Cramer Remix: The election stock opportunity ·CNBC
Abigail Stevenson
Updated
As both the S&P 500 (INDEX: .SPX) and Nasdaq composite (NASDAQ: .IXIC) ended the month of February with losses, Jim Cramer pointed to politics that are hurting the market.
"We pay less for stocks than we otherwise would because this angry presidential race makes people feel more glum and less sure of the future," the "Mad Money" host said.
Cramer added that not only does this backdrop make doing business more difficult, it also makes investors less willing to pay up for stocks of those businesses.
It is this brutal political atmosphere that is having a daily impact on stocks.
"Look, I am not trying to rant against either political party. I am saying that the backdrop that politics creates just makes people feel too uncertain to invest," Cramer said.
Ultimately it is an atmosphere that makes investors want to risk nothing; for fear that they could lose everything. And like Buffett, Cramer thinks those fears will prove to be unfounded.
Cramer urged investors not to hide from opportunity, especially in the face of a terrifying political environment. After all, it could obscure opportunities — but it doesn't eliminate them.
While the market has become less volatile recently, Cramer is ready for things to go awry at any moment. So while investor emotions are running high, he turned to the charts to get a read on where the S&P 500 (INDEX: .SPX) and Nasdaq 100 (NASDAQ: .NDX) could be headed.
Carolyn Boroden is a technician who has been involved with trading for over 25 years. She also runs the website FibonacciQueen.com and is a colleague of Cramer's at RealMoney.com. Boroden utilizes Fibonacci ratios to determine important swings in a given security to spot when a stock or index could change trajectory.
The real low for the market occurred on Feb. 11, when the S&P finally bottomed. Boroden knew this was a crucial date because she saw a confluence of seven Fibonacci time cycles that came due from Feb. 5 to Feb. 19, which suggested that there was a big change coming—and that is exactly what happened.
Boroden now considers the intraday low of the S&P 500 at 1,810 on Feb. 11 to be a critical level.
"Beyond that, even though the daily charts are still far from perfect, Boroden now thinks there is a strong case to be made that we could have a real, sustainable rally on our hands," the "Mad Money" host said.
In order to be bullish on this market, Boroden said there is one more major hurdle that needs to be cleared. Recent rallies in the market have lasted between eight to 11 trading days. As of last Friday, the S&P had been up for 10 trading days since that Feb. 11 bottom.
With stocks beaten down so badly this year, the question becomes how to tell the difference between a real comeback story and a fake.
One once red-hot stock is Wynn Resorts, the casino company with large exposure to Macau, a Chinese version of Las Vegas. The stock was on fire until the Chinese government began cracking down on corruption a few years ago, which was evident in Wynn's trajectory.
The stock roared to $242 at its peak two years ago, from less than $20 in March of 2009. After falling hard in 2015, the stock has now roared back and trades at 20 times next year's earnings estimates.
"I suggest waiting for the next big market-wide pullback and using it to buy some Wynn into weakness," Cramer said.
Cramer always appreciates the annual reports from Warren Buffett because he actually tells investors something.
And with this in mind, he listed his top takeaways from the Oracle of Omaha's annual letter:
The first was that Buffett confirmed what was on a lot of investor minds — that the presidential election has created negativity in the perspective of the future for most Americans.
Second was that Burlington Northern was an underperformer in 2014, it managed to turn around thanks to more capital and tighter focus. While Buffett noted that 2016 will likely be a down year for the railroad, it did make Cramer think that other rails could be more investible.
It made Cramer want to buy Union Pacific (NYSE: UNP) and CSX (NASDAQ: CSX), because they have less exposure to oil.
Third, Buffett's excitement over Precision Castparts made Cramer feel great about aerospace. It also prompted the "Mad Money" host to circle back to Alcoa (NYSE: AA) because Buffett stated that Precision Castparts wants to do acquisitions. When Alcoa breaks itself up into two companies, the engineered portion of its business could match well to Precision Castparts.
When Tableau Software sent many cloud-based enterprise software stocks down earlier this year, and things turned around when Salesforce.com reported a stellar quarter.
Workday is a cloud-based provider of software for human capital management, payroll and financial management. It essentially gives companies the applications they need to automate many non-revenue generating back office functions.
And despite rebounding substantially in the past few weeks, the stock was still down 24 percent for the year. The company reported on Monday, and delivered a smaller than expected loss on higher than expected revenue.
Could things be turning around for the company? To find out, Cramer spoke with Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri.
"Honestly we could have done a better job guiding Wall Street as to the seasonality of our business. And I think we put something in the report that will give people more understanding of the seasonality. But it was a very strong guide for the whole year and that's what we're very focused on," Bhusri said.
In the Lightning Round, Cramer gave his take on a few caller favorite stocks:
Bed Bath & Beyond: "It's an easy call. I prefer TJX to Bed Bath & Beyond because they have got Homegoods, which is smoking."
Etsy: "I liked Etsy's quarter ... I think it was a really good quarter. I don't understand why people aren't cheery. I was dead set against that company for 20 points."
