In today's Daily Rundown, Jim Cramer discusses the markets, Bristol-Myers (BMY) , AbbVie (ABBV) , Walmart (WMT) earnings, Linde (LIN) , and more!
JEFF MARKS: Welcome to the Daily Rundown. It's Tuesday. I'm Jeff Marks, senior portfolio analyst, Action Alerts Plus, standing on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange with Jim Cramer. Jim, we're going to get into Walmart earnings in a minute, but, first, let's just talk about the markets. We are coming off the lows, but it is a pretty down day today following yesterday's late-stage comeback.
JIM CRAMER: All right, so I'm going to--
JEFF MARKS: What do you think is going on here?
JIM CRAMER: --use the image of Bristol Myers, right? Bristol Myers did not have a good quarter. It was, eh, right? It was just eh. They got a balance sheet that's not as good as it used to be. I'm not seeing fantastic things out of Celgene.
I get they're OK on the cancer franchise. They're winning some. The stock can't be stopped. It can't be stopped because it's one of the most defensive stocks on Earth.
So what you can say is if Bristol Myers moves up, that means we are one-- we have 14 men on defense, and we have seven on offense. And I think that's how people are doing it. I think that it's football season, and we're thinking about how many people we can put on-- we can stack the box, and we're stacking the box.
JEFF MARKS: So it's the Bristol Myers of the world that are working. AbbVie, Abbott Labs, Crown Castle, acting well, these big dividend payers.
JIM CRAMER: Is there anything special happening in AbbVie? No. We're hoping for some sort of resolution, right? We're hoping that we get a two important approvals, but one we know that--
JEFF MARKS: Rinvoq.
JIM CRAMER: Rinvoq sends the stock up 10 if they get approval. But the longer this goes on, the more I'm hoping that he-- that the company manages to be able to start using Allergan. I mean, they haven't really done anything. Haven't done any of the Botox, ubrelvy -- there's so many good things that they have, and they haven't done anything. So my take is that it's time for-- if they get a win, that's the best one we have.
JEFF MARKS: All right, now let's talk about Walmart. The company did beat expectations and raised their full-year outlook this morning. The stock initially, when the print came out, it was about a 1% lower, and everyone was just trying to nitpick, all right, what went wrong about the quarter? And then as the morning progressed, we did see the stock reverse and it trade higher. So what did you think about the Walmart quarter?
JIM CRAMER: OK, this is, again, the ridiculous nature of premarket trading. Walmart stock, every line was good, and you sent me that piece about even the online, very good, challenging Amazon.
JEFF MARKS: e-commerce sales.
JIM CRAMER: Yeah. And yet when the stock goes down, suddenly I'm hearing gross margins are no good. Well, the gross margin is fine. Then I start hearing that online's no good. Well, online was good.
And then I start hearing that there are issues with whether-- the slowing consumer, but the slowing consumer shops at Walmart. So it was the type of thing-- it was the classic misdirection. People were just wrong about Walmart, and they're going to stay wrong because it's what you buy in this environment because it's the most defensive, along with Kroger, of the group.
JEFF MARKS: Yeah, so I'm--
JIM CRAMER: And Costco, arguably, maybe.
JEFF MARKS: The last couple of weeks, we have been watching this very strong move in Walmart, and we viewed the quarter as it's going to be the sign. Is the move a head fake, or is it something real? So now that we do have the quarter, you're saying if you own shares, hold on to them and potentially even buy some if maybe we do see a pullback, or what do you think?
JIM CRAMER: Under 150, yeah. I mean, the stock traded at 149 this morning, and that was your chance. I was doing my best in Twitter to explain to people the way the market works, which is that-- and Walmart could come down if the market, the Dow reverses. No doubt about it. But I don't like the following-- a stock goes down in premarket, maybe in relation to Home Depot, maybe in relation to the futures, maybe in relation to Europe, and it's got none of those characteristics that should be of impact, but it goes down anyway.
So then we all search to find what's negative, and then we write what's negative, and then it's self-fulfilling. And this one I was taking the bull by the horns and saying, listen, these are made up excuses. They are not reasons to sell.
JEFF MARKS: Yeah, and that's two quarters in a row where Walmart has raised their outlook following a guy down a couple of quarters ago, but that's a good sign to see them back on that beat and raise track. Now, Jim, before we started talking this morning, we talked about, is it too early to buy, what we do have, we're looking around the portfolio. Boeing came up as a name where we're trying to figure out, is it down enough to pick up? We know that they did send a plane out to China, and an approval of the 737 MAX would be a pretty big catalyst event for them.
JIM CRAMER: Yeah, I mean, look, Boeing, we know the MAX works, so if the Chinese want to be able to send a positive signal to the US-- and I don't know if they want to. Maybe when Janet Yellen goes there-- she's talking about going. Then what would happen is you get Boeing goes up 50. So I love situations where it's 10 down and 50 up, and that's Boeing.
JEFF MARKS: All right, Jim, and now we did have a pretty weak retail sales number for July. Down 1.1%. Expectations were for a 0.3% decline. So is this just a sign that the consumer pulled back spending in July?
JIM CRAMER: Yes.
JEFF MARKS: Is that delta variant?
JIM CRAMER: Some things got too expensive. Well, also autos got too expensive. Housing, people are taking a bit of a breather because they don't know whether they're going to be-- I think this is the market being frozen by delta. And that is something that we didn't expect, and it's driving people crazy.
I would point out that if oil suddenly were to rally $1, the market would go higher. If we had any move in other-- in Lowe's separating from Home Depot, that would move the market up. Home Depot is dragging this market down, and the retail sales is being dragged down. And the NASDAQ's going down, in part, because there's just too many companies. I just was looking at the plethora of companies. It's insane.
JEFF MARKS: And what about case counts? We are seeing some states showing some plateauing, new infections. Although, hospitalizations, we know, there's going to be a lag, but is that an encouraging sign?
JIM CRAMER: Yeah, look, Dr. Scott Gottlieb said last night when he was talking to Carl Quintanilla that he is seeing signs of the peaking of delta. Now that makes sense. Remember, things peaked in India. Things peaked in the UK, so it can peak here.
But it peaks the bad way. It peaks because everybody got it. That's what is so angry-- I'm so angry about because everybody got it, and that's how it stopped. It's terrible.
JEFF MARKS: All right, and real quick before we go, just on the topic of hospitalizations, my mind immediately goes to Linde, which was a stock we were talking about yesterday, how it has been a pretty strong performer the last couple of days, outperformer, and that could be because they have the health care business and they supply a lot of oxygen to hospitals.
JIM CRAMER: Yes, and they had a fine quarter. Air products did not have a good quarter, and yet it's still moving higher. A great secular story with a cyclical kicker, that's what we're looking for.
JEFF MARKS: Yeah, that's secular kicker being that green hydrogen play. All right, that's the show for today. I'm Jeff Marks. We'll see you tomorrow.