Stocks’ Fast Start, Gearing Up for Nvidia CEO's CES Keynote, U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel Sue Over Biden Blocking Their Merger 1/6/25

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Carl Quintanilla (0:15)

Market moving insight and analysis. Join Jim Cramer, David Faber and me, Carl Quintanilla on the opening bell hour of CNBC Squawk on the Street. Good Monday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla, Jim Cramer here at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. David Faber has the morning off. Stocks do look to add to Friday's rally ahead of a busy week of eco data, the Consumer Electronics Show, a jobs number on Friday, 10 years still pretty elevated at 4.6. A roadmap chip stocks rallying, Nvidia's Jensen Huang is set to speak at CES tonight. US. Steel and Nippon Steel sue the US. Government after the president blocks their attempted merger. And Salesforce among the Dow laggards today cut to sell over at Guggenheim.

Let's begin with the markets, though, kicking off another shortened trading week. Jim, as we'll be closed for business on Thursday.

Jim Cramer (1:02)

Right. Today is one of those days where because of that, they're pulling forward some bond auctions. There's a three year and then today a 10 year and then a 30 year. And I mentioned this first only because the 30 year is back to where it was November of 23 Very negative article about housing today in the FT trying to figure out what sectors are weak versus the obvious sectors that everyone seems to like today, which is enterprise software. So you've got this kind of conflict where people like tech. And once again, the rest of the market seems to languish. I think that's because people perceive that the rest of the market is hostage to rates and that tech is not hostage to anything. So I'm aware of that. And I'm just concerned that you have this speech tonight, 9.3 Jensen Huang, and everyone's, every word, we're really kind of, just whatever he says is going to move things. Against that, there's a really terrific piece, I like the FT today, a really terrific, I like it every day, I don't need to, about private equity and private equity trying to get into the 401K business. And Mark Rowan, who is a close associate of David when it comes to knowing about what's going on in private equity, should know that Mark Rowan, CEO of Apollo, says, I jokingly say sometimes we lever the entire retirement from market to Nvidia's performance. So the way that we've got the Nvidia's of the world, which everybody likes. On the other hand, there's just these stocks that are, that really are hostage to rates and no one wants them.

Carl Quintanilla (2:31)

Yeah, you mentioned the issuance from Treasury this week, $119 billion with rates at 14-month highs.

Jim Cramer (2:38)

Right, I mean, that's why I start with those because that's what's going in the end control. Because if we do see a spike in the 30 or say to 5, then that'll start interfering with this tech rally that it seems to be motivated by a lot of analysts coming out and saying, this is the time. There's now re-acceleration of tech spend. Interesting, the Salesforce that you mentioned is one of the few where there's not to be acceleration. I think that is dead wrong. I think that analyst has missed the whole move. I think Agent Force is incredible. It's starting to really make for my work. Agent Force is coming on very strong. There's an interesting post this morning by Mark Bettya saying that they're really going after health care and the easy one there is Viva. I think that Viva is a very high multiple stock and I think Mark sees a lot of opportunity in that.

Carl Quintanilla (3:23)

There's a look at the downgrade.

Jim Cramer (3:24)

So let's stay focused. This is fatuous.

Carl Quintanilla (3:26)

Yeah, well, I mean, they're skeptical about Agent Force. They're talking, they argue that double digit growth is in the past. It's more now about five to seven to nine percent growth.

Jim Cramer (3:37)

Agent Force represents an acceleration of sales at Salesforce. And I'm not saying that my research is necessarily better than that analyst. I am saying that I'm close enough to recognize that Agent Force ads are working and that Agent Force is doing quite well in different verticals that have eluded Salesforce. And that's not included in that.

Carl Quintanilla (3:55)

Right. On the flip side, Piper today does name CRM, Snow and Microsoft as top picks for the year.

Jim Cramer (4:01)