There’s a New Tariff in Town, Taking a Toll, The New Berkshire? 2/19/25

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Carl Quintanilla (0:44)

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 Wednesday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Quintanilla with Jim Cramer here at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. David Faber's on assignment. Pre-market's a little soft coming off those all-time highs as the president teases once again those 25% tariffs. Ten-year yield about a one-week high today, 457 Our roadmap begins with this new tariff threat. The president's signaling those levies on cars, semiconductors and pharma. Apple's expected to unveil a new product this morning. We're gonna get you ready for that. And shares a Toll Brothers under some pressure pre-market following an earnings miss. Let's begin though with the markets following another record day for the S&P and the NDX. Jim, although the percent of components, constituents at 52-week highs is pretty low.

Jim Cramer (1:34)

Yeah, I mean, there was a really an incredible program in the last seven minutes was out of high growth and into value or some people would say value growth. It made no sense that I could tell. The market was very thin. I think people have to recognize that it wasn't manipulation, but it did seem strange and wrong. So I almost want to use the word phony because the market was bad. It was bad in the last five minutes. And I'm trying to do my show. And I like I've always liked to put at the beginning where we are. And I had rushed up at five of four to interview a guest. Market was down. It turned out I had to redo everything. Market was up. So we take this with the greatest salt. I think a lot of like a lot of things we have to take with the greatest salt right now.

Carl Quintanilla (2:16)

What do you make of some and some desks pointed this out this morning some long time popular longs underperforming we saw metas run and now app love in reddit Netflix spot.

Jim Cramer (2:29)

These are favorites. They're long favorites. They've also been embraced by retail. I know someone did not have a quarter that people wanted. Reddit did not have the quarter. But Apple of them was a spectacular grab more than 500 to 700 billion. No, 800 billion in EBITDA. And they're like doing incredibly well. It would but anything had been up huge really got clipped yesterday. I love the Spotify quarter, but they got clipped. And then the money kind of rotated back to just some stock like there were retail stocks that were up. They look pretty good. I saw some, some pharma do well, although Merck is maybe the ultimate liagrad. I don't think I've ever seen Merck perform this badly. Here's the stock distinguished from the company, which actually got hurt by a decision by the Chinese to not give their people 200 million vaccines and Gardasil. RFK maybe it's kind of a reciprocal thing.

I've been choked him up, but there is, it's a great vaccine. You may not like vaccines, but great vaccine. And the Chinese have chosen not to use it. They have it. And some of it's with a wholesaler that apparently Merck can't give anymore to send enough money. But that's the one that I'm keying on is being, that used to be called St. Merck. And I know it's not high growth anymore, but wow, I think it's worth looking at because it trades like a bad 10

Carl Quintanilla (3:51)

Worth looking at in the way of potentially buying some?

Jim Cramer (3:54)

No, in the way of like what's really going on with some of these drug companies.

They have a loss of exclusivity for an unbelievable drug, Keytruda, but it's not for years. This group is the only one in this group that acts at all well as Lily. And I do think that when you're meeting with the president, it no longer is positive. The drug companies meet with the president and it's like, you don't know what he's going to say after.