After U.S. crude oil prices hit a three-and-a-half-year high on Tuesday, CNBC’s Jim Cramer drilled down on why investors should’ve seen it coming.
The “Mad Money” host pointed to an April conference call at oil giant Schlumberger led by its CEO, Paal Kibsgaard. On the call, Kibsgaard said that supply and demand were in balance, but that global crude stocks were still below the five-year average.
The CEO argued that these data signaled that oil prices could move higher soon, which led to the surge higher that occurred in early May, Cramer said, adding that prices could still climb.
“Look, without significant new exploration the price of oil will keep drifting higher,” Cramer said. “So if you get any sort of pullback like we got late this afternoon, I recommend using it to build up some oil exposure.”
His recommendations? “Maybe a major like Chevron or an independent like Pioneer Natural [Resources] or perhaps the most obvious of them all, the stock of the man who predicted it all, Paal Kibsgaard’s Schlumberger,” the “Mad Money” host said.
Searching for broken stocks
On tepid trading sessions that come after big market surges, Cramer likes to search for under-performing stocks of companies that still have strong underlying businesses.
“Most people prefer to chase what’s hot in the hope that they can get in on the next big thing, not before it’s happened, but while it’s happening,” he said on Tuesday.
“But the problem with hot stocks is that you’re often late to the party,” he continued. “The better approach? Find cold stocks of once-hot companies that could ignite again — that way you could potentially enjoy the whole run. In other words, find broken stocks of intact companies.”
Cramer dubbed the recent action in shares of e-commerce giant Amazon “the quintessential example” of a once-downtrodden stock that bounced back to generate real returns. He also tapped the stock of Raytheon as a current broken-stock opportunity.
Rent the Runway CEO: Think of closets like stock portfolios
Rent the Runway may be a private company, but co-founder and CEO Jennifer Hyman told CNBC that people could benefit from viewing her retail disruptor like they view stocks.
“People should think about their closets like they think about a stock portfolio,” Hyman told Cramer on Tuesday. “There are things you want to invest in, you make those investments and those are your blue chips. So you should invest in a great pair of jeans, in a great cashmere sweater. You should have things that are higher quality that last.”
“But for everything else, you should just have that on rotation and have the ability to take risks and constantly have newness and variety,” she continued. “And that’s a subscription [to Rent the Runway].”
For more on Hyman’s interview and Rent the Runway’s place on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list, click here.
Union Pacific CEO talks NAFTA worries
With U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin admitting on CNBC that there are still some “significant” issues hindering a new NAFTA deal, CEOs like Union Pacific’s Lance Fritz are concerned.
“I am worried about NAFTA just overall,” Fritz told Cramer on Tuesday. “What concerns me right now is there seems to be this idea that we’ve got to race to a deal, and if we can’t get it done soon, we’re going to have to pause for a while. And that strikes me as an unhealthy place to be.”
Fritz, whose railroad company operates in Canada, Mexico and much of the Western United States, said that he has spoken to members of the Trump administration regarding NAFTA.
Micron CEO on how tech complexity helps the chip business
A recurring theme with Micron, one of the cheapest stocks in the S&P 500, is the market’s concern around the supply-demand patterns of its top products, dynamic random-access memory and flash chips.
A host of investors and analysts view them as commodities subject to vicious boom-bust cycles that can erode demand quickly and create a supply glut.
But if you ask Micron President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, that thesis is unraveling with each iteration of products.
“When you look at the technology complexity, it’s increasing,” Mehrotra told Cramer in a Tuesday interview. “Each successive generation of new technology that is deployed into production is actually giving you less supply growth capability on a per-waiver basis.”
The result is more market stability and growth for Micron’s flagship products, the CEO said, adding that the fundamentals for flash chips are “healthy.”
Lightning round: Don’t take shelter in the housing stocks
In Cramer’s lightning round, he rattled off his take on callers’ favorite stocks:
Beacon Roofing Supply: “They missed the quarter. A lot of these companies missed their quarter. Can they come back? Yes. Would I sell them now? I don’t know. I mean, the problem is that Toll Brothers reported a pretty good quarter and everybody hated it. Anything housing right now is going down, so I want to be careful.”
Sprint Corporation: “I think T-Mobile has much more upside at $57. I think T-Mobile is the one you want to own, not Sprint.”