Squawk on the Street 8/2/24

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 Friday 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. Futures are sharply red as this growth scare picks up some steam, and July jobs miss 114,000, smallest growth in almost four years. Yields plummet to the lowest since December. Our roadmap begins with mega cap tech, though, and this big stock sell off. Apple seeing a continued slowdown in China. Amazon margins narrowing while announcing plans to ratchet up AI spend.

David Faber (0:35)

We'll also keep an eye on big oil. Of course, you got those tensions in the Mideast. Exxon banked one of its highest ever profits for the second quarter. Rival Chevron's earnings did miss expectations. We're also gonna watch chip stocks, of course. Nvidia, certainly, but what about Intel? Those shares are gonna be down sharply on news of a $10 billion cost-cutting plan. Company's gonna slash as many as 15,000 jobs.

Carl Quintanilla (0:59)

Let's get right to the selloff. The S&P and NASDAQ on pace for their third straight week of losses as we digest those mega cap tech results and the jobs number today. Hiring did slow sharply in July. Jim, yesterday you said you thought the Fed probably should have moved in July, and now the market's looking at 50 in September.

Jim Cramer (1:17)

Thank you, Carl. Yeah, I just think that they misjudged the month, the Fed. It was a very weak month, not a lot of jobs created. There are a lot of things that happened in the economy and also things that happened in the other world, the real world, in terms of what happened to former President Trump. And I think people were transfixed. What?

David Faber (1:37)

I'm just, there's music still going.

Jim Cramer (1:39)

Yeah, okay.

David Faber (1:39)

I don't know why, it's bothering me, sorry.

Jim Cramer (1:41)

But to get to, maybe it's like that bear that comes on. Thank you. I was, you know, recently in a...

David Faber (1:48)

Can we just talk about what's going on here? Which is that everybody says the Fed is behind the curve and that this jobs report seems to be confirming at least the fears that happened yesterday. That's 17 years ago, you started to rant that about the Fed. I'm not sure you feel that way right now. No, I don't.

Jim Cramer (2:03)

I think that they missed, I wish they had another meeting.

David Faber (2:05)

It wasn't enough yesterday that everybody was saying that the IMS was bad, rates need to be lower, and suddenly you watched all of Mega Cap Tech get hit.

Jim Cramer (2:13)

We have to talk about that because it's not correct.

David Faber (2:15)

Today, you've got earnings obviously from Apple, which were not bad, Amazon perhaps confirming some fears about the consumer, and then the jobs number. So you put it all in the mix and we look at a tenure of 385, and we're going to head lower again on many of those big stocks that take the market much lower.

Jim Cramer (2:31)

But we have to distinguish. I think that if we just say Mega Cap, we got to get away from that. We have companies that are building a huge amount and spending a lot, a huge amount, and giving money to NVIDIA. And then we have companies that I have said were free riders. And Apple is the ultimate free rider, which is why I would buy Apple if it were down today. That was a very bullish call. Tim Cook's probably the most, I'd say, least concerned person about the economy, most excited person about the rollout. And I think that if we lump in, Apple is dead. It's the future, stupid. Apple is good.

Carl Quintanilla (3:11)

Well, this gets to the conversation we've been having for weeks, Jim. We've heard about concerns about the consumer from luxury, from airlines, from restaurants, from consumer products, but somehow we're to believe that people are going to go out and spend $1,000 on a phone?

Jim Cramer (3:26)

Well, Brian Oslowski, the terrific CFO of Amazon, confirmed that it's the high end that they're spending. They said electronics is probably the most important buy, which I thought was incredibly significant. We can go in about Amazon Web Services being great, by the way. We can talk about the fact that there was some days that there wasn't a lot of buying. The Olympics had played a role. The attempted assassination played a role. But I will point out that it seems like the end of the world, days like today.