In today's Daily Rundown, Jim Cramer discusses the markets, Disney (DIS) , Salesforce (CRM) , Facebook (FB) , Apple (AAPL) , United Parcel Service (UPS) , and more!
JEFF MARKS: Welcome to the Daily Rundown. I'm Jeff Marks standing on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange with Jim Cramer. Jim, yesterday you said, don't trust the up open.
JIM CRAMER: No.
JEFF MARKS: We did have the markets close lower on the day. Got another up open today and we are rallying a little bit higher since the start.
JIM CRAMER: We are oversold, not as oversold as we were yesterday. If we did not have a Fed meeting, that I think is going to go poorly, then I would say look for opportunities. But everything is very, very strong.
And I'll give you example, we bought Wells when it's lower. I can't tell you to come in and just start buying Wells now. I mean, we just bought Wells lower.
So I want people to be careful and recognize that a Fed meeting with the market up tends to be not great. The Fed meeting with the market down tends to be good. And that's because the jackals in the press are after Jay, thinking that, don't you understand that everything's up in price?
Did you read the FedEx conference call? Have you looked at General Mills? Every single conference call is bad and they're going to make a mockery of him. He should cancel these press conferences. They're really a joke.
JEFF MARKS: All right, Jim, let's talk about one stock that we did buy and it's one that we've been doing the show for quite some time and you've been saying, we can't buy it in the high 170's, we can't buy it when it rallied in the low 180's, even though it seemed like FOMO might have taken over. And patience was rewarded as Disney fell to 171 yesterday, actually some cents below where we actually close it out. We bought the pullback yesterday. Let's talk about Disney. Why now?
JIM CRAMER: First, we're not done buying Disney. Disney made a couple of mistakes yesterday. Bob Chapek, he said that there were headwinds to Disney Plus. I think that what I would have said is that Disney Plus, there's a long run runway. And there's going to be ups and downs, but we're going to add a lot of content and ultimately, if it's no COVID, we're going to have it in the movie theater.
If there's COVID, you can have Disney Plus. There were many things he could have said and I wish he had not put it the way he did. But the second thing was, right at the end he dropped a bomb. He said, look, dividends and buybacks is going to be in the distant future.
And I don't think that's true, frankly. I think that as they got cruise ships going, and they got the parks going, Disney Plus, ESPN doing better, that the dividend and buyback might be faster than he said and that's what killed the stock. I think it's really important to not let that be the reason to sell, but the reason to buy.
Because now the bar is set so low that if he comes back even in 18 months and says, we can issue a dividend, people are going to be paying 200. I think people are going to be paying 200. So I really like that stock.
JEFF MARKS: Let's talk a little bit more about the park. So Chapek did say they did experience a little, brief period of softness, Delta related.
JIM CRAMER: Delta related.
JEFF MARKS: I mean, we saw that the airlines were reporting similar things--
JIM CRAMER: Speed bump.
JEFF MARKS: --in August, but he said since Labor Day, attendance has been very strong. And we do have with the US opening its borders to people from the UK and Europe, we'll get some international travelers back into the parks.
JIM CRAMER: Oh definitely. I mean, look I'm not denying that COVID is terrible, OK? I'm triple Moderna because I'm worried about COVID. I wish that the government had made it-- It was really kind of interesting. They said it's fine for people who are over 60 to get it, but how about 50?
How about someone who's 57? I mean, arbitrary, but I will point out this, the discussion about COVID will not be the same a month from now because we are getting vaccinated again and there's a lot of employers insisting to get vaccinated. So you will soon be such in the minority.
That like if you had a green card, like Italy it's mandatory. If we had a green card which said that you had to have it, then Disney stocks at 250. So let's remember, as COVID gets solved, Disney stocks are just going to go higher and higher.
JEFF MARKS: Yeah, Jim. And we should point out that cases in Florida do appear like they have reached a peak.
JIM CRAMER: Oh, they have.
JEFF MARKS: So I think that's very good for people who are looking to travel to the state as well.
JIM CRAMER: Dr. Gottlieb, who's got a new book out, did say two weeks ago that we're at peak. And he and Dr. Topol have been the best follows. And I think that Dr. Gottlieb is going to turn out to be right, that we hit the peak. And he said the peak was being done in part by herd immunity, by people getting sick, unfortunately, and in part by the mass vaccination and that there just won't be enough people to give other people COVID, and that's a very wise way to look at it.
JEFF MARKS: All right, Jim, you had Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on the show yesterday, you interviewed him. He's at Dreamforce. This is your first year not at Dreamforce that I can remember.
JIM CRAMER: I know.
JEFF MARKS: But they also have their big analyst day coming up as well. We'll hear about revenue trends, hopefully some margin expansion and everyone's focus on that Slack deal, of course. So let's just get your thoughts on what Benioff had to say last night and Salesforce.
JIM CRAMER: Well first, if you watch the keynote, there's a moment where IBM says, listen, we're all on Slack. And it was very telling. Mercedes Benz, all on Slack.
Slack is going to be at a table stake entry for Marc versus Microsoft, OK? Slack is very cooperative, teams is cooperate. I mean, not everybody likes Microsoft. I wish that were on Apple, frankly.
I looked at the Apple 13 yesterday. Very excited about that in a second. But Marc attacked another one of our holdings, Facebook, and I could go so far as to say that Marc believes that they're a serial liar and that they have been instrumental in making it so that people don't get vaccinated. And it was horrible, what he said was horrible about Mark Zuckerberg and I think that Mark has to respond, even if it means by going out there.
Because Marc Benioff did say, listen, there can be redemption, and he talked about the redemption of Robinhood where Robinhood said, listen, we're switching from being an app to being trustworthy, and I think that was a very good move by them. But it was shocking to hear Marc make these charges. And I blanched. I said, listen, but it hasn't hurt Facebook's stock. And today it is.
JEFF MARKS: Until today.
JIM CRAMER: Today it is and that's a worry for me. Now we have a huge gain in Facebook. We can take it any time we want, a small position.
JEFF MARKS: Now Jim, Marc Benioff, he has been consistently negative. He's actually the first person who I've heard compare Facebook to cigarettes.
JIM CRAMER: A couple years ago.
JEFF MARKS: But I know you're always focused on the good that Facebook does for small businesses around the world.
JIM CRAMER: Look, I think that I know too many people who started businesses on Instagram. And when I talk with the Facebook people, they didn't know their own hidden gem, which is really unfortunate. I mean, it's very interesting that Marc Benioff was saying that there are companies that are tech companies where they have to start realizing that they're customer companies. Facebook is still thinking it's a tech company and what they really have to recognize, and they're starting to do that with a strategy where they're actually advancing money to small businesses to be able to make their payroll.
I like what they're doing. They're very bad at telling their own story And that's because Mark Zuckerberg doesn't tell the story. But they are not as bad as people think. They are not as good as I think, when I listen to Benioff, but I just urge people to recognize that Facebook is not just a force of evil.
They have helped many small businesses. I do think, as I said yesterday, they should put 1,000 people in this. Just put 1,000 people on COVID. Whatever is the issue that people are lying about, put 1,000 people on it and sticker it.
People smoke cigarettes, right? But it says on the side, it can kill you. Why not sticker the Facebook stuff and say, look, this article below us is lies and we want to pull it down, but people feel like there's a First Amendment right, so you need to know we think it's a lie, or pull it down. One or the other, but you can't just put it up. It's just not right.
JEFF MARKS: All right. Jim, you did mention Apple and the iPhone 13. It did sound like you had something to say. We're seeing strong demand trends for the new iPhone, where just they announced the launch last week.
JIM CRAMER: Yeah, a couple things. First, I would say, let me just go to my pictures for a second. I think this is important.
It's a very interesting device. It's got three, not one, OK? And what I showed them yesterday was when I was doing pictures of my vegetables, and I do want to talk about my vegetables, I love them. I would run pictures of bees.
Well that's my tomatoes, but this picture of bees. This picture of bees right here, OK, bees. Now, you can't see the bees in any and it drove me crazy.
Look, obviously you don't want to go up to the bee like that, but it drove me crazy that no bees could be shot. With the new one, without any focus problems, you will precisely see that bee.
Now why is this important? Think about all the things that you take pictures of and they're blurry, all right? The moon, take a picture of the moon, it's blurry. Flowers, blur.
Anything that's moving, a bee, blurry, a spider, whatever. I happen to love take pictures of nature and it almost never works. With this new camera it does.
Second, 2 and 1/2 hours of extra battery life. Usually by 3 o'clock I have to have my phone charged. That's no longer going to be the case. Third, you can make movies.
I saw movies where it literally focuses on whatever you wanted it to focus on. So let's say you and I are doing this. The camera actually, it goes right to me.
JEFF MARKS: It tracks your face.
JIM CRAMER: It tracks your face and I couldn't believe it could do that. You're in a foreign country and there's a menu. You show the menu and it's translated by artificial intelligence machine learning, it's just translated.
So when I'm in Italy, I tend to go to places that don't have English on the right side, and it just translates it perfectly. Now these are little, quirky things that add up to, I got to get a 13. And as someone who takes a huge number of pictures and is disappointed so often, this is the answer to my disappointment.
JEFF MARKS: And let's keep in mind, carriers like AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, they're being very aggressive with their promotions because they want to lock people into those 5G phones and have people sign multi-year contracts.
JIM CRAMER: Yeah and you keep hearing the China sales are good. It's funny, there was a note yesterday about how it's the most incremental Apple ever. What I think people are missing is that not everybody has the Apple 12, and then they go to the 13. There's a huge install base of people like me. They think that when I bought my camera I thought it was terrific, and then I'm sitting there taking 100 bee pictures to get one.
When I was in Italy, I must have taken 50 bee pictures and not one of them can you see the bee unless you open it up and then the bee is blurry. And I'm looking at this thing and I'm saying, OK, I guess it's time to upgrade, my battery life is too short, my pictures aren't really great. How about this? Two phone numbers. You can have two phone numbers.
JEFF MARKS: Interesting.
JIM CRAMER: Yeah, so when I'm in Italy, when I land, I would like to just switch to my Italian phone number. Or I go to Mexico, I have a Mexican phone number, that way I don't have problems with carriers dropping. Or I can have AT&T and Verizon on one phone. And when AT&T doesn't have enough towers, it can switch to Verizon.
So if I know that there's a dead zone of Verizon going up on the Upper West Side, I would make my call on AT&T. So I mean, these are things that are so-- they're genius. They are genius and you can't believe it. The sound quality on the new mini, the sound quality, I feel like I'm at Symphony Hall.
And that thing is only like $400. I know, if you don't have any money. Like the other day someone said, Jim, you have all this kind of money. You don't even know what it's like to live in your car. And I come back, I lived in my car for six months. I had one pair of underwear. Give me a break.
JEFF MARKS: Apple is pretty good with payment plans as well. You an buy it, they spread it out over months.
JIM CRAMER: You can get these things. It's not the price that it looks like. So I urge people to try. Oh my God, this stuff is cool.
JEFF MARKS: All right, Jim, I do want to touch on FedEx. I think it's a really good market story today, because it is pulling down shares of UPS as well. $450 million in incremental costs related to labor shortages at FedEx.
JIM CRAMER: It is tough.
JEFF MARKS: It's a tough story right now. Obviously, we'll hear from Powell today about what he has to say about the labor market, inflation, transitory or if there's parts of the market where it is a little bit more everlasting. But let's get your thoughts on the UPS.
JIM CRAMER: UPS has a better balance sheet. UPS has been saying over and over again, they're not going to sacrifice margins. The anger that was on a conference call by the analyst has to do with the fact that the margins of others in travel and packaging are better.
Now look, is that like pound on the table UPS? No, because there's people going to downgrade UPS again. I just think that Carol Tome is better organized. We took some off higher, going over that.
I'm anxious to buy more if it goes to say 183, 182. A good yield, good buy back, but FedEx was jarring. And some of these things are jarring. Like Evergrande was jarring, where the president, she decided to bail out the locals, but not the internationals.
And there's a moment on the conference call, FedEx, where some analyst says, listen, you guys have 30,000 people in China, and they only have 12,000. I mean, this was the long knives out for FedEx and it was very tough. If you're a believer in FedEx, it was very jarring, particularly because many people had said over and over again that it's going to be a bad quarter and then it might turn out to be an even worse quarter. They did themselves no favors by starting out talking about how things are bad.
JEFF MARKS: Yeah, and I know one of the capital allocation policies under UPS with Carol Tome, they want to return about 50% of earnings, last year's earnings back to shareholders. So if you're looking at current estimates right now, it's 12. Lets say they do 11, you're looking about a 5 and 1/2 dividend.
That's going to take the yield up at the stock price to around 2.8% plus depending what it is. That's pretty solid. They'll make the increase next year in 2022, but something to think about if you're longer term minded.
JIM CRAMER: Yeah. I had Carol on last time and it was tough, it was tough interview because I trust her so much and I certainly didn't want her to reiterate, basically. I was trying to get a do over, saying listen, at the analysts meeting you said this, and she didn't do that. She just stuck by that, kind of like the Disney analyst.
JEFF MARKS: All right, Jim, real quick. We have our monthly call tomorrow, 11:30. Real quick, anything to tease ahead of the call tomorrow?
JIM CRAMER: 34 names, I'd like to lose a name to buy, because we added Disney. We have too many names, that means it's very hard for us to go over everything. Oh, just one second, I do not work for Citadel. By the way, if you didn't see the other.
People keep thinking I worked for Citadel. I am troubled by what I would regard as Wynn, Union Pacific. Now Nucor, again, trouble because what's happened is that there are situations where we could have taken profits and we didn't.
But I then think about PayPal. You know PayPal, I wanted that profit so badly that I left a huge amount on the table. And when we were a buyer of Union Pacific, I'm not buying it for this quarter. Once you get the port solved, Union Pacific goes to 250.
Nucor, if they earn more than $12 this year, that stock's going to go to 150. I do believe that there will be an infrastructure bill, so I want to talk about the notion of leaving profits on the table for long term versus not taking during short term. I'm not going to spend too much time on it, because I've got to go over every name, but that's one of the reasons why I said 34 names is so hard for us.
JEFF MARKS: All right, that's the show for today, everyone. Again, we got that conference call, 11:30 tomorrow. We'll see everyone there.