Market Rally Aims for “Cloud Nine,” Bronfman's Paramount Bid, Eli Lilly CEO on Weight-Loss Drug 8/20/24

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 Tuesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer at the New York Stock Exchange. We're gonna hear from Faber momentarily. Meantime, the S&P, Nasdaq going for their ninth straight game today would be the longest streak for the S&P in some 20 years.

As we're about 1% away from all time highs. A roadmap begins with the S&P, Nasdaq, and the NDX aiming to extend their respective win streaks. NVIDIA leads the MAG-7 surge over the last couple of weeks, even though the rally has been quite broad. And Lilly says its weight loss drug cut diabetes risk by 94% in a late stage trial. David Ricks is gonna join us later on this hour. Let's begin with the market, though, in this rally, Jim. A lot's been said about even though the volume's low, the breadth has been pretty impressive.

Jim Cramer (0:53)

Yeah, look, there's a, we're seeing like bank markets piece of buybacks, record levels. We're seeing big inflows. A lot of people feel that they don't wanna miss anything ahead of when the Fed starts cutting. And that's very much the way it's always been. However, I do think that we are now the most overbought. We've been in a long time, we're plus seven. My discipline for the investing club is it just doesn't matter, you have to sell something. Try to sell your losers so that it don't subsidize your losers with your winner sales. But I would point out that it's not too good to be true, but there's just an endless parade of things which just say, you'll take a look at a Lowe's, Lowe's will be a big miss, okay? And you just presume, you just want to figure out how much up it will be, even though it's a miss.

Carl Quintanilla (1:45)

Yeah, we're gonna get to Lowe's in a minute, but 52-week highs for utilities, staples, health care, S&P financials, all-time high, equal weight S&P, all-time high.

Jim Cramer (1:55)

Well, I mean, look, this is stuff, we are, this is pretty historic, but we want to ask how negative people were coming in. And if you go back, this started with that collapse of our market because of the Japanese collapse of 12%.

And that turned out to be not a good reason to sell, better reason to buy. And ever since then, we've been buy, buy, buy. September is historically a weak month. We've got a, there is a convention on, and in the convention, they're all calling for higher taxes, which is not good for the stocks. Stocks are oblivious, we came through earning season, and it was turned out to be pretty darn good. We are now almost done. We have Target tomorrow, and then I just don't really care after Target. And now it's just, it's just catch, catch, catch. And the judgment is that it was pretty good. If you go back to when things started, there was an, there was a Daiwa note that downgraded JP Morgan today. And I want to say, heresy, just heresy. But I do feel that people are getting a little too comfortable.

Carl Quintanilla (2:54)

Interesting. So you would be cautious here?

Jim Cramer (2:58)

Yes. I don't buy when the thing that I look at since 1987 is very, very rarely led me away and astray. It was, there used to be an S&P. It was the standard portion. Now it's market edge. And it's, it's a measure of over enthusiasm. And when you get to plus five, and this is now plus seven, people are over exuberant that to use a term that Alan Greenspan really kind of coined. And I, so I'm not a buyer. I'm a seller.

Carl Quintanilla (3:26)

Do you think that if we were to revisit all time highs, we would be looking at a so-called double top?

Jim Cramer (3:32)

Oh, wow.

No, I just think that we'll be, we have to have a recharge. We've had a lot of move. We have to have a sell-off. And then I think we can go ahead, maybe mid-October. So you have to deal with this. I've been working with Larry Williams, who's an amazing market historian. And he's saying, listen, don't get too excited. He used the term kaput, that the rally today is kaput. And I'm like, kaput? I mean, that's not toning down. That's not like lose tapering. Kaput's different from tapering. Now Larry sometimes is a little, he can be hyperbolic, but I do say that we have a quarter next week that is way too big, looming, NVIDIA. And there's too many people in NVIDIA right now. Like, you know, I went to a, well, I had the, our great chart event, thank you for Sidecorpers Cinema.