The Market Rally's "Drive for Five" and Jamie Dimon's Letter to Shareholders 4/4/23

Carl Quintanilla (0:00)

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 Tuesday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer and host nine of the New York Stock Exchange. David Faber has the morning off. Futures fairly steady as the S&P's coming off four straight gains. Longest win since January. Oil continues its climb. Australia becomes the latest central bank to pause after 10 straight hikes. A roadmap begins with stock shrugging off an oil price spike. The Dow and the S&P looking to extend that win streak. Jamie Dimon says the banking crisis is not over, but that it will pass.

And have you seen my stapler? Google looking to cut some costs, including cutting back on employee laptop services and yes, office supplies.

Let's begin with the markets though and Dimon's annual letter to shareholders. Weighing in on the banking turmoil, he writes the current crisis is not yet over and even when it is behind us, there will be repercussions from it for years to come. But importantly, recent events are nothing like what occurred during the 2008 global financial crisis. Jim, his point is that there are fewer players with those types of issues and those issues are easier to solve.

Jim Cramer (1:11)

Yeah, I thought that was absolutely great that I did feel better. Having not been done obviously is an issue, but it's always required me and it's always very thoughtful.

Carl Quintanilla (1:23)

He works hard on it.

Jim Cramer (1:24)

Yeah, he really does.

And I think that it's a great state of the state. My issue is on page 17, he says we need banks to be attractive investments. They need to be investible, not uninvestible. I've been saying to everybody they become uninvestible.

And they become uninvestible for all the reasons that he says they're wrong with the bank system. And then he said in conclusion, we need them to be investible. But I find that Jamie Dimon has page after page about how his bank is doing better than everyone else. And it's totally true. But the fact is, is that they all have to do better. Or else the industry is uninvestible. Doesn't mean that Jamie's bank's uninvestible. It means that if the industry is not worth owning, it's very difficult to justify even owning JPMorgan. Because it can be pulled down by the others.

Carl Quintanilla (2:09)

We're actually gonna talk, we're gonna check in with Mike Mayo in the next hour, talk about his view on the banks going into earnings.

He has suggested that the bank discount will come off. Because in his view, we're not looking at a situation where you need capital raises in the near term.

Jim Cramer (2:24)

Yeah, but look, if you want to make it so that great banks can demonstrate their greatness, allow them to raise the dividends like every other company, allow them to buy back stock as aggressively as they want, allow them to be able to have some sort of status where they are regarded as being, they've checked off a lot of boxes a lot easier. The stress test in retrospect didn't really work.

The fact is that JPMorgan stock is being kept back by Silicon Valley and by First Republican, kept back by Zions, kept back by Comerica. And that's not good because, by the way, I haven't think Comerica is a good bank. Zions has always to me been a little bit too aggressive. But I agree with him that the banking landscape is uninvestable, but I therefore don't want to reach the conclusion that this is investable.

And I want to, I mean, I sent them a note just saying, I feel terrible because I've been saying they're uninvestable simply because they're in question of the law, the bad is driving out the good. So all those terrific charts that Jamie has that shows spectacular return on investment just don't matter if there's five or six near to Wilson.

Carl Quintanilla (3:31)

He does, it's not all about bank management. He says, this is not to absolve bank management. It's just to make clear that this wasn't the finest hour for many players. And by that, obviously he's suggesting, I think that supervision was lacking.

Jim Cramer (3:46)

Yeah, I think there are a lot of people who actually feel under their breath, like Senator Warren, who basically is saying, okay, look, let's fire a lot of the people in the Fed out west, San Francisco. Now, again, I always come back to that our people who watch our show would say, wow, my boss would be fired if they did that. And they always wonder, well, why is it that no one, like why are we don't have a top five list of people who should not be playing? It's like, look, I went to the Super Bowl and there was a ref that made a call against a guy named Brad Berry, he's a good player.