Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 7/1/25
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Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Kramerica. Do you want to make friends? Look, I'm just trying to make you a little money. My job. Not just to entertain, but to educate and to teach you. So call me at 1-800-743-CNBC. Tweet me at Jim Kramer.

You are witnessing, or I hope participating in, one of the most equal opportunity bull markets I have ever seen. After allowing the data center power providers and the Palantirs to run free for the first half, this market has discovered the likes of Home Depot, Builders First Source, Toll Brothers, and Lenore, and a host of other stocks that can keep going up for many a day and still be nowhere because they've been such laggards.

It's the best kind of bull market, the kind that broadens to new sectors, which explains how this new group of winners could allow the Dow to gain 400 points as we dip 0.11 percent. NASDAQ declined 0.82 percent. A lot of the winners from the first half of that NASDAQ. I got to tell you, I'm Jones on a dual track right now. All aboard. I look, I kind of can quote your chapter versus your analysis of the tape.

Some would say it's the two year, the tenure, the chairman pal rate cut dilemma slash presidential rank. There, that's a ticket for them. Or I can say that we have an idea generated market. And today's ideas stem from the Senate passing this budget bill that has some good things about housing. So newer, less jaded buyers say, OK, that sounds convincing. So let's go buy anything. Housing. Yes, that's how these more novice buyers think.

And they've got the money, the money that used to be ours. They didn't steal it. We are experiencing $100 trillion wealth transfer from baby boomers to Gen X, Y, and Zers. And they're cutting their teeth on stocks right now, doing just what I'm telling you.

It's easy to spot housing wind extended to beating down stocks like the Target or Kohl's. I'm not a fan of Kohl's, but I am a fan of Target. And the new buyers, the people who aren't trapped by Fed dogma, know that there's fundamental worth to Target. And it's probably higher than here. You don't need to worry about what that's worth truly is yet because we're nowhere near when Target reports. It also bodes well for the bank.

any banks, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and my favorite right now is Capital One. Now that Capital One has merged with Discover, its stock has potential to keep climbing because it's put together a credit card powerhouse, and I know it's up a lot, but it can go higher. Plus, now that the banks have all passed the Fed's stress test, they're aggressively raising their dividends. Tonight, after the close, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, said they plan to put through 8% dividend boosts,

Wells Fargo, a stock that's owned and beloved by my charitable trust, put into a 12.5% one. Many more are on the way. This kind of analysis sounds so lacking in sophistication, so pedestrian, doesn't it?

Am I seriously suggesting that stocks are poised to go higher without a thorough analysis of Chairman Powell's brainwaves? Yes. Why? Because this is a pedestrian market that does lack any sophistication to begin with. So if the Senate's version of the big, beautiful budget bill, which makes the mortgage deduction permanent, ends up passing, then it's obvious you should be buying the housing stocks because this market is run by Captain Obvious. And you can get ahead of Captain Obvious.

Throw in that there's a buyer of anything house related, a vehicle called QXO run by Brad Billionaire Jacobs, hostile or not. And you got a pretty darn good story.

Of course, some of the rallies, nothing more than the left behind stocks playing catch up. The drug stocks had a rare day in the sun. I wish I had something good to say about them. Maybe it's enough to say that Bristol Myers has a faint pulse, one that lasted until the end of the session. Merck looks good on the charts. Oh, and as painful as it might be, we have food stocks going higher. I spy Hershey's up huge. Heaven forbid Kraft Heinz is higher.

Now that we've identified the distinctly counter trend rally, one that could last for a bit of time, let's consider what the best breed of those industries are so maybe we can do some buying still. Housing. We're going with Toll Brothers, which had a magnificent quarter and is so well run by Doug the Bomb yearly that I see no reason to stray from this high end home builder. There's something soothing about buying a company that makes million dollar homes when the people who can afford these homes just got an enormous tax cut.

The retail rally is a little more difficult. You might want to shoot the moon and buy Dick's Sporting Goods, betting that the Nike Turn could benefit them now that they're acquiring Foot Locker. But the stock just ran up 30 points on that news. I say go with Home Depot. I know that the last time they just made GMS materials for professional contractors seems a tad hasty.

But the SRS deal from last year seems to be working out well. Home Depot is more than just a story company. It's a company that reinvents itself regularly, has a strong culture. This time it's really going for the professional, the contractor. More important, it almost always works.

Long term, you really don't want to bet against this one. Let me give you another one that has a 3% yield and has just completed a dynamite acquisition. Contour Brands, the maker of Wrangler and Lee jeans, which did miss the quarter not that long ago. But bear with me here. I was with my daughters in British Columbia two weeks ago for some hiking, birding, cold plunging and helicopter fishing.

It was cold and rainy, just like we like it. We bought all sorts of layers, but not enough of them. So we had to borrow clothes from the resort owner and we borrowed what we affectionately called Helly R's clothes.

which are actually Helly Hansen's. That's a fantastic clothing brand just purchased by Contour Brands. I cannot believe they practically stole this one for something like $900 million. The exact price is not disclosed. I think the acquisition transformed this company and makes up for any mistakes by Wrangler or Lee on the way. I think they should call the company Helly Hansen. You want consumer packaged goods? Well, then that's easy. Buy Procter & Gamble because the dollar's been incredibly weak and the company's the principal beneficiary of the S&P 500 of a weaker dollar.

They sell a ton of merchandise overseas and suddenly got a lot more competitive. Food's too hard here, although the sightseers always seem to glom on to Mondelez. And that's how to play the counter-trend rally. But what do we do with the very different set of winners for the first half?

Once you consider the G-Vernovas and the Halmets and the Palantirs, the stocks are likely to finish the year dramatically higher from these exalted levels. What do you do with the stocks that have been on a run nonstop for 26 weeks, though? I think you send them on one of those two-week vacations like that Southeast Asia or Cape Town, maybe New Zealand. You pay no attention to them. Let them have a good time. Just take them off your screen and come back to them when the rotations run its course.

Okay, there's one that's not like that, though. Palantir. I think Palantir, it's taken a rare dip. This one's actually more of a shorter vacation. Palantir is going on a staycation. I say it can be bought starting in three days. Monday morning, buy some Palantir. Then after that, you can go over the power generators. Go for the power generators. Remember Palantir. I said when it's at 50, it says it's going to 100. When it's at 100, it says it's going to 200. Stick it by that.

tech really hard. There's a lot of bad shareholders in these stocks, like the people who dumped NVIDIA and Meta earlier this year without regard for the fundamentals of the people who dumped NVIDIA today without any sort of intelligence whatsoever. And Tesla, total dice roll. We have no idea what Elon Musk and the man in the White House, who may be the best name callers since me when they called me the needler in college, are going to do.

are going to do. But they sure don't seem like they're on great terms. So my plan is to have the president give Elon the right to have driverless cars in the interstate

I'm calling that plan shelved. But moral, there are usually ways to make a lot of money, but it's really fun to talk about Elon. Here's the bottom line. If this counter trend rally continues, so many stocks that sat out the first half will keep running while this year's big winners go through a temporary cooling off period, except for Palantir, which has a three day cooling off period. More on that later. Let's go to Drew in Idaho. Drew. Booyah, Jim. How are you? Jimmy Chill says he's good. How about you?

Doing great. First of all, I want to thank you and your team for having me on. They're a pleasure to talk to on the way to talking to you. The team's good. I'm looking at the team right now. There's like three of us. I love them. They're great. And thank you for the investing club. It's made such a huge difference these last few years. Jeff and I are working. Jeff was off yesterday. It was really hard for me to do the 1020. I found myself just rambling and talking to myself. I'm sorry. But let's go to work together. Yeah.

I missed him. So I heard you talk about this one on the monthly meeting last week. I picked up a few shares after earnings a few weeks ago. It's agent force product is really compelling, but it's still been dead money since I bought it. How do you solve a problem like Salesforce? Okay, here's the problem with Salesforce. There are two sales forces. There's agent force, which is doing very well. And then there's the rest of Salesforce. And all I hear about over and over again is,

is that business is doing poorly. That's why I've not added to the position. I need to see the quarter. It has been a... Sorry, Mark, but I've got to call him as I see him. That's kind of me. Anyway, this is one of the most equal opportunity bull marks I've ever been a part of. Make sure that somehow you're a part of it, too.

Don't think it's unsophisticated. Just think it's what's happening. On MadMoney tonight, there's a lot you can learn from the winners and losers in this tape. So today I'm identifying the top five and bottom five performers in the S&P 500 for the first half of the year. Got to make sense of what's happening here. Then, Generac shares have been on a tear since the April lows, but it's still down for the year.

We've got to find out what's going on there. And I brought you Fang. Another guy I like, a guy from Bank of America brought you Magnificent 7. I was a day late because I was too busy thinking about whether it was Yul Brynner or Stephen Queen. I couldn't figure out what was going on. But tonight I'm revealing a new acronym of the stock that made it through this tough quarter. I'll reveal it. Stay with Kramer.

Don't miss a second of Mad Money. Follow at Jim Kramer on X. Have a question? Tweet Kramer. Hashtag Mad Mentions. Send Jim an email to madmoneyatcnbc.com or give us a call at 1-800-743-CNBC. Miss something? Head to madmoney.cnbc.com.

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The first half of 2025 is officially over, and it's been a wild ride. Let's learn. The market got obliterated in early April thanks to the press's Liberation Day tariff announcements. But stocks casually came roaring back as most of those tariffs got postponed, eliminated. In the end, the Dow finished the first half up 3.6%. S&P and Nasdaq both rallied 5.5%. Not bad. Finishing the second quarter at record highs.

Of the major averages, only the small cap focus Russell 2000 was still in the red for the year. Remember how everyone said to buy those?

So now that we've reached the third quarter and the market's still in pretty good shape, it's worth looking back at the biggest winners and losers of the first half because I think they're emblematic of what's working and what's not. Let's start with the top five best performers of the 5500. After the break, I'll give you the stinkers. The biggest winner of the first half was, of course, Palantir Technologies, the government enterprise software company with a stock that's beloved by individual investors.

It finished the first six months of the year up more than 80%. The skeptics will point to Palantir's nosebleed valuation. I mean, this is now a $308 billion company. Trades at a mere 225 times this year's earnings estimates.

Or the fact that very few people can articulate what their software really does. But that's par for the course with enterprise software stories. And Palantir's got tremendous growth with surprisingly high margins. Just as important, the people who run the company are simpatico with the Trump administration, especially the Defense Department. Good way to win business. They want to change the Defense Department in a way that I think you and I might want. But they'll just say it in a potty mouth way.

Palantir is now a $130 stock, and I've said for a while now that it's headed to $200. Not because of the fundamentals, but because that's how momentum stocks behave. Just remember, if you got huge gains in this one, those gains don't count until you ring the register or part of the position. Take something off the table. Let the rest run.

Playing with the house is money. Next up is NRG Energy, which was the second best performer, up 78%. This Houston-based power generation utility is roaring thanks to the insatiable demand for electricity in the year of AI data centers. Lately, these power generation utilities have been huge winners. I mean, we saw it with Constellation Energy, Vistra. It's happened again with NRG. How?

However, NRG is only partly an independent power producer. The company also has a residential utility as well as a home solar business. And as the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, it makes a lot of money from derivatives trading. I'm not crazy about that. But it makes NRG more like an energy trading hedge fund in some respects. I'm not crazy about that either.

Which brings me to the other reason the stock's having a great year. Back in May, Energy announced it's acquiring a handful of natural gas-fueled power plants, along with some other assets from LS Power. The deal's valued at $12 billion, though that's in cash and stock and the assumption of debt. Energy's stock jumped 26% the day the deal was announced, and it's gotten a bit more since then because Wall Street loves the fact that they're doubling down on power generation. Also costs a lot of shorts to cover because they were just in there to believe that it was just a big hedge fund.

In third place, we've got another familiar name, Halmet Aerospace. That's a Perseic aircraft component supplier, I think, screws, that we affectionately call How I Met Your Mother. I don't know why, but we do. It's with a 70% gain in the first half. This one's straightforward. Halmet's caught fire because we've got a raging bull market in aerospace. Hey, by the way, GE Aerospace was the ninth best performing ESP during the first half. It was up 54%.

Right now, the demand for new planes is off the charts, but supplies are limited. And we might see even more orders as President Trump conducts his trade negotiations all over the globe. Because buying a few jets from Boeing is the ultimate olive branch when you're in a trade war with the United States. Aerospace is just a great place to be. If you don't have any already, please get yourself some exposure. In fourth place, there's, this is an amazing one, Seagate technology, of all things, up 67% in the first half, after more than doubling from its lows in April. Seagate makes 100%.

hard drives and flash-based solid-state drives, basically storage hardware, the textbook commodity tech product. But right now, the hard drive business is booming. And the company announced a $5 billion buyback a little over a month ago while projecting mid-teens revenue growth through 2028. That's not bad. This one's a reflection of the AI data center bull market. As long as people are building these big warehouses full of servers, they need everything that goes into a server, including storage, even if the lineage is ancient.

We had a big scare earlier this year with all that deep-seek nonsense, but once companies began reporting in April, it became clear that deep-seek had no impact on anything, and stocks like Seagate have been making up for lost time ever since. Can it keep running? Look, if data center demand stays strong, it wouldn't surprise me, even as this one's just made a new all-time high today.

Finally, in fifth place for the first half of the year, we've got GE Vernova, Kramer Fave, the power business that was spun off by the old General Electric about 15 months ago. This stock was up 61 percent in the first half of the year, and it's given you a more than 250 percent gain since it started independently trading in April of last year. Now, GE Vernova's got a couple of things going for it.

First, they make turbines for power plants, which makes this another huge beneficiary of the AI data center theme, because we're desperate for new power generation in this country in terms of natural gas into power. Second, as Vernova's CEO Scott Strasek told us when he came on the show in late April, his company could see some real benefits from trade tensions. Just like Boeing's planes, GE Vernova's turbines are big ticket items that cost tens of millions of dollars each. People say they're about $50 million on average. The

The Trump administration wants a lot of countries to reduce their trade surpluses with the United States. And buying a bunch of natural gas turbines is an easy way to make that happen. I've liked GE Vranova since before it was spun out of GE, and I see no reason to turn bearish now. Sure, the stock's expensive, trading at roughly 72 times this year's earnings estimates, which is why a couple of analysts have downgraded it from buy to hold in recent weeks. But the scale of the opportunity is enormous, and the story seems almost tailor-made for this moment.

Look, over time, I bet you Renova can continue to grind higher. Count me as a buyer for the trust. Here's the bottom line. Looking back at the top five performers in the S&P 500 for the first half, it's kind of a mix of representation of representatives from the market's top themes, AI data center, and you can help them keep the lights on. Plus the red hot bull market in aerospace. And of course, the unique momentum story that is Palantir. I said 50 to 100. Then I said 100. I said 200. I'm sticking by that.

These winners can teach us a great deal, but there's just as much to learn from the market's worst performers, which is what we'll be looking at after the break. That money is back after the break. Coming up, you've heard about the S&P's best performers so far in 2025. But what about the worst performers? Kramer's going bottom fishing to see if there's any bargains among the group. Next.

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Today we're looking back at what worked and what didn't in the first half of the year. For the break, I covered the top five performers in the S&P 500 over the past six months. But you can often learn a lot more from the losers than you can from the winners, which is why I want to walk you through the worst five performers in the S&P over the same period.

While some of these will stay losers, others could potentially be buying opportunities as long as you know how to tell the difference. The biggest loser in the S&P 500 in the first half was Decker's Brands, down 49%. Now, this company was the parent of Uggs, Hoka, and Teva. You spilled on my face! Hoka's a terrific sneaker brand. And from the end of 2019 to the end of 2024, this stock shot up 622%.

But now Decker's has nearly been cut in half over the last six months, in part because the whole consumer discretionary category has become much less attractive given the global trade war. And in part because when Decker's reported in late May, their guidance was awful and growth at the key Hoka brand slowed dramatically. So investors simply gave up on this one.

But is Decker's really all that bad? Is it a lost cause? I'm not ready to throw in the towel. Why? First off, the stock's got incredibly cheap. It now sells for just 17 times this year's earnings estimates. While I don't like that the earnings are on track to decline this year, I'm also cognizant of the fact that Decker's has beaten the earnings estimates for 14 consecutive quarters, usually by a substantial amount. So maybe it won't be a down year.

However, I feel a lot more confident in Decker's comeback. If we can somehow get some clarity on President Trump's tariffs, these guys do a ton of manufacturing in Vietnam. And we don't know if Vietnam will end up with a baseline 10 percent tariff or something close to the 46 percent tariff that the president proposed on Liberation Day.

Next, the second worst performing S.P. through June was Enphase Energy. That's a solar power play with its stock down 42 percent. Now, this one is just political. The solar industry relies on tax credits, but the big, beautiful bill that just passed the Senate will cut those tax credits starting in a couple of years.

Doesn't help that Enphase reported the latest in a long line of weak quarters in late April. This was once one of the greatest growth stories around. Now it's basically untouchable as the fundamentals stink and the regulatory backdrop is likely to get much worse for the company. Sadly, the solar industry has become a partisan football. The third worst performer was, wow, United Health Group.

Suddenly very troubled managed care company that used to be the ultimate darling in the group. It's down 38 percent in the first half. United Health's troubles are very well documented. I'm not even talking about the assassination last December, as terrible as that was. The real trouble started in April when the company reported a weak quarter dragged down by high utilization rates, meaning people are getting much more health care than UNH only needs to pay for.

What's starting to become clear is that the company made some major missteps with its underwriting, especially with Medicare Advantage plans for seniors. They're far from the only one in the industry with this problem. But UNH might be the hardest hit. This is the largest player in the Medicare Advantage space with the most extensive data. And they really should have been able to avoid these mistakes. They almost always have.

But clearly they didn't. The company made a change in the top mid-May with CEO Andrew Witte stepping down for personal reasons. Turning around at UNH is now the job of Stephen Hemsley, whom I really like.

He was previously CEO from 2006 to 2017. And there's some nascent optimism that he can get this business back on track. But I don't necessarily think this will happen quickly. If you're inclined to bet on a UNH comeback, I suggest that you take it slowly because you've got all the time in the world. Actually, you might even want to wait to see the next quarter, which could be what we call a clearing event for the negatives. The fourth worst performer, wow, Lululemon Athletica.

The former athleisure kingpin, which suffered a nearly 38 percent decline in the first half. Lululemon struggling for some of the same reasons as Decker's. And that includes an excessive reliance on Vietnamese manufacturing, which we all thought people should be doing.

Back in late May, I told you that Lululemon might be due for a comeback, given how far its stock had fallen. That was a big mistake of mine. I guess I had too much reverence for the brand, and I thought the expectations were too low. No, turns out they weren't low enough. Lulu reported a stinker of a quarter last month, sending its stock down almost 20%.

in a single session, and it hasn't been able to find its footing since. Camugo come back now. Stock's certainly cheap, selling for less than 17 times this year's earnings estimates. But I just stuck my neck out on this one, only to have it chopped off.

At the end of the day, while Lulu pretty much invented the athleisure space, that business has become incredibly competitive. So until they can put up better numbers, Lulu's in the penalty box here. Finally, the fifth worst performer of the first half was Edison International. That's a regulated electric utility in Southern California. But the stock goes down 35%.

This year began with those horrific L.A. wildfires which took place in the company's service area. But that's not what truly crushed the stock. California utilities have all proven to be bad investments this year. I used to be a big fan of PG&E. That's the Northern California Gas and Electric Utility. Yet it was the ninth worst performer in the first half, down over 30 percent, even though it wasn't impacted by these wildfires at all. What's the issue in California?

Proposed regulations that were originally aimed at addressing affordability, but somehow morphed into a major regulatory overhaul. The bill in question, SB 254, would create a new regulatory authority, force utilities to take on debt to pay for fire mitigation capital, etc.,

efforts and other capital spending while also limiting their ability to recoup these costs by raising prices. Oh, man. The utilities would have even have to make an ongoing contribution to a state run wildfire insurance fund. The bill passed the California Senate last month, and it's still working its way through this. The state assembly. I don't want to get in the politics of this.

Obviously, it would be very bad for the utilities that do business in the state. If you buy something like Edison International here, you're betting that this bill dies in the next couple of weeks or gets vetoed by the governor. I personally wouldn't take that bet. So there you have it. Those were the five worst performers in the S&P 500 through the first half of the year. The bottom line, if you're looking for comebacks,

I think the best bet might be Decker's, the worst stock of the year, so far at least. Well, United Health has become a long-term turnaround story, and Lululemon needs to show us something before I can get behind it again. As for the other two, Edemface and Edison International, they're both caught in the political crossfire. The Democrats who run California are gunning for the utilities.

And the Republicans who currently run Washington are gunning for the renewable energy stocks. Like it or not, that's a real bad setup for any investment. Let's go to Chris in California. Chris! Mr. Kramer, Chris here. Thanks for bringing the energy and having me on the show. I sure try, Chris. Absolutely. I bring it every day. How can I help you?

First and foremost, Booyah! But seriously, though, what's your take on Intel? Great American company, but as you know, the stock fell in 24. This is an absolutely great question, because you know I used to be an Intel hawk, and then I told everyone to sell it for about 40 points. It's a great call by me. This Lip Bhutan, who took over

He's monster good. But I think even he is going to have to take another six months to a year before he can turn it around. If you're willing to wait that long, I bless it. But that's not what I think you should do. Let's go to Tom in Florida. Tom.

Hey, Jim, thanks for taking my call. Of course, Tom. I'm a third-time caller and dedicated Mad Money fan. Your comment this morning to David describing the current market as ideas-driven market struck me as right on. You could probably do a whole thing about that. Thank you. You know I'm alone on this. Remember what David said? David says, does anybody else agree with you? And I just said, well, I don't care.

You struck a note with me right on. But my idea, Doc, I've got a whole bunch of them, but the one I want to call on today is one I've been dollar-cost averaging into. It's Applovin. And can this company continue its fantastic revenue and free cash flow growth? And should I be adding on today's dip? Okay, the only thing I worry about is that I think, you know, the company can come in and challenge Applovin, but...

And if that happened, then I think you'd be in trouble because I don't think it's as nearly as proprietary as other people think. I know many companies that are gunning for them right now. And I want to be a little bit careful about that. But they're a very, very good company. Very good. All right. Listen to me. If you're looking for a comeback, I might I think the best bet is going to be Decker's.

Otherwise, keep your eye on the teams that have been winning this year. They're all coming in now. Every one of them is going down. That might be the time to doing some buy, buy, buy when I tell you. Okay. Now, much more made money, including my season with Generac. While you think of generators, you probably think of bad weather, but Generac has an important job in the data center build out. I'm learning more about how it's positioned with the CEO.

Only three of the mega caps finished this first half around all-time highs. I think they deserve a new acronym. I'm going to reveal their names. And, of course, all your calls rapid-fire in tonight's edition of the Lightning Round. So stay with Kramer. ♪

Many stocks have rebounded like crazy since April, but not all of them are making new highs. Take Generac. That's the number one maker of home backup power generators that also has a very big business making batteries for renewable energy and protects the data centers. This stock sold off along with everything else earlier this year, but when the company reported in April, they knocked it out of the park.

Since then, the stock's rallied nearly 30 percent, but it's still down more than 5 percent for the year. So does this thing still have room to run as we get closer to the worst part of hurricane season? Let's check in with Aaron Yagfeld. He's the chairman, president, CEO of Generac. To find out, Mr. Yagfeld, welcome back to Mad Money. Thanks for having me, Jim. OK, so we are heading into hurricane season and we also have consumers that obviously are more worried than ever about fires, particularly in California. So what's the tenor of business right now?

Yeah, so our residential business has actually been quite resilient. You know, I think, as we've said before, general economic concerns obviously weigh on everybody. But when your power's out, you tend to reprioritize your spending, right, especially at the household level. So protecting your family, protecting your home, you know, whether it's a wildfire in California, shutting the power off there for that type of a situation is

or a hurricane in the Gulf, you know, I think you've got homeowners who are, you know, they're genuinely concerned about the amount of damage that can happen and the amount of pain that can get inflicted on their family when the power's out. All right, so let me ask you, I know that you're...

I have one of yours, and it cost me about, candidly, about $10,000. Now, if I had to, I'd have to finance that. Obviously, we know from what President Trump says, financing costs are a little bit higher, maybe because of tariffs, maybe not. Are people able to get credit? Are people worried about finance charges?

Yeah, I think on the residential side, financing, you know, it does play a role in that business. It's not a huge component in terms of we have a lot of cash buyers. So, you know, our typical buyer would be somebody who maybe has their home already paid for. They're closer to retirement. They might be thinking about how to make their home, you know, more livable as they age. Right. So they tend to have cash.

access to more liquid funds. I think really where the interest rates can have a problem in our business is maybe even on our CNI side, more in the project business. Okay, tell me about that. Some of our fleet buyers in the rental business. Yeah, so on the project side, we'll sell generators, batteries, and things for not only backup, but in microgrid type of configurations.

for campuses, you know, universities, hospitals, things like this. And sometimes, you know, as the interest rates climb, those the economics, right, don't pencil out quite as well. So some of those projects have slowed. And that's what we've seen here, I think, over the last, you know, I would say the last year as rates were higher. All right. Now, everybody seems to know that the grid is taxed. Are you seeing any money going in? Is the grid stronger and more robust than it was the last time I saw you?

No, I think it's worse. I think we've got bigger problems ahead here. We're talking about a situation where it used to be all about the weather, right? In terms of what happened to the grid was 80% Mother Nature. What you have coming forward now is a very serious situation around supply and demand. We've got a tremendous amount of need. We've got growing demand in retail electrical sales for the first time in over two decades.

And we're starting to see that kind of growth coming from electrification of, you know, and that's not only just transportation, but things we do in our homes and our businesses, but the reshoring and re-industrialization that we want to have in this country that takes a lot of power. And then, of course, the new kernel here, which is data centers, right? The amount of power

is being driven by data centers is enormous. And frankly, the utilities and grid operators are struggling mightily to keep up. And I think what you're going to see, Jim, is on days where you've got very hot days, very cold days, days where the grid is going to be under significant stress,

I think you're going to see more grid disconnections. And they're not going to be caused directly by weather. They're going to be caused more directly by really just an imbalance of supply versus demand. Now, what can you do to play a role in, say, the data center world? Because we know that they are insatiable users of energy.

Yeah, that's a new segment for us. I mean, our product line, we've just recently announced an expansion of the product line. We opened our order book in April, and we're seeing, frankly, incredible demand for these types of products. So when we talk to data center developers, they tell us there are two major components that are a problem for them in terms of the timeline of developing new data centers. It's transformers, access to transformers, and access to backup generators.

So, you know, I mean, that alone right there tells us that, look, there's a need for these products in the marketplace. There's a lack of supply. These, you know, the demand is growing so quickly. It was a great opportunity. So we entered the space and we've opened the order book and we're starting to see a backlog grow already. So we're very bullish on this and where we can take our CNI business. You mentioned it at the start here. You know, we've got a great CNI business and we think that that's a business that probably could double in the next three to five years.

And we think that there's a tremendous amount of opportunity not only with data centers. Certainly, that's an important part of it, but really all businesses, institutions and other areas where, you know, of the economy, critical backup is is really something you can't live without. Well, obviously, the demand is incredible. Are you putting up new facilities to be able to churn out what we need?

Yeah, we just opened a facility in Wisconsin here. That's our sixth facility in the state of Wisconsin. We've got a big addition going on in a facility over in Europe. We've got a big factory down in Mexico as well that feeds Latin America, a factory in Brazil. So we continue to invest in our footprint because we know, you know, this is a company like we've grown this company tremendously. If you look at our track record over the last 15 years, you know, we've grown this from when we went public, we

public company in 2010, we were $500 million in revenues. And today, you know, we're going to be close to $4.5 billion. So the amount of growth in this company, and it's on the back of the need for reliable power, and the fact that, you know, power costs are growing. So homeowners, business owners are looking for ways to take more control over their power. And how are you mitigating tariffs? I know you have some small part that is going to be tariffed.

Yeah. So we have a global supply chain. So obviously tariffs are a consideration for us like they are with every company out there. And we're trying to do everything we can to mitigate that so that we don't have to pass that along to consumers, of course. And we're reshuffling, you know, we're shuffling our supply chain around. We're seeing what we can do to reshore, you know, more of those elements back here to the U.S.,

Obviously, that has its own challenges in terms of access to people, access to, you know, the kind of skilled labor that we're going to need to manufacture the types of goods that we need. But we're doing everything we can to try and mitigate that. But it's, you know, it's challenging. Probably the most challenging part about tariffs right now is just figuring out what the framework and the rules are going to be at the end of the day. So I think if we can get some. Yeah, my last question is that I think we're in good shape. Big, beautiful bill. What do you see in there for you? What's what's bad? What's good?

Yeah, so I think the good part of the big, beautiful bill are around kind of the important things for businesses in terms of the preservation of lower taxes, the accelerated depreciation, bonus depreciation, things that are available to us, right? The R&D credits, right? I mean, I think the importance of research and development in this country and our ability then to take those as accelerated deductions in our tax return are really important and

I think important things that from time and again go in and out of regulation. And so it'd be really great to codify those with greater long-term impact. I think on the bad side of it, we look at some of the things. We've got a business that does focus on batteries. It focuses on solar. We do think that we need all forms of energy today. We need energy from all places, not just thermal places like coal and gas and nuclear. We need it from renewable places as well, where it's very competitive to build energy.

you know, a solar plant or a wind plant on utility scale compared to those thermal assets. And we need a wide array of energy because, as I said before, demand is growing. For the first time in over two decades, we're starting to see utility demand grow. And we need to get these forms of energy from wherever we can get them. So some of the things I think that we may have taken a bit of a step

backwards, perhaps, in some of the support for some of those things. But, you know, that'll be filled in by other forms of energy. But I think for a business like ours, you know, we'll adjust. And I think our core business around backup power and generators, that will continue to be the focus here going forward. And we're incredibly bullish on that business, both at the residential level and the commercial and industrial level. Well, it sounds like you should be judging from the orders and what you're talking about. I want to thank Aaron Jagfeld. He's the CEO of Generac. Been on a bunch of times. Aaron, thank you so much for coming on Mad Money.

Thanks, Jim. We'll be back. Coming up, Kramer takes your calls and the sky's the limit. It's a fast fire lightning round. Next. It is time. It's time for the lightning round. Chris Rimmel, it's a graphical story. Same as the start. And that is over. Are you ready? I'm Kramer. I'm with Judy in Pennsylvania. Judy.

Hey, Jim, I'm a new student of yours. I inherited some money, wanted to learn a little bit about the market. All right. And listened to you a couple of weeks ago and did a little investing in BB AI. Wow. You went right for the speculative. OK, that's good. That's but that's only going to be your one speculation. We are not going to do other speculations.

because that will have to be better. Fill it out with some very good growth companies, but that one's losing a big bit of money. By the way, Poundtier would have been a better one to buy there because Poundtier's coming in. But let's limit our speculation to one stock. And thank you for calling. Let's go to Cozart in Virginia. Cozart. Booyah, Jim. Happy 20th anniversary. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. What's going on?

Good, good. Thank you. So my question is on Oklo and the fact that there's a big demand for AI. OK, so let's talk about this. We know that this is nuclear fission, not nuclear fusion. We know it's a big spec. We know a lot of people like it. We know it's up a great deal, 143 percent.

This one, we're now going to wait for it to come in. Maybe we give it a week and then we'll take a look. But I'm not against Oklo. And I can't be because I'm very pro-nuclear and I do like the uranium stocks, too. I do not expect anything short term, but I know that a headline would move that thing up 25 percent. Let's go to Jack in Ohio. Jack. Hey, thanks for returning my call, Jimmy. No problem. Hey, fine. Fine for the dividend income. Even though they raised the dividend a couple of weeks ago, the yield is still 9 percent plus. Yeah.

Is it okay to add more? L-Y-B. We're not going to buy stocks for high dividends. We're going to buy stocks for earnings momentum and for growth. And I don't see growth in that or Dow Chemical. I think these stocks, I like the fact that they boosted the dividend. But what I really like is growth, growth, growth. Because growth is the only safety in this stock market. Growth. Let's go to Forrest in North Carolina. Forrest.

Booyah, Jim. Booyah. I'm glad I got to speak to you. I am a club member, joined a couple months ago. Fantastic. Making some bad money. Thank you. I tried to call your show a couple days ago from Cape Lookout, National Seashore. It's a barrier island off the coast of North Carolina. Sounds good. I was unable to get through to you, but I spent 20 days out there camping, fishing, clamming. What'd you catch? What'd you catch there?

What'd you catch? I caught a red drum, a red drum, big one, 32 inches long. You went for drummies. You went for drummies at night. You do drummies at night, not day fish. No, it was during the day, during the day. All right, well, this is a whole new program. We're going to have to change the program around. We're on the fly. No, maybe we ought to revert to the program. What stock?

Okay, I want to ask you about Booz Allen Hamilton. Oh, man, they got clobbered by Doge, and we're not done with the clobbering. I think there's more ahead, but I've got to tell you something. I went for rockfish, and they are delicious. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the conclusion of the Lightning Round. The Lightning Round is sponsored by Charles Schwab.

Not Fang. Not Magnificent Seven. Just M&Ms. The sole survivors of the brutal quarter from what used to be the most captivating group in the market. Yep, only three of the mega caps finished the first half at all-time highs. And it's worth trying to figure out how that happened. How did Microsoft, Nvidia, and Meta manage to triumph? Especially when all of their stocks had hit some pretty hideous darn levels early in the quarter. What were their secrets?

Well, why don't we start with Microsoft? Here's the story you used to be able to set your clock on. It revolved around business software and Azure. That's the cloud computing business. In January, Microsoft shocked the world by missing Azure's numbers. Yep, they blew the estimates. The division grew 31%, but the street was looking for 31.9%. Coming from a company that rarely misses and almost always guides up, this was seen as a stunning defeat, and the stock dropped over 6% immediately. No!

Stock fell from $442 before it reported to around $345 at its lowest in April. But when Microsoft reported again at the end of April, their Azure business actually grew to 33% clip. I know it seems like nothing, a gossip or twig, but it drove the stock right up to $500 at the end of the quarter. On less than two percentage points of growth, the stock added over $150 and hit the new high list. NVIDIA's stock started the year at $134.

Little did we know that this stock, after years of being an institutional holding, had switched to become a favorite of individual investors. And even the meme stock guys who were trading it around the clock, they picked a lousy time to get long. First, at the end of January, we found out about some Chinese dollar store outfit, AI outfit, a deep-seeked.

which said it could make quality AI models for much less money. Everyone acted like this was the end of the whole AI story, including NVIDIA hardware, even though DeepSeek never even broke out its hardware costs, DeepSubterfuge.com.

Eventually, NVIDIA stock had an anemic bounce in March, coinciding with the annual GTC festival we went to, where CEO Jensen Wang wowed us with what the next generation platform could do. But then at the beginning of April, the stock collapsed on word that the president didn't want NVIDIA to sell any of its AI chips to the Chinese, even the outdated ones. That

eventually caused NVIDIA to take a $4.5 billion write-off as they lost access to a market Jensen said could be worth as much as $50 billion. When that happened, the memesters left the building. Stock bottomed at $86 and changed in April. Can you believe it? And that was time to buy. As NVIDIA began its unhurled run all the way to $158 where it closed last night. The amazing thing?

This rally was based on nothing more than semiconductor superiority and persistent demand from the hyperscalers. The same things that had the stock growing all last year. I guess you could say that there was nothing wrong with NVIDIA the whole time. Finally, there's the toughest one to explain. Meta.

This stock started the year at $630 and then got caught up in the rise and fall of everything growth, sinking from $740 in February down to $480 in April. A week later, and only a few points from the bottom, Meta reported a magnificent quarter that crushed the estimates.

On the conference call, we discovered you no longer needed to advertise anywhere else save Amazon and Google. They didn't mention that, but that's me. On that call, you realize that when you go with Meta, your ad will be shown only to the people who want to buy your product. No other medium, say maybe the NFL, seems to reach anyone these days. And that's why the stock finished the first half at $738 yesterday. This machine really works.

So what did we discover? Microsoft doesn't miss more than once. NVIDIA's artificial intelligence chip remained unrivaled. And Meta's a ridiculously cheap stock that should never have traded down to $480. Microsoft, NVIDIA, Meta. Hmm. M&Ms. Melt in your mouth, not your hands.

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.

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