Inflation & Earnings, Citi Downgrades U.S. Stocks, Twitter vs. Threads 7/10/23

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Jim Cramer (0:31)

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 (0:38)

Hey, good Monday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer, David Faber. Back at post nine of the New York Stock Exchange. Setting the table for a big week. CPI, bank earnings, and more strategist commentary on what the second half may bring. Ten year, as Joe said, still 408, close to some eight month highs.

Our roadmap this morning, that's where it's going to begin with the big week ahead for investors, key inflation data on deck, lot of Fed speak, and of course, the banks kicking off earning season.

David Faber (1:03)

Citi is downgrading US stocks, saying performance may go on pause after a solid first half, but it is upgrading one other major global market.

And that war of words between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, well, it just keeps heating up as threads. That new offering from Metta surges past a major milestone.

Carl Quintanilla (1:23)

Let's begin with the markets on this new week of trading. Jim, you've been fairly circumspect about what the second half is going to bring.

Jim Cramer (1:29)

Yeah, I mean, we have the CPI number on Wednesday. I did a piece for Investment Club, which just talked about, we're just not going to get what J-PAL wants.

I think there's a big mistake. I think that we keep thinking that he'll be happy with it's going in the right direction, because that's what we keep here.

And I don't think he wants that. I think he wants it to be better than it was. And he stuck, remember, housing used to be the CPI. They took it out in 1983, but housing is terrible. And I use this story about my favorite.

David Faber (2:02)

People may get confused when you say housing is terrible. Because within five minutes from now, you're gonna talk about housing stocks being great.

Jim Cramer (2:09)

Okay, no, you're absolutely right.

Home prices have gone up 40% since 2019 But home prices are not in the CPI. But I honestly think that we may look at the CPI and say maybe we're out of the woods. But I think that Jay Powell is saying, hey, listen, these have to come down. We need more homes.

And yet the housing companies are doing so well because for the first time, not building homes unless they think they have buyers. So we gotta get it lower. We don't wanna get it going in the right direction. Which is why we keep hearing, and I fear we might hear in Jackson Hole, that we're not done. It just is not working.

Carl Quintanilla (2:45)

Consensus for CPI is three one. Last month it was four. Last June it was nine.

So, I mean, nine versus three, is that good enough? Is there a good enough print?

Jim Cramer (2:56)

If you strip out food and energy, which I don't know if he does or not, because I know that energy is set worldwide, but food isn't, you're back to 5%. And I think that J-PAL's saying, look, we need it to be negative.

We don't want it to be three or two. We gotta start rolling back. And without more people in the workforce, Carl, I just don't know how he does it. And I just look at it and I just say, we're just stuck with the losing hand when it comes to short rates. A lot of stuff today about autos, by the way, which are controlled by short rates. But there's a lot that does well in any rate. And we come back to Tesla and Amazon. We come back to Netflix. We come back to Alphabet. These were all positive pieces today.

Metta, David Metta, I know that there's a dialogue between Musk and Zuckerberg, but I don't think it's a war of words. I think it's a war of numbers.

David Faber (3:54)

Well, we're gonna actually spend a little bit of time talking about both the war of numbers and the war of words and what it means for Metta. But is it your expectation that it will work then in the first half of the year? Because this is our first chance to be together since the first half, second half of this year began.