More Pain for Tech, Tug-of-War over Musk's DOGE, Home Depot Beats 2/25/25

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Jim Cramer (0:47)

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 (1:01)

Good Tuesday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer, David Faber at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Future's relatively steady as the market weighs earnings from Home Depot, and we inch our way to Nvidia tomorrow. Oil's barely hanging on to 70, and the 10-year yield near a two-month low now at 4.3. Roadmap begins with these China chip controls. The Trump White House reportedly looking to expand the Biden era semiconductor restrictions.

David Faber (1:26)

Plus DOGE pushback, federal workers suing over Elon Musk's. What did you do last week, email? And Home Depot delivers a beat. It snaps a streak of eight straight quarterly sales declines.

Carl Quintanilla (1:40)

Let's begin with the markets after yesterday's late sell-off in Tech Gym. But we can talk consumer discretionary, too.

Jim Cramer (1:46)

Look, the late sell-off, when I was addressing this last night on Mad Money, I'm tired of it. I'm tired because it just seems totally artificial. I mean, someone comes in and blitzes the market in the last 20 minutes. There's no reason to do that other than you want to take it down.

I don't know why. I've seen this periodically in my career. These are what I regard as being deliberate, not manipulation because that's too strong, but a deliberate attempt to send the market down because the market can't handle the level of selling. Typically, by the way, buybacks stop at $3.30. So if you really want to get a good price, you wouldn't just come there and jam it. This is someone who wants the market down or several accounts who want the market down. David, this is no sin to point it out. There are a lot of people in the... Let's say someone wanted to market up. You know, they come in at the end of the quarter to take it up. Some people want to market down. It made no sense to come in. This is the third day that they blitz the close.

David Faber (2:39)

Well, I never know who the they is.

Jim Cramer (2:41)

Well, no, and you never will know who the they is.

David Faber (2:43)

I mean, again, we talk so often about the enormous power of the algorithmic trading firms. There are so many of them.

Jim Cramer (2:53)

What? They think they're going to make money.

David Faber (2:54)

Even ones that, you know, that typically you think of as sort of using fundamentals actually have large portions of which are run by rocket scientists and the like. But I don't know if it's them. I do know everybody still seems to own the same stuff, and so there's a lot of pain out there whenever that happens.

Jim Cramer (3:09)

Morgan Stanley's saying that they're underweight in these big caps. But then again, if you were actual weight in these big caps, you'd have 30% NASDAQ, you know, and it would be mostly MAG-7. So to be underweight may not be as important. But this is what people are talking about. Look, people are talking about Nvidia. There's a nice deal this morning with Cisco. I think it's actually much more important than people realize. Cisco is the first to qualify. It's going to be a real partnership, and that's Chuck Robbins working closely with Jensen. But there is an overwhelming sense that this market keys on Nvidia at a moment when we have no idea what the federal government is going to do to Nvidia. So the federal government... What does that mean? Well, I mean, they might...

They literally might just say, you know what, we're going to block Nvidia. Not just the low-end Nvidia, but everything Nvidia. I had Lamb on, and I had a KLA on, and they've already taken a big hit. They could take another hit.