Investing

Jim Cramer's Game Plan for This Week and the Start of Earnings Season

Chris Lange

Published: July 12, 2021 8:05 am

The S&P 500, Dow Jones industrials and Nasdaq futures were relatively quiet going into Monday, but this will change as the week gets rolling. Earnings season is upon us, and there will be a few big names kicking it off this week, including a bunch of the major banks. Considering recent Federal Reserve news, these will be the guys to watch. All this makes for a stock picker’s market, and who better to pick these stocks than CNBC’s Jim Cramer.

Cramer has been a force in the market for years, dishing out advice and analysis to savvy investors. He makes no bones about how he encounters the market with well-founded technical and fundamental analysis at a level to which many a trader and investor aspire.

It is no secret that Cramer has not just been a fount of breaking news surrounding everyone’s favorite stocks and companies, but he also actively engages and encourages more people to get their money to work for them via smart investing. With the recent surge in meme stocks and interest in cryptocurrencies, Cramer has shifted and grown with the times. He even has investment strategies on the cutting edge.

Cramer has maintained a popular show on CNBC for years now. Many people watch Mad Money to make sense of the daily market moves. He also runs the popular finance website TheStreet.com. Furthermore, you can see him make cameos on other shows over the course of the trading day on CNBC. When not on the air, you can find him on Twitter, dishing out even more knowledge.

24/7 Wall St. has compiled and distilled some of Cramer’s top picks and analysis here.

The latest Mad Money focused on a couple things, namely the start of earnings season. Cramer noted that what happens this week could cast a shadow on the entire earnings season. Jimmy Chill outlined what he’s looking at for the week.

For Monday, Cramer is watching for updates regarding the new COVID-19 delta variant and what the latest tensions with China could mean. Tuesday, look out for the Consumer Price Index (this could reignite inflation fears) as well as earnings from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and PepsiCo.

Wednesday, Cramer expects that comments from Fed Chair Powell to dampen some of the inflation concerns as commodity prices have begun to decline. There are more earnings here too with Bank of America, Delta Air Lines and Wells Fargo reporting.

Thursday, Cramer is looking forward to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing chip prices and UnitedHealth, which reports then too. The week concludes with a read on local economies from First Horizon and an update from Kansas City Southern regarding its merger process.

For the Lightning Round, Cramer kicked it off with AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T): “I’m not a fan sir. I really think that if you want growth, you want T-Mobile. If you want income, you should go with Verizon … I’m actually willing to say Chevron for yield.”

Cramer was not that decisive on Arrival S.A. (NASDAQ: ARVL): “You know which one I like best? Ford. I think we start buying Ford here. Hey, by the way, I like Tesla down here.”

On Cerus Corp. (NASDAQ: CERS), Cramer was negative: “This is a very niche speculative business. They’re not making a lot of money. I’m going to say, ‘no.’”

On the other hand, he was more positive on Cemex SAB de CV (NYSE: CX): “This is a great play on infrastructure.”

Getting into biotechs, Cramer was asked about Altimmune Inc. (NASDAQ: ALT), and he replied, “This is a company that has not had a great record of success … there are a lot of other companies that do the same thing that I like a lot more, including … Moderna.”

He capped off the round with this on Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ: ZNGA): “I like Zynga. Zynga’s OK. It’s a very inexpensive stock.”