Q2 Kickoff, Oil Surges on Surprise OPEC+ Cut, Ari Emanuel and Vince McMahon on Endeavor-WWE deal 4/3/23

Carl Quintanilla (0:00)

Market Insight and Analysis. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC's Squawk on the Street.

Vince McMahon (0:06)

Good Monday morning.

Carl Quintanilla (0:07)

Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer, postman of the New York Stock Exchange. David Faber has the morning off. Let's kick off Q2. Futures are mixed after OPEC gives us that surprise production cut. Got some Monday M&A. It is a holiday shortened week. We'll still get the jobs number on Friday. Our roadmap begins with a second quarter surprise. OPEC announcing that cut as it comes off after the longest monthly losing streak for crude in about nine years. Tesla's strong quarter deliveries top 422,000, up 36 year on year.

And after months of searching, WWE finally has a buyer. We'll get to that.

But we'll begin with the markets. Kicking off Q2, oil prices, stocks rallying on this cut by OPEC Plus Nations. Jim, on a voluntary basis, it's about a million and a half barrels a day.

Jim Cramer (0:52)

Yeah, I mean, look, I think a lot of people felt the winner.

Yes, the strategic petroleum reserve would be refilled, and that might have been a bid under the market. It didn't happen, and then a lot of shorts pressed their bet because they were making so much money. Remember, it was cut in half, so it's really well-timed.

Oil stocks have started to go up in the last week, so maybe there were some people at wind of it. But overall, I don't know how strong it's going to be. We're going to lighten up on some oil for the trust. And the reason we're going to do that is because the economy is getting a little more anemic except for China. So they may do this, but that may only just take off what might have been a problem with demand anyway. So I don't want to get too excited about it. I do want to know is when you speak to the big drillers and service companies, they think that Russia is going to have a problem producing as much next year simply because they don't have the technology anymore. But it's not this year. But it would be very interesting to watch if Russia becomes less of a power in oil. Yeah.

Carl Quintanilla (1:54)

Well, some stories on the tape this morning about Russia, their seaborne flows hitting new highs.

Jim Cramer (2:00)

Right.

Carl Quintanilla (2:00)

That could be an offset.

Jim Cramer (2:02)

Well, they're good. I mean, that was something that, you know, an SLB might have worked on.

In 1910, Standard Oil and oil and Russia were the two biggest producers and Standard Oil, of course, then became just a lot, they split it up, but it is amazing that Russia's been in the whole way producing. And I keep thinking that they use US technology. Let's see what happens without it. But they're still skating on what we taught them.

Carl Quintanilla (2:30)

JP Morgan today says, look, we expected this cut a couple of months ago. And so our forecast is still unchanged, Q2 average 82, Q3 average 84 I think that's right. Makes sense to you?

Jim Cramer (2:43)

Yeah, I think that's actually really common sense.

I know that there's some people who felt that oil should be dramatically higher. But when you go through all the different notes that we've been getting, everybody's ratcheting back what they thought could happen in the second half of this year. So why should oil go up when everyone is saying, listen, we don't have as much demand all the way across? With the exception of Tesla, I'm sure we'll talk about that, but there aren't many people who feel the second half is going to be strong. So once you take this much off, that's not that much.

Carl Quintanilla (3:11)

What about the notion that, I mean, the White House, some argue, blew it on this SPR and not only that, Jim, that they committed the cardinal sin of leaving a potential customer out to dry with that promise at 70?

Jim Cramer (3:26)

I've been thinking about this all weekend and trying to think about a diplomatic way to say it because I don't want to be perceived as being pro or anti. But I just feel like that I'm a big believer in the petroleum reserve. I don't think it's been obviated by the fact that we've become a better producer because maybe we go down flat. But yeah, I mean, you say you're going to do one thing, you got to do it. I think like, let's just leave the orb of politics. I mean, if you promise me you're going to buy it at 70 and then when you let it go down, I would say, well, either you're a bad trader or you're not honest. And I think that you reap what you sow here.