U.S. and Israel Attack Iran: The Effect on Stocks As Oil Prices Spike 3/2/26

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Carl Quintanilla (0:42)

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 with Jim Cramer, David Faber at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Futures eyeing roughly 1% declines as the US and Israel strike Iran for a third day. Defense and energy names are higher, some travel stocks fall. Oil goes to 72, although off the highs of last night in the 10 years of 401 We begin with the US and Israel extending their attacks on Iran, and as Tehran and its proxies retaliate by firing missiles at US military targets, Israel and Arab states. Last hour the Pentagon said it's engaging in a major combat operation, not an overnight offensive. Energy prices, as we said, spiking, stocks falling around the globe in reaction to this widening Mideast conflict. Jim, sounds like you think maybe these declines are a little too moderate, curious in a curious way?

Jim Cramer (1:44)

Yeah, well, I mean, it's kind of interesting. I expected the interest rates to go down. There'd be a flight to quality and said rates go higher. When rates go higher, I don't like it. I don't hear a quick way to get oil down. I think it will. I would not own the oil stocks. It's a great time to sell. But David, when I look at things, I say things weren't so good on Friday. We had a lot of private credit issues, you know, the Blue Owl issues. We had Corriev here, and Corriev was some sort of a cathartic thing, which basically said, you know, like, let's find other things to buy.

And, you know, overall, it just wasn't a kind of a queasy market based on what we saw, the banks in particular. So I felt that down one, we could have gotten down one without a half.

David Faber (2:33)

I completely agree. I have, I mean, investors will be focused as they should be on the macro events that may occur as a result of this war. There's no doubt we'll be focused on it. Obviously, the key one is what you're looking on your screen right now and what impact that will have, broadly speaking, in terms of that rise and accrued. But Jim, we would have come into this morning as well, discussing just what you said. And by the way, there's a lot for investors to deal with right now beyond this war. And there would have been if it was, if it did not, if hostilities did not begin. Because of private credit, because of this overall concern, I think broadly speaking, in terms of just credit, even though we're not seeing software companies not pay back their loans, and AI, and what is coming at us this week, and what businesses everybody will believe are being disrupted again. So you overlay the war, the macro events that will be created as a result, or concerns, I should say, with what we're already dealing with. It makes it a difficult market, I would think, to invest in.

Jim Cramer (3:38)

I think very much. I mean, Carl, when I go over what I want to buy here, I come back and say, okay, I'll buy health care, because health care won't get hurt. There are a series of things that NVIDIA has done, that NVIDIA did on Friday night, which were extraordinary. And basically just said, okay, listen, we've got this new chip, it's faster, it's better, cheaper maybe, than what Google has. What we now find has been one of the negative theses against NVIDIA is that both Amazon and Google have a competitive threat when it comes to inference. NVIDIA is the largest stock in the market, it's down big. Like David said, I mean, you're looking at these stocks, these stocks are all in some sort of negative scrum. And I saw Apple down really big, and nothing that's happened is going to make those sales go away.

Carl Quintanilla (4:30)