

Jim Cramer (1:39)

They're not taking into account a lot of e-com. For instance, they had a power up. The largest seller of power up after Amazon is Temu.

Temu has lowered the price of a power up.

David Faber (1:53)

Jassy just said consumers are trading down. I heard him say that at the very top of the interview.

Jim Cramer (1:58)

They're getting good value. The average price of the footwear on Temu was 89 cents. I do not include this in the CPI. PPI is a little more intelligent. By the way, food was up big because of the avian flu. I think if you look at the way that they do that, at the Labor Department, I would go in there and clean house.

I would do a little deadwood chainsaw.

David Faber (2:23)

Yeah.

Jim Cramer (2:24)

And what else here? I'd like to go to Carl because I need some optimism right now.

David Faber (2:30)

You're not going to get it from Carl right now.

Jim Cramer (2:32)

Why not? That sunrise scene.

David Faber (2:34)

I mean, he looked great as always.

Jim Cramer (2:35)

But that's optimism.

David Faber (2:37)

That's optimism? I was trying to get some optimism. He's going to be with Cities of Success tonight at 10 o'clock.

Jim Cramer (2:42)

That's what you're saying. It's skewed? Are you saying the deck is stacked?

David Faber (2:46)

No, but what I think is interesting is you seem to want to emphasize the PPI today as opposed to the CPI tomorrow.

New York already had a significant sell-off as a result of that CPI number. Everybody now coming way back on their expectations for rate cuts during the course of this year. I don't know if many are now coalescing around one or two. Certainly not June. Well, I just think that the PPI number is not going to change that.

Jim Cramer (3:08)

We got to keep perspective here. If we didn't have these aggressive projections on rate cuts, we would be like, okay, not great. But let me tell you something. You raise...

The thing that worries me most is rent and housing. Remember, housing is out of the CPI because in 1988 they were worried about housing inflation. They wouldn't make the number look big.

We have an immigration problem. And we also, if we raise rates, the affordability of housing is going to get even worse.

David Faber (3:40)

So the feds are in a box on housing. Richard Fisher was on yesterday, talking about it again. That auction yesterday, by the way, didn't go as well as it might have, meaning concerns about so much supply to help fund our deficits and not enough demand. And that's a concern as well this year. Do you share that concern?