Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 8/26/26

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Jim Cramer** (0:54)
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**Jim Cramer** (1:09)
Hey, I'm Cramer. Welcome to Mad Money.

**Jim Cramer** (1:12)
Welcome to Cramerica.

**Jim Cramer** (1:16)
How do my friends try to make a little bit of money? My job, not just to entertain, teaching tonight. Call me 1-800-743-CBC. Tweet me at Jim Cramer.
When the Treasury Secretary caps long-term rates with stepped up bond repurchases, you need to be ready for opportunities. That's pretty much what Secretary Besant has done, at least temporarily.
Decent backdrop. Despite some muted action today, Dow falling 114 points, has to be dipping 0.02 percent. Now it's like getting down 0.08 percent, but I have a feeling that will go a little better tomorrow. Can it make you want to buy anything that the Treasury Secretary is doing this? I'm going to go through the process of picking stocks, like a professional hedge miner does. I mean, I usually don't talk about it like a hedge fund manager. I'm telling you, but I am going to do it tonight. I was for 14 years. I retired to become a TV personality, or a person who appears on TV, which is a little more humble, and what my wife started calling me when she's mad, a mosquito celebrity.
When you're searching for stocks to own, you need a worldview. That means first a view on the economy and interest rates. You have to start with the boring stuff. You have to start with that because those are essentials. My view is that we're more or less fine. It's a benign moment unless something goes wrong in Iran or Ukraine. Those are the outliers that can cloud my crystal ball. We do have this really big speech coming up from Fed Chief Kevin Warsh, the new guy. That's that annual Jackson Hole speech on Friday, and that can complicate things if he says he wants to raise rates to stamp out inflation, but I don't think he will do that. Not with the Treasury Secretary moving the rates. You can't have one guy raising rates, the other guy lowering rates, even if it turns out the short rates and one is the law.
So for the moment, I'm taking the Fed out of the equation and assuming rates stay calm, at least for the relevant time period of my world view.
I believe the economy will have a hard time growing without rate cuts, but I also believe that inflation is peaking, which could create a lot of opportunities, because peak inflation is always good news for stocks. My evidence for peak inflation? Oil. I see it going down. Okay, now we've got the world view. Pretty much free to examine anything we want.
I got to pick sectors. I always start with tech. It's the biggest. In an environment where we have minimal growth with slowing inflation, tech usually works.
But tech's got a couple issues right now. First, we know the great data center build-outs become politically toxic. I don't think that means the story is done. Once the election is over, maybe we go back to building them. But now it's tricky. Plus, Salesforce just reported a blowout quarter and a huge partnership with Anthropics Clawed. Good news for cloud software, more on that later. At the same time, NVIDIA reported a magnificent set of numbers and the stock is trading higher, 7% revenue growth. The consensus was for 45 Holy moly.
We got both Mark Benioff, salesforce.com CEO, and we got Jensen Wong tonight. This is a smoking hot show.
But those stocks, here's the problem. They've already soared after hours. I don't want to buy something abused like you'd have to with those two.
I say that's a daylight dollar short. So then you got to say, all right, well, what hasn't moved? Travel and leisure? Uh-uh, look at that Disney, Expedia, Booking Holdings. Even my favorite Viking Holdings, boom, too much. See, they are already up, and I don't have a lot of downside protection if I go after them. And you need that. They require a hefty chunk of disposable income. Not ideal in a name of economy. See what I'm going down? I'm doing a checklist, just like a quarterback trying to figure out, look at the receivers. So I go back to the drawing board, to the other receivers. Maybe it's worth seeing which stocks just hit a 4% dividend yield. Nice protection. Also benefit from cheaper oil. Who does that? Aha, I recall that PepsiCo said its sales have been held back by high gasoline prices. I think they said it four or five times in the call. Oh, and look at this. And now has an accidentally high 4% yield. Eureka! It fits! I look at the stock. I say to myself, boy, is that low. See, unlike Salesforce, which is high, unlike Nvidia, which is high, I like them low. Some people like them hot. I like them cool. Low versus the historic valuation, too. I know that CEO Ramon Maguarda needs to get that stock higher. I know they have a good boundary. Maybe he's motivated to do something extreme. Most important, he emphasized four times that, you know what, in this environment, well, there's too much inflation, again, because of gasoline. Don't forget, they have a lot of convenience store sales. Now, that's the genesis of an idea, not a position, just an idea. I walk you through the starting point of the process of trying to buy a stock that hasn't moved with a good yield. After you come up with the idea, you have to do the homework. Study the company over many years, check ingredients, how it's done over many years. You don't have to do it yourself over many years. See what management has to do, and figure out if they'll do it. The bottom line, we have the start, not necessarily of a buy of NVIDIA, that's kind of up, not necessarily sales words, that's kind of up, but for PepsiCo. For me, the question is, do I put this in the bullpen for the charitable trust? And you know what, if you want to know that answer, you got to join the investing club, which while I mull as I watch the trust stocks tonight that are doing well, CrowdStrike, Salesforce, and NVIDIA explode into the stratosphere. Let's go to questions. Let's go to Alan in North Carolina, Alan.