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How those ahead stay ahead. Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Kramer. I'll be with my friends. Hey, look, I'm just trying to make you a little money. My job, not just to entertain, but to educate, to teach you. So call me at 1-800-743-CBC. Tweet me at Jim Kramer.
Maybe it was all a dream or more pointedly, a nightmare. I'm talking about the Chinese artificial intelligence breakthrough known as DeepSeek. Remember that? Which caused Wall Street to turn its back on the AI data center. Earlier this year, we were told that the Chinese had come up with a way to build AI models using far less hardware, meaning chips from NVIDIA. And it crushed every stock in the group. The house of pain.
with the biggest casualties being the stocks of all the companies needed to create high-speed computing and generative artificial intelligence. Today, the deep-seek nightmare officially came to a close, as data center tech led the way back up, driving the averages to near their all-time highs, Dow jumping 507 points, S&P climbing 1.1%, NASDAQ poll voting 1.43%. Almost back to where it was, before everything started getting kerflooey.
This rally is a total refutation of everything you heard back in January when we accepted that China had beaten us in AI. It was almost a replay of the Sputnik affair when the Soviets launched the first satellite to orbit the Earth on October 4th of 1957. Back then, we had an inferiority complex about the Soviet Union like we have now about China.
We decided we were finished. We'd never catch up to them in the space race. But not only did we catch them, we leapfrogged them and we never looked back. When the deep-seek news broke, Wall Street exhibited the same inferiority complex and everything AI-related got hammered. Everyone just accepted that China had come up with something revolutionary that made all of our artificial intelligence efforts pointless.
They know nothing! Almost no one dug into Deep Seek's highly misleading numbers. But just like with the Russians in 1957, it was all chimerical.
We never heard from the Chinese again, did we? Except that they were willing to go to the mat to get their hands on NVIDIA's second-rate semiconductors. Not even the best of them. We were never going to give them that. It didn't work. Our governments came to some sort of agreement, but we didn't give them the chips they wanted, chips they wouldn't have been going begging for if DeepSeek Sputnik had been a real breakthrough. Why didn't any of the naysayers and pessimists put that two and two together? If they had, they would have stayed in these stocks as we did for my travel trust.
This data center renaissance, so shocking to the people who abandoned these stocks, the NVIDIAs, the AMDs, the Vertivs, the Microns, the Marvell Technologies are all back or nearly back. And the story that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wang calls the new industrial revolution is once again front and center. It's like deep seek never happened. The AI stocks, they're all breaking out. Of course, success has many fathers, and this rally is about more than just the data center. Just a week ago, we were trembling about what would happen in the Middle East.
As we watch oil prices climb and climb, the decline in oil earlier this year had been our hope to offset the rising price of tariff goods, but suddenly was going away because of the war between Israel and Iran. Stocks which had tried to climb back once again seemed ready to roll over. It felt like only oil stocks were worth... Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy!
For all its prowess, Israel seemed unable to stop Iran's nuclear program on its own. But then this weekend, President Trump bombed Iran's three big nuclear enrichment sites, and suddenly Iran no longer had a viable path to become a nuclear power.
Of course, Wall Street wasn't really worried about the Iranian nukes at all. It was worried about the price of crude. The usual pessimists assumed that Iran would shut down the Straits of Hormuz, blocking 20% of the world's oil supply. But that would have represented a major escalation, and without a functional nuclear program, they just didn't have the cards. In fact, Iran's desperate for money, which means they need to keep the Straits open.
open, not closed, to sell their own oil, 1.7 million barrels a day. Once the Bakke thesis got taken off the table, oil plummeted from $78 and changed at its highs yesterday to the mid-60s today. It's given up all of its gains since the mini-war began. And I think, by the way, that oil has got a lot more downside.
With food going in the right direction, we're back in the declining inflation story. It wasn't enough to get Fed Chief Jay Powell on board with rate cuts today. He just told Congress that he wants to wait and see. But there is enough slowness in the economy, particularly in housing and autos, that I think we'll definitely get rate cuts at some point this year, tariff or not.
That's the other leg of this rally that's driving up so many stocks. But now I got to go back to this thing that I know you care about so much. This tech situation, this deep seek affair is one of the most instructive stories I've come across in years of trading. It's a microcosm of everything that causes people to get the market wrong, to lose money, to write off stocks and bizarre embrace of American mediocrity.
In a market with the memory of a mayfly, it may be impossible to remember, but DeepSeek's ability to do so much more with less went almost unquestioned because it was China. And if DeepSeek's numbers were real, which I don't think they were, then all the hyperscalers, the Microsofts, the Googles, the Amazons, the Oros, were wasting billions upon billions of dollars on unnecessary AI hardware.
If you believe deep seek, it meant that virtually every tech executive was an idiot. Our tech titans, we were told, had lost their minds. All that build-out simply could not be justified. We had visions of tens of billions of dollars worth of write-downs. So you had to sell every one of these tech stocks. Every one. And that's exactly what happened.
For months on end, I told you it was a mistake and a handful of experts called out DeepSeek's numbers. But for the most part, nobody listened except CNBC investing club members. And we will convene tomorrow noon to talk about it. These AI companies became the punchline of endless jokes about overvaluation, with the biggest joke of all being NVIDIA.
You couldn't go a day, make that an hour, without hearing about all the brilliant hedge funds that had sold NVIDIA, could you? The company which had been leading a new industrial revolution suddenly became a one-trick pony, a semiconductor maker that needed China to make its numbers. But it wasn't going to be allowed to sell them. So what do you do? You hide.
Those of us who champion the data center in general and NVIDIA specifically look washed up, clinging to a thesis that had been defrocked by the Chinese. We tried to argue that perhaps the whole thing was highly misleading, but DeepSeek never actually disclosed their full costs, including their hardware costs. Yeah, they didn't even tell you what they spent on chips and servers. Yet somehow their numbers were treated as gospel, and anyone who questioned them, they were regarded as insane. Now, looking back, with so much of tech bordering on new highs, it's clear that these stocks never should have been sold in the first place.
Because deep seek simply wasn't that meaningful. With the data center story back on, all those analysts and hedge fund managers, newsletter writers have to try to get back into these stocks immediately.
The ones they dumped at much lower levels. They might be able to get back in if we have a tariff fiasco. Maybe they can have an earnings report or two. But I think they'll be left behind. Bottom line here, the deep seek affair made so many money managers believe that Mark Zuckerberg from Meta, Andy Jassy from Amazon, Larry Ellison from Oracle, Satya Nadella from Microsoft, Sundar Pichai from Alphabet were all a bunch of morons. Here's what I have to say. Who looks like morons now?
Jerry in Missouri. Jerry. Hey, Jim. Thanks for taking my call. Of course, Jerry. Good to have you on the show. What's going on? About two weeks ago, I listened to an interview with David Faber and a CEO named Chris Britt. And I liked what I heard about this IPO. Originally priced at $27, but it opened at $43. It's been dropping steadily ever since.
Now let's go to this original price. What are your thoughts about Chime? Okay. You know, look, I think Chime was part of this. It was a couple of days where no matter what anybody did, things were going up. And then this one happened and it cost too much and people got nervous about it. $10 billion. Chime, I want to buy it. I think it's going to be good. I think every analyst is going to come out and recommend it. I think you get a good price here by the next level at $25. Let's go to Luke in Texas. Luke.
Hey, Kramer. Professor Kramer, I wanted to ask about the defense sector. Should it take some gains from the tech sector and reposition Lockheed Martin?
No, I like Lockheed Martin too much to tell you to do that. Every time I see Jim take that, I say to myself, why does anyone want to sell that stock with a 3% yield, a great book of business, and a terrific CEO? No, you stay wrong, Lockheed Martin. All right, listen, this deep-seek news made so many money managers believe that our leaders of our great tech companies were incompetent. Well, after this last rally, who's looking incompetent now?
I'm in a legitimate concern. I
got the company's CEO to set the records right. So stay with Kramer.
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All right, what's going on with these numbers from AV? That's the drone-focused defense contractor you may remember as AeroVironment. The company just reported a significant top and bottom line beat, but its earnings guidance was a tad light versus expectations, and the stock's been real volatile in after-hours trading, as it often tends to be. So we checked in earlier with Waheed Nawabi. He's the chairman, president, and CEO of AV, again, former AeroVironment. To learn more, take a look. Mr. Nawabi, welcome back to Mad Money.
Great to be with you, Jim. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Waheed. Once again, Waheed, I've got to tell you, I look at the release. You've got a big top line beat. You've got 87 percent increase in some of the key things I like, the loitering munition system. Nice bottom line beat. Market seems to be a little unsure about what's going on. Perhaps it's the goodwill impairment. But to me, this looks like you are more positioned, positioned better than I've seen you in all the years that we have talked together.
Precisely, Jim. We're in an inflection point. We have delivered outstanding results. We're entering fiscal year 2026 with an incredible backlog, over $750-plus million. We're setting our targets again in our guidance for between $1.9 and $2 billion in revenue. We delivered over 40% quarter-over-quarter last year's fourth quarter versus this year's fourth quarter results.
in terms of top line, strong profitability. We have purpose-built this company for the critical strategic priorities of the U.S. national security and our allies. And we're just getting started, and the future looks really bright for our company. Last time we spoke, you were doing the Blue Halo deal. That is now closed. I think there's a little confusion to the analysts about what it means right now. But give me a sense of how it's doing versus when we spoke when you did the deal first.
We're incredibly excited about that. We successfully closed the Blue Halo acquisition. Now we are essentially on all the critical domains of modern warfare.
air, land, sea, space, cyber, and maritime. And so we have a solution set that is leading. We have the production capacity that is desperately needed. The demand in United States as well as abroad is huge. Counter UAS, counter drones, drones, loading munitions, one-way attack. We are the leading player in these spaces.
And Blue Halo has given us a tremendous complementary set of capabilities to meet our customers' needs in the next two to five years. Let's talk about the key thing that I feel. I really want to get a lot on this. This counter drone technology you got. I think that we now realize from what we've seen in the Mideast and what we've seen in Ukraine, counter drone technology may be the most important area that our country needs. What do you have there for us?
Absolutely. So one of the key reasons we acquired Blue Halo is because they have developed one of the leading layered approach to a counter drone technology. They don't have just one point product. They have detection systems, RF jammers, e-sports.
even directed energy, lasers where you can actually shoot down drones at a much, much lower cost than what we can do it today. Today, we're shooting down a $50,000, $100,000 Group 2 drone with a $2 million to $3 million missile. The solution is not economically scalable. We have the solution that's operationally deployed that you can actually kill a drone or drop a drone from the skies with a small package of directed energy, lasers.
And essentially, it could allow us to reduce the cost of this economic equation from millions of dollars per kill to basically a few dollars per kill. Well, this is great. Our whole country, our country is gripped by the idea that we're spending tens of thousands of dollars on drones and they're using $500 Iranian drones and those drones are superior. This is clearly no longer the case.
That's not the case. We have the technology. We have the capability and products that we could produce now and deliver. In fact, some of our products are being deployed today in conflicts that are out there. Number two, we need to protect every airport, critical infrastructure around the entire country. This is a massive, large, long-term opportunity, which we're leading. And we're excited about the Blue Halo acquisition because of that as well. I'm glad you mentioned that because on slide 10 of your most recent deck,
And this is a deck that dates back, well, because I don't have your new one. This is a May 20, 25 one. You actually mentioned the term Golden Dome. Leaders start work on Golden Dome. Are you doing our equivalent of the Golden Dome in our country?
Jim, we have many, many of the pieces of the puzzle for an effective and successful adoption and implementation of the Golden Dome. For example, we're currently the winner of a $1.7 billion program record with the Space Force to modernize the laser communications and directed RF communication of all of our satellites in the space.
The same technology is critical and essential to a Golden Dome solution. We have the software solution and AI capability to that. We have the lethality and kinetic capability, directed energy solutions, counter drone solutions. All of these things that we have fits into the overall priorities of the US Department of Defense as well as the Golden Dome. We are here ready.
And the best thing about the whole thing, Jim, is that unlike many other players in our industry, we have the production capacity to deliver now. And we've been doing it for several years. That's a really key differentiator for us. No, look, I think that these are all important because I know every time that you and I have been together, I have seen the stock drop.
And every single time I've had to tell people that you've got to use this opportunity because of your backlog, because of your technology, because of who you can stop and what you can do. For instance, right now, a lot of people are gripped by the idea of the Chinese drone mothership. This is the mothership that's filled with so many drones that they're going to overwhelm our country. When I listen to you, I think that perhaps it's overdramatic to state that that would be doing that.
Very much the case. I mean, the capabilities that we have, we've purpose-built our company to meet the needs of our defense industry, our national security, and our allies. The amount of investments that needs to be directed and shifted from traditional systems to our capabilities and our type of robotic systems is enormous. Over the next several years, you can see the priorities of the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense, the White House, the Congress, all
all align with our priorities and our capabilities. We represent basically two-thirds to three-quarters of the US DoD's priorities in terms of our product sets. That is an incredible position to be in. And we are delivering year after year in terms of profitable, top-line, double-digit growth. And we're poised for a lot more to come in the future. I think we're positioned better than ever before in the history of our company to be able to capitalize on this
this very seismic shift that is going to be taking place in the next several years in our industry. Well, I'm so glad you say that because I know there are a lot of people who are gripped with fear right now about the possibility of what drones can do. I know you've got Titan 4, which I think sounds terrific. That's a recently launched Titan 4 for next gen unmanned aerial system and detecting and defeating drone threats. So you are getting ahead of this issue.
We have the most capable solution out there that is being deployed today operationally. That is a layered approach to counter UAS or counter drones. First is the detection, then RF jamming. That's the Titan IV product that we announced.
And then it's directed energy. And then if all those do not work, eventually you can also get to a kinetic defeat system, which is a switchblade or a high speed, high velocity weapon system such as our Freedom Eagle 1, which is right now poised for a program of record with the U.S. Army. So absolutely, we have the solution set to be able to address these issues. We have...
It selectively and deliberately have invested in areas over the last decade to enable us to be in a position that we are today. We're very fortunate because we made the right decisions to position ourselves to be in a great, great position for the prosperity that is going to be coming our way in the next several years in our industry. Well, I know I care about the stock, but I'm also an American citizen. I care about what you said about the economy.
the strength that you may be bringing to us for something that, again, has many people concerned because it's just so prevalent when we read about Ukraine, when we read about the Mideast. And again, I also think that you are perfectly positioned for this moment. All you did during this interview was make me feel even strongly about that position. That's Waheed Nawabi. He's the chairman and president and CEO of AVAV. We've seen the stock go down before. What do I tell you to do? It won't be any different this time. Thank you, Wade. Good to see you.
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As the averages rebound in response to a possible detente in the Middle East, we're now back to levels last seen in February, before the whole market got derailed by President Trump's tariff agenda. Four months ago, everyone was really ready to give up on all speculative stocks that have been flying lately. People were eager to throw in the towel on anything connected to artificial intelligence, with the whole AI complex getting crushed until the market-wide bottom in early April. But now all these groups are on fire again. It's like the tariff turmoil and the open conflict with Iran never happened.
Throughout this period, including at the top of tonight's show, I always told you that nothing had really changed on the business side, that the AI bull market was just as strong as it was in January, if not stronger. I thought it made no sense to give up on such a powerful story, which meant the AI stocks got cheaper as they went lower. And now we know that was true. So today I want to think about what it means to say that we have a long-term bull market in artificial intelligence, one that can get knocked down, but like Chumbawamba, gets back up again.
That's why we're going off the charts with Joe Fammi. He's the portfolio manager at Zora Capital LLC. He's also the founder of JoeFammi.com Education because he's got a unique take on the situation.
When you look back, we've had a bull market in all things AI going back to late 2022, early 2023. You can argue about the exact start date, but certainly by May of 2023, the AI revolution was upon us because that's when NVIDIA, the backbone of artificial intelligence, delivered one of the greatest earnings reports I've ever seen. And aside from a detour earlier this year, the stocks never really looked back.
We know that in terms of money-making potential, AI is more of an enterprise technology than a consumer technology. But Fahmy points out that ChatGPT was still the fastest application to reach 100 million users in history. ChatGPT got there in two months after it launched. TikTok took 13 months. Instagram, 26 months. Snapchat, 39 months. Facebook, 42 months.
I've been telling you that AI represents the next industrial revolution, and Fahmy sees it the same way. Just like railroads, personal computers, cell phones, the internet, AI can help us boost productivity, and higher productivity translates into higher stock prices across a whole host of industries. That's why he thinks it's safe to compare the AI bull market to the great internet boom from 1995 through early 2000. Normally, when someone makes a comparison to the dot-coms, they're implying that the bubble will burst and it will all end up in tears.
And it's true that dot-com collapse was terrible. But man, the late 90s gave us one of the greatest bull markets I've ever seen. People made fortunes, and they kept those fortunes as long as they were disciplined enough to ring the register on some big gains. Fomby wants to make this comparison more explicit. If the ad bull market is following in the footsteps of the dot-coms, then we've got two or three more years of incredible gains. Years! Take a look at a chart from Bespoke Investments comparing the action in the Nasdaq Composite
from the mid to late 90s in blue to the current moment in red. He starts this with the release of Netscape at the end of 1994. This first chart shows you how the Nasdaq roared in the first three years following the launch of Netscape, which is a real game changer in terms of Internet access. Fahmy says if you look at the AI bull market from the launch of ChatGPT, their trajectories, well, they're kind of ridiculously similar.
Now, here's another chart that shows you how things played out for the NASDAQ composite in the five years following the launch of Netscape. So if FOMI is even partially right, we could have a lot more gains in the AI cohort over the next two or three years.
Of course, that doesn't mean you should go all in AI here. Even though 1995 and 2000 was one of the greatest poor markets in history, there was insane volatility along the way. For instance, in late 1997, we witnessed a horrific, horrific correction thanks to the East Asian currency crisis. In the summer of 1998, we took a beating from the Russian debt default and the collapse of a highly levered hedge fund. It was called long term capital management.
Take a look at how the S&P 500 traded in 1998. Okay, it's really important because we had a terrible summer followed by a terrible fall.
The market only recovered after the Federal Reserve stepped in with an emergency rate cut in October of that year. 1998 was so bad, I'd almost put my hedge fund out of business. But then we came roaring back. The S&P raised all of its losses by December. And 1999 was one of the best years on record. So even if FOMI is right that we're in the middle of a five-year bull market in AI, one that could last until 2027, we're still going to see plenty of corrections, some shakeouts, some pullbacks along the way. In fact, we just escaped from one, didn't we?
Tommy points out that coming out of the correction in late April of this year, we caught an incredibly bullish technical signal. It's called a Zwei breath thrust. Getting there from my late hero, Marty Zwei. This is when the 10-day moving average of the percentage of advancing stocks goes from below 40% to above 61.5% within the 10 trading days. When that happens, it shows a decisive change in momentum. You know, we've seen only 19 of these moments since World War II. And all
All 19 have led to above average returns over the next 12 months. Well, maybe we're going to join them, huh?
Fahmy also points out that there's been an insane level of call option buying, specifically call options, that expire in June and December of 2027. It's been happening in Amazon and Google, Nvidia, Tesla, Broadcom, ServiceNow. If the bulls are right, then these stocks can take up the entire market. We've seen that before, haven't we? At the same time, he notes that the VanEck Semiconductor ETF, the SMH, has been consolidating for the past year. That looks poised to break out to the upside, the consolidation upside.
Given that Nvidia has been roaring lately, while Taiwan Semi and Broadcom have also started working their way higher, he's feeling very bullish about the chipmakers. I also like the action in AMD and Marvell. Of course, this is not just about the bull market in AI. Whether or not the Fed cuts rates at its next meeting, it's very likely that rates will go lower over the next 12 to 24 months, not higher. And lower rates are almost always good for the broader stock market.
If the AI boom is really a sequel to the dot-com boom, then that's good for more than just the AI stocks. We had all sorts of big winners in the late 90s because people felt so good about the stock market. So here's the bottom line. The charges interpreted by Joe Fami suggest that the AI bull market is following closely in the footsteps of the dot-com boom, which would mean we've likely got two or three more years of gains, even if we definitely won't get there in a straight line. Keep
that in mind the next time something happens that makes you want to give up and sell everything. Let's go to Michael in New York. Michael. Hello, Jim. How are you? Booyah. Booyah, Michael. And I'm actually in Arizona, but I'm from the Bronx. I have a question concerning CrowdStrike. I purchased it in 2020. I'm up 649%. It got to 10%. I sold a third.
I got my principal back as well as a significant profit. It is back up to 8% of my holdings. Do I hold it or do I take more profit? Many disciplines involved here. Obviously, you exercised the first discipline that was terrific. Next discipline, you're a little bit too overweighted in CrowdStrike, but I do like CrowdStrike very much. Why don't you take it down a percent? Just take it down to 7%.
And then I think you let it go. It's a little bit more like what we do with the Travel Trust. We talk about again tomorrow at noon. But thank you for sharing that with us. You know, I think CrowdStrike is terrific. The charts interpreted by Joe Fami suggest that this AI bull market has a lot of similarities to the dotcom boom with some outsized gains still to come.
So just remember that the next time you want to give up and sell everything. Much more mad money here, including my sit-down with the CEO of MasterCard. Ma! I'll get engaged in what kind of disruptions these stable coins might be posing to the business, fresh off the company's annual shareholder name. Then, discipline will always trump conviction in the stock market. I'll tell you why it's more relevant now than ever. And of course, all your calls rapid-fire tonight's edition of The Lighting Round. So stay with Kramer.
Over the past couple of weeks, Visa and MasterCard, two of my favorite companies, have pulled back sharply from their all-time highs. Wall Street's suddenly worried about the whole payments industry might be threatened by advances in crypto, especially now that Congress looks like it'll pass this genius act, which establishes a framework for regulating stablecoins. Visa fell over 10 percent from its high set on June 11th to its low last Friday. MasterCard dropped more than 11 percent over the same period, though both stocks have rebounded this week. In part, that
But that's because there's no reason these companies can't deal in stablecoin, too. In fact, MasterCard already supports a bunch of them. This morning, I spoke with Visa CEO Ryan McNerney. And Ryan told me, I think, a story which made me feel like that you'd be nuts to be in this, frankly. And McNerney's a very smart guy. But I got another guy I want to hear from. This is Michael Meeback. He's the CEO of MasterCard. After the company's annual meeting earlier today to find out what he thinks. Mr. Meeback, welcome back to MadMoney.
Good to have me. Thank you. I'm happy to be back. I have to tell you,
I've gone from thinking that from the article that appeared a few weeks ago that Walmart and Amazon might be coming after you to thinking maybe this is just all nothing, all much ado about nothing. And I say that having spoken to Mr. McInerney this morning, but also reading all the things that you say. You're happy to be in stable coin if people want it. But does anybody really want it?
In a way, yes. But let's take a step back. Let's take a step back. So when you think about what we do as a company, it's kind of all relevant payment choices. Somebody wants to be paid or pay with a debit card, credit card, prepaid, whatever, you name it, we have it. And as of late, that does include stablecoin. There are some use cases where stablecoin does add some value. So
There are niche opportunities, but let's think about why that is and what is new about stablecoins. So fundamentally, if you look at innovation in payments, it always comes down to a couple of central things. People got to trust it. They got to understand what is it doing. It's going to be simple and it's going to be secure. That's the standard for debit, credit, prepaid. Everything has ever happened. Buy now, pay later, you name it. So stablecoins in itself is a rail.
So we have leaned in because we said, OK, it actually does help with some use cases. Let's take its cross-border payments. But we can add our safety, our security, our trust that people feel they want to use it. So we've invested in technology for the last 10 years. So it's starting to become a potential driver of payment innovation in the future. And we're at the head of it.
Well, should I be worried if I'm a MasterCard shareholder that countries that have very unstable currencies might have people who want to use this product, use stablecoin, and therefore may disintermediate the exchange fee, the interchange fee that you get?
So from a MasterCard perspective, you know, if you take the basic stable coin, you still have the need for safety, security. You still have the need for our cybersecurity, all the protections. And that doesn't come for free. That can't be free. We're investing in that. And therefore, there is a value to be brought. So very clearly, we are needed to make sure that stable coins will become a part of the fabric of the payments ecosystem. And now how about this Fiserv partnership, which is a very knowledgeable company?
So what we're going to do with Fiserv is basically make it easier for traditional financial institutions who are now also getting interested in stable kinds to offer these to their customers. So Fiserv is at the back end of banking ecosystems. They will help facilitate that in partnership with us.
One good example of that is the MasterCard One credential. So it's an opportunity for a consumer to choose at the moment of transaction, do you want to use credit, debit, or now stable coins? So we do this together with Pfizer. Okay, so let's talk about actual business. To me, the... What do we know about this? MasterCard is still a cash to plastic. That's not changed. But what has changed is that countries that have massive adoption of plastic...
you're taking share in. So it's not just like, well, wait a second, the whole world has gone already to Plastic. That's totally untrue. It's also not true that there are whole categories where it's still cash, not Plastic. This is still the great secular growth story of all time. It's a tremendous opportunity. It remains to be. You know, we, as an industry, we've been really good at digitizing cash and checks. Right.
But if you look at it today, just take the US, $3 trillion cash in checks as an opportunity. And we haven't even started to talk about commercial payments, B2B, small business. You know, there's a tremendous opportunity there. So the secular growth opportunity remains.
We're differentiated versus anybody else out there in terms of geographic coverage. So we can help going after this opportunity in places like Asia, in emerging markets everywhere. So that's a big part of it. But what's also changing is the nature of the digital economy. So it's not just cash and checks. There's a whole, you know, take the ride share opportunity. What used to be maybe one taxi ride.
is a bunch of payments you pay the driver, you pay Uber and the people who's actually taking the ride is another payment so it's a multitude of transactions and our business model is about transactions as well as volume so here's an ever-growing digital economy and we have a tremendous growth opportunity in the long run. See when I listen to these things and I've got the stablecoin in the back of my mind I just don't think that I want to take a risk
of anyone have my information unless I've got somebody like MasterCard who backs me up. If I'm just out there freelancing with stablecoin, who do I call?
Well, so here's the role that we take. It's a very simple rail in the middle. Our protections take cybersecurity, data protection, anything, zero liability, fraud, you name it. We put it around the transaction. That's the value that we bring. But it's by itself. Stablecoins cannot do that. They can move money from A to B. We do a lot more than that. All right. So what we're concerned about right now, as the Fed spoke today, Vince, is that things are slowing.
I don't detect from your numbers that things are slowing. They're not. So take the headlines, take the sentiment analysis, consumer sentiment, one thing. And that is, you know, we've seen some concerns there among consumers. But if you look at actual consumer spending, actual behavior, very solid to the end of April data that we reported.
So, we have said to the market that we don't see that changing in the near term. You know, if you look at some of the, there's some minor changes. For example, travel from Europe to the U.S., there was a little bit of, you know, downdraft there, but, you know,
Are people sitting at home? No. They're going to just travel somewhere else. So here's basket changes, slightly different positions overall. The factors that support consumer spending is wage growth. Employment remains rock solid. See, and if you're the Fed, and listening to you, and I know you have the best data in the world, I understand why J-PAL is not just so quick to say, listen, we got a cut.
Yeah. Things are not as dire as the media makes it out to be. They're not. They're not. It does not show in the hard data. It might show in the headlines. Well, if you don't mind, I'm going to go with the hard data over the headlines. I'm with you. Very good. That's Michael Meeback, CEO of MasterCard. And, mate, you know, everyone knows I've liked this stock forever. And I just, well, it's been right to like forever. We'll be right back after the break.
It is time. It's time for the lightning round. And then the lightning round is over. Are you ready? It's time for the lightning round. It's time for Jess in Nebraska. Jess. Big booyah, Jim, from Lincoln, Nebraska. I'm a big fan. Thank you so much, Jess. Thank you. How can I help you?
I really like TMC's business model and would like your thoughts, please. Okay, heavily speculative stock. And as I said a couple of months ago, I've changed my view on this. If I think that a stock can go up on a headline, I'm going to prevent people from doing. You can be that. You can keep that speculative stock. I'm fine. Let's go to Larry in Illinois. Larry. Hi, Jim. I'm interested in Six Flags. Should I buy some fun this summer? Don't be interested in it. I don't like theme parks other than Disney. Let's go to George in California. George.
Thank you for taking my call. This is George from California. I would like to give your outlook on MP material. Okay, I've always liked MP. It's just very recently people realized that it's got great rare earth potential. Lutensky's done a good job. It keeps losing money. That's unacceptable, but you can own the stock. Let's go to Robert in Delaware. Robert.
Hi, Jim. I love you and I love your show. I also love how you get into it with David Saber on Squawk. He's a good man. Great TV. He's a good man. Give him and Carl a shout out for me. Best trio on TV, bar none. All right. Thank you. That's very nice. Thank you. My question.
You're welcome. I love you guys. My question is, DJT, given the fact that they are now positioned well in Bitcoin, do you see a short squeeze coming soon? Well, I can't really anticipate a short squeeze because I don't know. You've got 12% short position. It could be maybe. The real short squeezes have occurred, sir, when it gets to about 25, 30. I think below that, then you're kind of on your own with the fundamentals. Let's go to Brett in Florida. Brett. Hello. Go ahead, Brett. It's Jim.
How you doing? All right. How are you doing? Fantastic. All right. How about a stock? Jim BWX Technologies. All right. That's nuclear. And again, like, you know, nuclear. I'm not going to fight anyone who wants to do nuclear stock. I'm going to bless it, even though it's a very, very big. Let's go to David, Illinois. Dave.
Dr. Kramer, I don't know whether I should be more envious of your recent trip to Vancouver Island with your two lovely daughters or your monumental achievement of delivering 20 solid years of mad money with Jim Kramer. And I thank you for your kind shout out, by the way. They're both hard fought, and I thank you for recognizing them. And how can I help you, Dave? Jim, my stock today is J. Bill Inc. This is
J. Bill is so terrific that even though it's up on a spike date, I am again going to bless it. Why? Because it only sells at 22-ton journeys. And it's the kind of company you need to deal with right now. They'll understand all the tariff problems and they'll help you. Let's go to Ian in Florida. Ian. Hey, Jim. How are you doing? I'm doing well, Ian. How about you? I'm doing excellent. Thanks. Third time caller and investment club member. Yes. See you tomorrow. There are 12 noon coffers. Absolutely. Looking forward to it.
Jim, I wanted to ask you, what do you think about this company and is it a good time to possibly enter? It's ACHR, Archer Aviation. Okay, Archer and Joby. Again, I'm going with them. Why? Because a news headline and it can be up 25%. That's what I'm looking for these days. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the conclusion of the lightning round.
The firm's been busy lately putting through a lot of your calls about speculative stocks. I don't mind. I actually like it. You can make a lot of money speculating. But remember, you haven't really made any money until you sell something. It's all conjecture otherwise. No matter how much you love these speculative winners, you don't have a gain until you actually ring the registrar.
At the end of last week, for example, HIMS and HERS Health, the online health care company, was trading at $64. But then yesterday, the stock fell $22 for almost 35% decline. The cause? The company had to deal with Novo Nordisk to sell its miracle weight loss drug, Wegovi. Novo canceled the deal, charging HIMS and HERS with deceptive marketing, something the company vigorously disputes. Now, I don't want to go into the particulars here.
because I don't care about the particulars. What I care about is that this stock had almost tripled in two months. If you want hims and hers up almost 200% and you hadn't sold any of that point,
you were being a knucklehead. Why? Because this is one of the most heavily shorted stocks in the market. 35% of the shares sold short. A lot of people betting against the haters are plentiful. In that situation, the stock can erupt on any good news. And there was a lot of good news when HIMS was making money with the Wigovie deal. But a lot of those gains came on the backs of the short sellers who were forced to cover or buy back the shares they sold short because they couldn't take the
The House of Pay. That's why when a stock goes up that fast and there's a big short position, you've got to generate some discipline here. You've got to let discipline trump your conviction. Meaning you have to take something off the table. It's not a case of suddenly hating a stock that you love. It's simply that the gains don't count until you ring the register. You can love a stock and still sell some of it. Gradually selling your winners on the way up is responsible money management.
Now, this kind of thing is happening all over the place right now. A little worrisome. Take CoreWeave. This is the company that came public at $40 a share, a company I recommended and pushed incredibly hard to. People didn't believe me. Many chose to bet against the stock. 32% of the shares are sold short. On Friday, CoreWeave had a high of $187. Stock still sits at $172 and change. Sure, it reported a great quarter. But a lot of this move is because so many people were betting against it. Because the company picked a bad time to come public.
I had tremendous conviction that Corby would make a big move, but not this big. Again, I think discipline must trump conviction, and you've got to do some selling here. Sell, sell, sell, sell. While I still like the stock, I recognize that much of this move was powered by Panic short sellers. Take something off the table, please. Finally, there's Circle Internet Group. Again, I have conviction that this company has a bright future in the red-hot stablecoin market. But I care about the stock price, not just the company.
Less than three weeks ago, Circle Internet came public at $31. It's now at $222 and change. And that's after a 15% decline today. You may think you've made a fortune in this one. However, you've made nothing until you ring the register. I'm not questioning your conviction. I'm questioning your sanity. How can you not at least take your cost basis out? You can let the rest run. That way you're playing with the house's money.
That's the ideal place to be because you'll never lose. Look, I know a lot of stocks are going nuts here. It's sensational. Some of these moves are short squeezes. Others are because of over-exuberance. The last thing you want to hear is some old geezer telling you how to sell part of your position.
Know this, though. I want you to make money. And you can't do that until you sell at least some of your position. So tomorrow, examine your spec winners and ring the register on at least part of those positions. Go buy yourself that you've always wanted or put it in the bank so you don't give it back.
Don't worry, I'm not saying sell the entire position. You can keep your favorite stocks. I'm not going against them. But remember, you haven't made a dime until you ring the register on part of your position. Then and only then can we say you made money in a hims and hers or a Corweave or a Circle Internet Group. I like to say there's always a bull market somewhere. And I promise to try to find it just for you right here on Bad Money. I'm Jim Cramer. See you tomorrow.
All opinions expressed by Jim Cramer on this podcast are solely Cramer's opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC, NBCUniversal, or their parent company or affiliates, and may have been previously disseminated by Cramer on television, radio, internet, or another medium.
You should not treat any opinion expressed by Jim Cramer as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. Cramer's opinions are based upon information he considers reliable, but neither CNBC nor its affiliates and or subsidiaries warrant its completeness or accuracy, and it should not be relied upon as such. To view the full Mad Money Disclaimer, please visit cnbc.com forward slash madmoneydisclaimer.
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