Snowflake Melts and Changes CEOs, Salesforce Beats, Fed's Preferred Inflation Gauge 2/29/24

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.

David Faber (0:07)

Good Thursday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm David Faber with Jim Cramer. We're live from Post 9 at the New York Stock Exchange. Carl is on assignment. Let's give you a look at futures. You just heard Becky say it, so you really don't need to hear me say it again. So I won't.

Just look. All right, let's get to our roadmap this morning. It starts with the Fed's preferred inflation gauge.

January Core, PCE in line year over year, up 2.8%.

On the tech front, we got Salesforce out with the beat in terms of its quarterly results. Stock's not doing much. So revenue forecast certainly concerning. We'll talk to Jim, obviously, a lot about that, and we'll talk a lot about Snowflake. That stock is down dramatically this morning, both on guidance and the news that its CEO, Frank Slootman, will be retiring.

Jim Cramer (0:58)

Suboptim.

David Faber (0:59)

Yeah, suboptim. All right, let's start with the inflation data, sort of get that out of the way before we move on to a couple of those big stock stories this morning. What's your take on this PCE number?

Jim Cramer (1:08)

Okay, look, an inline is cool.

That's the way I look at it. I think that there were a lot of people who thought after the CPI, this one could be bad too. And when you look at the progression of the S&P futures, David, it really is incredible how negative people are underneath. I mean, when Frank was on, Frank Hollman this morning, he saw the futures just sinking. As if it was a foregone conclusion that the number would be too high. We keep seeing that, which is, I think, one of the puts underneath the market is the actual negativity of the futures in the morning.

David Faber (1:42)

Interesting. And of course, to your point, there is that move up in the futures again. And we'll see, oftentimes, we trade away whatever we were doing in the futures market very quickly when the market opens, but you see that big move up.

Jim Cramer (1:54)

Right, it's the stigma of this market. There's a belief that it all has to end. I mean, that this whole invidia-fueled rally, if you want to call it that, we'll talk about it most of the day, is really just about people saying, oh yeah, AI, I don't believe it. And by 9.35, they're like temporary believers. How about that? They borrow the belief, they're renters of bullishness.

They're bull renters.

David Faber (2:20)

Bull renters. Well, come on.

Jim Cramer (2:22)

Come on, that was good.

David Faber (2:23)

I just thought of it. I liked it, but we've also had a significant rally overall in the market. Right. And even this year now in broader market.

Jim Cramer (2:34)

And that was something that Frank showed around 5.05. He said, if you look at the now, the S&P, the weighted, as opposed to the one that gives all the pressure on the set.

The equal weighted, it's now good. And I thought that was a very, I'm glad you saw that, because what that said is, stop it with the MAG-7, which is MAG-6, which is MAG-5, and focus on the fact that Sherwin-Williams hit a high. I thought, when we did that this morning, I said, yes! Let's just go back to the idea that to our individual companies, like Home Depot, that reported, forget all this stuff about how their forecast wasn't good, gotta get away from beaten race. This was the first quarter I've decided to rebel against the terminology that the Street uses.

David Faber (3:15)

Right.

I mean, you're to date, again, the MAG-7 is, as you see, they're up 13%. Really, it's not seven.

Jim Cramer (3:21)

No one's complaining about Apple. It's 903 and no one said that Apple's lost its bojo.

David Faber (3:26)

By Gaines and Nvidia. I wanna talk more about Apple as we go along. Two interesting stories, Apple and also Alphabet, which we've been talking about as well, which I find fascinating right now.

Jim Cramer (3:36)

And Comorz, I think you have to focus on for a second.

David Faber (3:38)

Comorz, really? Comorz. Oh, Comorz, I'm sorry.

Of course, I thought you were talking Anheuser-Busch, you know, AB.

Jim Cramer (3:45)

Anheuser-Busch was good. No, I just, we'll get to that, but when you see something like Comorz, you forget what's going on. It's a chemical company where the CEO, the CFO and the Comptroller are suddenly on leave.