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My mission is simple, to make you money. I'm here to level the playing field for all investors. There's always a bull market somewhere, and I promise to help you find it. Mad Money starts now. Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Cra. Other people, my friends, I'm just trying to make a little bit of money here. My job is not just to entertain, but edit, do some teaching. So call me at 1800743 CMBC. Tweet me at Jim Kramer. When we look back, I wonderful say this was that moment when Dell simply took over the hardware computer space with one of the biggest blowouts I could ever recall. On a day where the Dow jumped 363 points
advanced 222%, the NASDAQ gained 21%. Dell with a 102 point gain or 32% one session defined today creating still one more day of tech strength even if we did see some recent winners get hit with a bizarre round of profit taking at the end OF THE DAY SELL DELL'S QUARTER was a true surprise and Michael Dell should be very proud but there's one great tech quarter after another in May that we saw great results and nearly all of them were connected to the same thing, the data center in some way, shape or form. Today, away from Dell, we actually saw some stunning strength in a host of software companies that have underperformed of late. I'm talking about stocks like Service Now, Atlassian, I Salesforce, Microsoft, all of which were simple
month. Their gains were in some ways as shocking as the declines to some of the great hardware leaders by in the last few minutes of today's session. At Dell, they saw incredible strength across all their businesses, but the fastest growing saving came from Dell's partnership with Nvidia, the AI pioneer with a stock that's been a bizarre underperformer of late, including today, where the company stock fell four points in the last few minutes of the trading session and finished down an ugly $3. It was a wild and inexplicable fall for the largest stock in the world. I didn't think it'd collapse so fast on no news.
No news at all. Maybe that's a good place to start our game plan then because the week begins on Sunday night when Jensen Wong, the CEO, gives his annual Computex talk in Taiwan. Maybe something he says could reverse today's inexplicable decline. This year, Jensen plays host with some of his favorite partners, including Renee Hos at Arm Holdings. That stock held up. Matt Murphy from Marll. Intel's Lip Boutan. That stock did not hold up. And Qualcomm's Cristiano. Computex has been a stake in the ground really for many years now for Jensen Wong. And I think he may unveil something special here. Now, why do I feel that way? We got a potential hint when Nvidia's official X account posted a cryptic tweet teasing
quote, "A new era of PC." the account for Microsoft Windows posted the same message. Grasping at straws, doing everything I can for you. Maybe what we saw in late day trading was some sort of end of the month rebalancing out of some semis and into depleted software. Let's hope Nvidia can give investors a reason to get excited again with its copy text presentation and we can get back to talking about the fundamentals and not just endless flip-flopping trading. Next, when we come in on Monday, we may have a deal with Iran. Who knows? I know I'm in the minority though for what will happen. I'm believing this. I think that will be very quickly a wash in oil and I suspect a very fast plummet to the
70s from the high 80s to low 90s when it comes to the price of oil. I want this market to broaden beyond tech. But it can't do that because of the war and the shackles that the Hermuse blockade is putting on the consumer. Now the American consumer is remarkably resilient. That's been one of my themes. You know that I said it last night. But it only takes they can only take it so far. For example, we can't have banks, among the weakest of all stocks this past month, rally until the war is over and the price of oil comes down because the risk of a spike in defaults because of expensive gasoline is just too darn high. We can't expect a housing boom as rates have gone up even as again I'm
contrary I expect a decline when the war ends. We can't expect lots of travel. These are all important props to the economy and they need to kick in if you're going to make any money beyond tech. Monday's also got a host of important corporate events. The Federal Express less than truckload division is going to be spun off as FedEx freight, which will trade under the symbol FDXF as in Frank. We own FedEx the for the travel trust. So, we'll have full coverage about what the breakup means to you if you're a fellow club member. I think FedEx Freight could be a true winner given the not so benign neglect it suffered through the for so many years as part of the combined company.
Although I still favor parent FDX. Now Merc in the Monday evening very odd in the actual 6 p.m. host a meeting to review its cancer portfolio after the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology conference. That's the most important cancer confab of the year. Merc's cancer dominance has been challenged of late by J&J. Let's see what Murk has to say. The next day we've got some market moving tech news. We know after speaking to Shrear Ramaswami the CEO of Snowflake earlier this week that he'll be hosting an analyst day on Tuesday and I expect the stock's phenomenal postquarter rally which continued by the day with today's 7% gain will roll on. Yes, it was that good a quarter. A real conversion from an enterprise software company with some
artificial intelligence to a genuine AI company that stores data. The ladder's worth a lot more in this market than the former as shareholders bless blessedly found out this week. Now that same morning, we see Dollar General. We see if it's as good as Dollar Tree, which reported a blowout quarter yesterday morning. Dollar Tree has sensational numbers and a bright forecast despite its poor clientele being weighed down by higher fuel costs and inflation. I expect the same thing to happen with Dollar General. We also hear from national s uh jewelry company signant which could tell us about the state of the consumer as everything they sell is discretionary obviously I find signant
to be an excellent barometer of the times after the close we get results from PaloAlto Networks that's a cyber security company that we own for the investing club this stock tends to run into the quarter and then when it reports we get hit with some profit taking it's possible we can see the same pattern again it's been the way of PaloAlto except the cyber threat situation is more extreme now than it's been in the last few quarters. Let's see what happens. Then there's Alta Beauty. Now, we saw it to see them not that long ago. You know, the stock's down 15% this year, and today an analyst cut their price target ahead of the quarter next Tuesday after the close. Maybe the analyst knows something. I don't know.
It was jarring Wednesday morning, Metronic report. Speaking of jarring, this long-term winner's become a short-term loser with the stock down 23% year to date. Metronic is not alone. Most of the medical device stocks are down with the worst being one of the best just last year. Boston Scientific almost 50% down. I wish I could be aggressive recommending Metronic right on Monday morning, but I can't. And now we got to wait to see the quarter. That group's so awful. After the close, club members beware. We have both Broadcom and Crowd
Strike. Two very important positions for the trust. Both hit their all-time highs today. So, I have to be a tad circumspect. You know how I feel when stocks run up ahead of a quarter. Broadcom stock hasn't done all that much this year. I think it'd be delivering good on Crowd Strike's gone parabolic though. It might be able to brave the profit takers on a good quarter, but it most likely will be greeted with some noticeable profit taking events any kind like the last few crowd strike quarters because it's an expensive stock. But the company's been a bull work against cyber criminals, especially since anthropic privately released this
mythos and scared the dickens out of all of us. We also hear from one of the strongest stocks this year which is five below. Now that's well off its highs now down nearly 25 points. I like it very much and I go for it given its consistency and its price points for purely discretionary products. Yes, I would buy five below ahead of the quarter Thursday results from Sienna. This had been it's a networking player. It's come off a lot from its highs even though it's up almost 150% for the year.
I think Santa's got its own proprietary technology and there's more than enough room for it to grow for this one. Thanks again to the data center. Next, if you've been following the turmoil at Lululemon, it's hard to believe that they can beat the estimates. This could be a reset quarter, and you don't buy ahead of a reset quarter. Finally, on Friday, we get the Labor Department's non-farm payroll report. Could this be the moment when we start seeing all the the building jobs related to the data center show up? They really haven't shown up yet in the numbers. It's a very important series of numbers that we are going to get though and it does need to be weak enough to justify a rate cut
from the Fed. I think new Fed chief Kevin Worsh needs to see a truly soft employment number before he starts aggressively pushing for lower rates. But the bottom line beyond the data center, this market could really use some peace in the Middle East uh or at least something it can reopen the straight of Hermuz bring down the price of oil and allow the bull market which is so much centered on tap to broaden out to more economically sensitive sectors otherwise hardware softer who knows but they all seem to be in play as a magnificent month of May draws to a close. Let's go to Arthur in New York. Arthur, hi Jim. Thank you for taking my call.
Really appreciate it. Love what you Thank you, Arthur. Thank you. Hey Jim, I needed your opinion on Elf Beauty. I have this stock um all over the map over the last three years. This company's been growing 25 to 50% a year. The stock has just been beat up. Um am I buying more now or am I holding on to what I have? I'm worried about it. I'm worried about it because, you know, they get a lot of stuff from, you know, it's made in China and what really bothers me about it is the inexplicable decline uh and the in very large short position. I am call me confused about ELF. I don't understand how the stock did indeed fall apart.
Let's go to Patrick in Virginia. Patrick Booya from the Shannondoa Valley there, Jim. Booyah. Chief, what's up? Uh well I wanted to ask you I bought Nvidia back in 2017 when you called it the stock of our generation and then in the next eight years it grew to represent about 60% of my entire individual stock portfolio and um so I've been diversifying it over the course of the last year and I wanted to get your opinion on GE Vernova uh even though there's other companies in the space that have some seemingly more attractive value. I think Jenova I think Gernova is absolutely terrific. We know that the it's come down nicely from its top. It's at a very good level. I still like Nvidia very much. I'm not backing away
from Nvidia. I just need to know what the heck started what went on in the last hour cuz it just seemed un let's just say it didn't seem right. How about that and leave it at that. Okay. This market needs a few more catalyst to broaden it out besides the data center. Maybe we'll get that in June. Got to hope so because you can't just keep trading the same stocks. On May money today, GAP shares plummeted on the company's latest earnings. But were they really as bad as Wall Street seems to think? I got to dig deeper in this one with the retailer CEO. An investor sent Agelant shares soaring on its beat and raised quarter. What is that about? It's a medical device company. Those are not
doing that well. I'm going to find out with the company's top brass. And after a great investment club meeting this week, although I did beat myself pretty badly, I'm taking a look at some of the more amazing questions we get from our amazing club members. So stay with. Don't miss a second of MadMoney. Follow Jim Kramer on X. Have a question? Tweet Kramer #madmentions. Send Jim an email to mad***@c**c.com or give us a call at 1 800743CNBC. Miss something? Head to madmoney.cnbc.com. What the heck happened to the stock of Gap today? Last night the retailer reported a mixed quarter. Gap brands
doing well, but Old Navy did a little worse than anticipated while Banana Republic and Athleta also missed expectations. The reason the stock plunged over 15% today though is that GAP gave soft revenue guidance for the current quarter because of weakness in the Old Navy division. It's the largest division and the company cut its fullear sales forecast even as they raised their earnings outlook. Now, the stock is now back to where it was in late 2023, which was just a couple of months after CEO Richard Dixon took over and started to orchestrate a real turnaround. So, what do we do now with the stock? At this point, it's trading at less than nine times the midpoint of this year's earnings guides. Very solid dividend,
good buyback. On the other hand, the turnaround's not playing out as well as we had hoped. I think we need to do more digging. Earlier today, I got the chance to speak with Richard Dixon, the president CEO of GAP. Take a look. Richard, welcome back to May Money. Jim, good to see you. Okay, so we've got some things that are tough obviously that we're going to go over, but I do want to start with something that I thought was surprising. The excellent GAP numbers themselves because they were very, very strong. Good. I love that you're starting with there. I'd even zoom out just a little bit more because we did deliver progress across key metrics for the quarter. This
is our ninth consecutive quarter of positive comparable sales. Uh, three out of the four brands growing. Comps on the total were up 2%. That's up against 2% last year. Overperformed on gross margin by 30 basis points, winning across income cohorts. Uh, we returned 450 million in cash to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. The performance at brand was varied, but let's talk about GAP for a minute because doubledigit comp up 10%. Uh, and that's 10 consecutive quarters of positive comps. It was a standout quarter up against 5%. The playbook is being executed with excellence. Uh, we are now seeing consistency in women's, progress in men's, improving trends in kids and
baby. Category performance across the board in GAP remains healthy, particularly in denim. Uh we've been incredibly disciplined in delivering clear and consistent brand messages, which is truly resonating with consumers, particularly Gen Z, uh through the collaborations that we've been driving, which have been incredibly exciting and culturally relevant. Yeah, I will say the brand will also be accelerating its store remodels as we build on the success of the test stores that we did in the past year. We're also relaunching fragrance uh this fall, which is going to be another brand building momentum driver. And overall, I would tell you Gap is back on the forefront of the cultural conversation.
It's an iconic American brand. We've got significant runway to build upon. Great product, great storytelling, great execution. lots of runway to continue the progress. Okay. So people might say then why is the stock not up and the answer is old Navy indeed and you were very abject about it losing a momentum. You did not blame tariff. You did not blame the environment. It was you put it on your shoulders. Uh you talked about uh dynamic environment which means that things changed very quickly. So tell me why you had to guide actually guide down to negative uh because of Old Navy because it was something that had been
going quite well in the other times that you have been on the show. Yeah, Jim, I appreciate it. You know, we operate with integrity and transparency. Um the good news here, which is being clouded a bit, is we delivered a 1% comp growth and that's on top of last year's 3% growth. This is also the brand's sixth consecutive quarter of positive comps. As you know, we've been pursuing categories like denim, active, kids and baby, all of which posted growth versus last year, up 6%. And we continue to build upon that with relevance with our customers and momentum. Seasonal categories got off to a weaker start.
Okay. within that particularly dresses where we've admitted and said we just did not have the right fashion quotient and value equation. Dresses just didn't deliver the right execution. Now I will also say we overinvested in inventory slightly and didn't correctly anticipate what ended up to be a decline in the dress market. Our dress assortment did resonate in occasion dresses which have much more specific end use like weddings and Easter. We are seeing a change in customer acceptance of dresses during key peak moments like summer stock up now instead shifting to more versatile categories and styles that can be worn year round. But can that but how can that be uh just to hear you say it makes me feel like okay you
missed some things but not don't take apart the stock with all the buyback that you're doing you're shrinking you have a good dividend people are just reacting to this one division and I think in part because you had fixed it we thought it was on to the next but then it seemed inconsistent and I think people are not recognizing they didn't think that you did something that could be inconsistent because you've been so solid in all these different ones. Look, we are continuing to be consistent. We grew in the quarter 1%. Now, would we want more growth? Do we expect more of ourselves? Absolutely. Of course we do. But the consistency that we've been demonstrating quarter after quarter, season after season, six
consecutive quarters of comp growth with Old Navy, market share, stability, leadership across nine out of the 10 categories in the industry. And really important to recognize, we're calling it out. This was a seasonal challenge in a category. Now, as these changes have begun to take hold that we've effectively driven, we're seeing trends improve. Now, given the performance that we had in Q1 and the continuation of seasonal products in Q2, we are taking a moderated view of the year, but of course, we're driving for better results. And as we look to the second half with the seasonal product behind us, I'm really confident in our ability to drive improvement. Again, when you shake things down then I mean I felt when I listened to you that you
shouldn't I think I said I figured that you would just say listen we're done with that part. We're going to be maybe we are low single digit but you took to you were negative and it made me feel like wow maybe I'm missing something. I don't know how Richard could be as negative as he is given the fact that he laid out a pretty good scenario for the future. I'm absolutely not negative and we are taking a moderated growth approach as we continue to drive GAP with double-digit increases. Banana is solid. Old Navy got off to a slower start and it is a largebased business. We're giving ourselves and our investors the room, if you will, to get through these seasonal categories and then really overdrive in the back half. But
that being said, we're transparent. You know, as the changes are taking hold, we have seen trends improve. We are holding our operating margin outlook. Our gross margin outlook is unchanged at flat to up slightly. We continue to maintain our cost discipline with SGNA as a rate uh to sales that is flat to last year. And despite Jim the lower sales outlook, we're also raising our earnings outlook $230 to $2.40, which reflects 11% growth year-over-year at the midpoint. While this is our current outlook on the top line, of course, we aspire to outperform the brand's strive for continuous improvement, but on the balance sheet, you have and we were again concerned.
You were tough on yourself for um Athleta. I found myself thinking, do you need an off-ramp Athleta because it's really missing and you said it's behind schedule. Athleta is a important brand in the portfolio. It's an important brand in the industry. Very few brands are over a billion dollars in this industry. It's the number five active brand in the space. Now, we've admitted and shared we are in the rebuild year. Maggie Gowerer, who joined us in August, has taken several actions to strengthen the brand. She's streamlined the assortment considerably which is resulting in better AUR, better margins even with a challenging topline. We've been
repositioning talent, filling in key roles. If you look at the website, you could see we're delivering much better creative execution. We've gotten some new merchandise in. It's checking really well. It's small. They're early reads, but we do believe that this brand has strength to deliver, and it's on us to prove that. And so stay tuned, you know, as we look to slight improvement in the back half. We believe we'll continue to chip away at this and find the growth pattern for Athleta. And one of the reasons why I respect you coming on and saying this is that you did not take the cop out. You could have very easily said the consumer's weaker.
You did not do anything like that. You were uh consistent in saying that you've got to do a better job. And I admire that. An executive that blames the environment. Well, you know what? There's that just doesn't hold water for me. And I thought that was really important that you did not do that. All right. Thanks, Jim. I mean, honestly, we see our consumer, we love our consumer. We're seeing strength in customer behavior. Uh, we've sustained AUR growth and we've gained market share. I mean, the product is resonating on whole. We're winning across all income cohorts, low, middle, high income customers. This is demonstrating the breath, the relevance, the resilience of
our portfolio. So, no, this is not a consumer issue. This is a seasonal challenge where we got off to a slower start in seasonal merchandise. The good news is the season gets smaller and smaller as we get into the back half and you're going to see us with a robust and determined motivated perspective to deliver opportunity. If you weren't returning all this money and weren't growing, then I say, but you were tough on yourselves. And I think people aren't used to seeing management as tough on theirelves as you were. I want to thank Richard Dixon, president CEO of GAP. No excuses here. Hold it as it is. That's what matters to me. Thank you, Richard.
We got this, Jim. Thank you. May I be back after the break? Coming up, can Agyant Technologies continue to build momentum after a strong quarter? Kramer is finding out from the CEO next. What do we make of these results from Agyant, letter A, one of the major arms dealers to the life sciences industry among other precision enterprises. Earlier this week, the cup reported magnificent top and bottom line be management also raising their fullear forecast. Yesterday, the stock in response jumped 17% although it's still basically just flat year to date. So,
there might be opportunity. This quarter was interesting because some of Agyan's key end markets were indeed weak. China, food, academic, government's bending down, but the rest of the business was so good, it more than made up for that softest. We're talking about strengthened drug development, uh, drug manufacturing, cancer diagnostics, semiconductor material testing, airport security screening, and lab automation. Next week, they're presenting data on some new products to the American Society of Mass Spectry meeting, and it's going to be very important. So, can the stock keep running even after this incredible move? Let's check in with
Cory McDonald, who's the president CEO of Agelant Technologies to find out. Mr. Don, welcome back to May. Thanks a lot, Jim. Great to be on. Okay, so B, you really did just some remarkable work here. Um, why don't you first tell us uh remind us of what Agyan's doing in general and then strictly walk us through this quarter because obviously it took a lot of people by surprise. Yeah, so we're a critical part of the to we're tools company in pharma, chemical and advanced materials and diagnostics. So really along the value chain of those industries and the stock saw a big a very big jump something we haven't seen for uh for
quite a while in 20 years but a really fantastic jump and we provide uh our technologies I'm very proud of what the team delivered and when you think about the markets that we're in you know pharma health healthcare those areas are really important and really growing for us chemical and advanced materials really important of course with semiconductor reshoring happening and pharma reshoring happening and of course clinical and diagnostics uh testing. So, we're very satisfied with our internal efforts. We put a huge amount of uh effort into transformation, innovation, our portfolio resilience. And you put that together with steadily improving end markets all coming together. We
deliver this strong uh performance. And of course, we're really optimistic uh about our prospects going into H2, but we're also very cleareyed about the dynamics in the world, but we're very uh much looking forward to the rest of the year. Right. Bill, let's go to some things that for instance people might know. Uh we know that GOP-1 drugs are maybe going to be the biggest drugs in the world. I saw today France said they're really going to and everybody gets reimbured. So it's obviously something very big, but I also fear counterfeits. I also fear phony compounds. What can you guys do to be sure that the stuff that the GP-1s are clean, clear, accurate, and healthy?
Well, that's where we're h bestin-class at doing. So our business grew 20% in GLP uh P uh GLP1s. We see long-term opportunities in GLP1s as it penetrates in obesity and drug labels in different areas. But we have two business where we're actually involved in the production helping with precursors in GLP1s but also in the testing of GLP1s and that's where we want to remain modality exotic whether it's orals or uh injectables. our equipment and our tests and our workflows and our teams make sure that they're safe and make sure that their efficacy is there. Okay. So, would you be up against uh companies say like um I don't know Danaher might be there, Aluminina could be there, uh Thermoffisher, are you in
in are those are the ones that you come up against? Yeah, we come AC, you know, we have many fine competitors out there, but our real sweet spot is in QAQC, which is downstream. So we're at the very end of the testing and the development areas to make sure they're absolutely uh h the drugs are absolutely safe when they leave. So that's right in the sweet spot and you can see with reshoring Jim you know there's a lot of investment in the US and around the globe in terms of you know manufacturing capability and that's where you see our equipment our workflows and our software testing these drugs.
Now how about this TSA contract and we're all we've all had to deal with TSA. We want it to be they want it to be as good as possible. You've got something that's pretty novel. Yeah. So it's uh ramen spectroscopy. It's one of our key technologies. And if you go through uh the airports for the FIFA World Cup and you go through secondary screening, it's going to be one of our systems going to do it keeping uh the cities and people safe. And uh it marks a significant milestone in our aviation security and forensics portfolio. This is a technology we've had and we've built on in this new market. So it's opened up a new market for us. And it's not just a
one-off. It's it's it's FDA is actually TSA is like the security of what FDA is to global drugs. So there's a clear halo effect and actually we're working with other geographies outside of so it's really exciting. Oh that's fantastic. I also know of course we go back to the original business we talk about semiconductor exposure talk about something that's in fire and I also believe is reshoring. So where are you fitting in there? Yeah. So while reshoring gets a lot of attention know we have a big opportunity there and we're working with our customers globally to make sure that their labs are going to be ready when the reshoring happens for manufacturing
in the US but over the last few years semifab re resuring has al already happened and that's a here and now benefit for agelant and moreover the AI boom and related memory chip shortage has a very strong demand for semis so we have an unmatched capability in our chemical and advanced materials market spectroscopy products and GCMS gas chromotic graphy mass spectrometry. So, it's very broad and diversified and we have a long history. It's our heritage back to the old HP days, Jim. And that's something that we're uh we have a very high market share on and actually at ASMS, which is the mass spectrometry society. Next week, we're going to be launching a new technology that's even higher sensitivity for those
fabs. Now, well, let's talk about a term that I read when I was reading your documents that I usually don't read about much. Customer intimacy. What is that you have? Yes. So we believe in building really strong intimacy with our customers. So we have a incredibly strong service team. We do enterprise services for labs where we not only service our equipment but look after lab operations with multiple vendors equipment on it. So we have service engineers that are embedded in pharmaceuted in semifabs etc. And what we really do is not just fixing the equipment but we help uh customers get more out of their equipment, get more uh
productivity and help them with new modalities. So for example, if there's reshoring happening with GLP1 and a QAQC lab is being set up in a manufacturing facility, our engineers are installing the equipment, making sure it works, but making sure it's productive and making sure the right data comes out. So that's really, really important. So that creates a lot of intimacy. And the service business is just a fantastic business for us. It's a very big part of our uh company and it's going to continue to be. Then how important was Ignite to making this quarter? Ignite is really important. So we're fundamentally changing the company with a view on growth. So we're looking at how we can uh take some shocks with tariffs and of course with supply chain
changes that you see and Ignite has made us more uh more have greater ability to move um you know supply chains around the world move faster move manufacturing. We're also doing a huge investment I would say in digital and AI and these all these products and innovation is really moving towards the growth for the company. So transformation is really important and we're changing it because the world is changing around us and we need to be more nimble and agile and you see that through our pipeline of innovations and what we're going to be seeing with AI very shortly. Well, terrific. Congratulations again on just a monster good court. I think all these things came together. it sometimes that's what happens and each piece came together all at once and surprised all
the analysts obviously terrific I want to thank Pory McDonald president CEO of Agilant Technologies thank you great to have you on thanks Jim okay m back after the coming up it's your questions answered as Kramer's getting caught up on the ones he missed from this month's investing club meeting Next, earlier this week, you may know that we held our investing club monthly meeting where Jeff Marks and I get together to walk club members through a decision-making process for the portfolio. We discuss our current holdings and then we take questions from club members. Now, this is one of my favorite parts of the meetings because frankly, look, we don't get the time to spend a lot with the actual club
members. So we read your questions and then we don't even get to read all the questions. That's why I brought some more questions right here and give you some answers so you at least get a sense of what we do in the club. So why don't we start with our first question. You get a good sense of what we're doing. Um obviously if you want to join you can just do this but I want to let's spend some time with the questions. I want to start with Lester from Maryland who asks with the pending IPOs coming and your concerns about free money shortages. Would it be reasonable to trim 10 to 15% across the portfolio prior to IPOs being issued in order to hold a larger cash position for better buybacks? Thank you
for all you do and for Jeff for teaching. Now look, I've got to tell you this is a really important question and I've seen a lot of these from a lot of people from all walks of life saying, "What do I do with these pending IPO? I want to be in all of them. You have to look at the IPOs and decide if they're better than what you own. I'm not trimming 10 to 15% of a great stock in order to buy a stock that may not be great. And more importantly, if I'm not in on the IPO initial price, if I'm coming in where after it comes public, I am telling you that most of the stocks in your portfolios right now are probably better than those. So, let's calm down about these IPOs. Let's look
at our stocks on a casebycase basis and decide whether it really is better to say buy a stock that's already come public and is all the way up versus some of the stocks you may have. Case by case people case by case. Next we have Lee from Alabama who's wondering is it better to invest for dividends or for growth given 10 years to retirement. Okay, I talk a lot about this in how to make money in any market. And the answer is at that point we really do want a lot more dividend income but from growth stocks. That's why I gave you a list of eight companies that are growing their dividend but they are still income related. We have to balance. Again, it's a set of balance. I don't want no
growth. I think that you should own growth stocks right until the end so to speak. But I do think you need to adjust to more income. Don't sacrifice growth though. Now we have Justin from George who says, "Booyah, Jim, longtime watcher and listener. As you talk more about a five stock portfolio, what would you consider an oversized position that needs trimming? I recently trimmed some of my positions in Crowd Strike and Alphabet as they were nearing 25% of my portfolio. Was this the right move?" Absolutely. In a fivetock portfolio, I need you to pull back a little bit so you can play with the house's money.
Your goal ultimately in a five stock portfolio is to get to where you're playing everything with a house's money and then you can actually add more stocks if you want to and put those stocks to the side. I after I wrote the book, I said to myself, I should have said that one of your goals is when you get the house's money, you can actually add another stock. You don't have to do just five. And by the way, the reason I picked five is a little arbitrary, but I just find a lot of people don't have enough time to look into like seven, eight, 10 stocks. And I don't want you to be a mutual fund. We have mutual funds for that. We don't need you to be a mutual fund. Next we have Cheryl North
Carolina who asks, "I'm looking for a medical equipment maker. If you agree the timing is right, should it be Abbott Labs, Medronic, or Boston Scientific?" Boston Scientific had a very weak quarter because of its primary product did not do well. Abbott Labs bought this exact science. I don't know exactly what it's going to look like. Metronic has fallen off a cliff and they report next week. Let's look at Metronic after they report and then that may be the one that we pull the trigger on. Now we have Steven in Massachusetts who says defense companies seem to have flatlined over the last few months. Some have reasonable PE multiples. All have
significant backlogs. The world remains a dangerous place and they appear to be making money. So why the stall? More importantly, what's your view on their outlook? Okay. A lot of people feel that the government just can't continue to afford this kind of spending on defense. Other people say, you know what, the cycles have peaked and what we're going toward is cheaper and more efficient, say, let's look ordinary, say drones versus manned um giant jets that cost a fortune. I think that it's going to take a long time for us to wean ourselves out of the stuff that's really cost a fortune, which is why I say if you want to own one of these, you own Lockheed Martin. Okay, that's that's the best one
in the group. And uh I'm not recommending any defense stocks, but that would be number one. And number two would be RTX, which also has a big commercial business and I think the commercial business may save you. Next up, uh we have Bruce from New Jersey who says, "Hello, can you share your strategy on trimming a position that is doing well? I have a series of buys from higher to lower or cost that I build a position on. When selecting a sell option, which lots of stocks do you select and why?" Okay, I always like to take high basis. The reason I take high basis, I want to pay taxes. I don't have to worry about for char trust, but I don't want to pay taxes. And uh more importantly, I always like to get my
basis as low as possible. Uh and I do think that what matters, I mean, some of that's just arbitrary, but what matters for you is just don't end up with too much of one stock versus the rest. Okay? Then you'll be swinging with that stock and not with the actual fundamentals, the rest of your portfolio. Want to thank you to all club members and Mad Money is back after the break. Coming up, he's the fastest mind on Wall Street, so we're putting him to the test with your help. Bring on the lightning round. Next, it is time. It's time for the light.
Bye. My step will be playing the sound and then the lightning round is over. Are you ready? Skiing daddy time light round. Let's start with Bill in New York. Bill, hey Jim, thanks so much for taking the call. I just warned today about Clover Health. They've exploded. I got lucky. I got in around April looking. It's good, but remember the quarter wasn't good. The quarter was not good. So, you're in pure spec mode there. The revenues were okay, but the earnings were not there. So, uh, take it with a grain of salt that it's moved up because it was not a great quarter. Let's go to Eric in Nebraska. Eric, hey Jim, first time caller, new listener. Um, okay.
Just want to say thank you for all you do. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. My question is on AMKR if uh has packaging but the right kind of packaging is semi-ductor packaging. I do prefer cadence though and I like the burden burgeoning uh packaging division of Intel under Lip Bhutan who used to run Cadence. Let's go to Scott in California. Scott. Oh yeah, Jim. Scott from Marin, mortgage banker here. I've owned EFC for 12 years. My retirement account down about 30%. But the dividend has been solid.
Well, my problem is this that's been a mortgage. When I see these mortgage finance companies, I never know what they really own. So, I never feel like I can give any good guidance. So, that's why I do not recommend them even though they have very big yields. Not for me. Let's go to David in Arkansas. David, hey there. Longtime listener, first time caller, big razor backy to you, buddy. Oh, thank you. What's going on? Uh, you're welcome. There's a lot of uh volume going recently on Big Bear AI and uh not a lot of announcements. I'm wondering total spec cuz it loses money hand over fist. I can't recommend it, but if you want to speculate it,
that's fine. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the conclusion of THE LIGHTNING ROUND. THE LIGHTNING ROUND IS sponsored by Charles Schwab. Coming up, with the calendar turning to June, don't let your portfolio fall into a swoon. Stick around for Kramer's top tips next. Last night I interviewed Joanna Stern, the author of I am not a robot and chief technology analyst for NBC News at our terrific local bookstore, Words in Maplewood, New Jersey. We had Joanne on the show not that long ago, she was as
funny and as insight as sightful as ever. I mean, just enjoyable. What I found incredible though was in the short time since she was on our show, so much has already changed in the AI world. Wow. take this concept of a genic AI. While Joanna was fielding my question, she told me she had an agent working for her at that very moment, helping her pull together some information for her next column. She talked about how she's been using Claude for so much of her work, a big deal. Since I thought she was kind of agnostic about which of the chatbots she prefers, I've been a Gemini and Chat GPT guy, but all day today I was using Claude and I find Claude much
better informed than the last time I checked it out. Although it can still make some mistakes, but no wonder Anthropic, Claude's owner, just raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation. 3 months ago, it raised 30 billion at $380 billion valuation. I was jealous of Joanna and her AI agent. So, I made a mental note that I'm going to create an agent this weekend. Maybe I'll create two agents in case one gets busy. I have a lot of jobs. Maybe I should get a whole fleet of them, share some of them with the always skeptical David Faber squawk on the street Monday morning. But Stern said, "I don't need a humanoid robot. They aren't improving fast enough
and they simply aren't all that functional. They can't do enough." I look, I thought that each month they were getting more and more useful, but it sounds like robots still can't make them better, fold things, so they're probably not worth my money. The biggest change in the last few months, she says that AI keeps getting better and better when it comes to healthcare. It catches so many things that humans can't, especially when it comes to cancer. It's also become much smarter about discussing health issues with patients. I guess somebody realizes even machines need a good bedside manner. Then again, how hard is it for AI to tell us what we really we want to hear? I mean, look,
let me tell you something. My biggest problem these days with sites is that they're often too far. They're just too sick of fantic. She explained that the sites can only be as good as what they're trained on. And the vast body of thoughts they tap into favor sucking up as an MO. When we opened the fort to questions, the same issues we keep hearing about came up and people were pretty heated. They wanted to know what will happen to the entry-level jobs that so many people count on. They're worried about the same bots that examine X-rays and MRIs will take away the jobs for people who used to do that work. Where will they go? What will they do? And of course, they're worried about the
data centers wrecking water, jacking up electric rates, not helping the communities that build it. I mentioned that I blame the politicians for not asking for more from the hyperscalers and neocloud companies that build these things. Of course, the hyperscalers could afford to be more like New Core, the giant steel company that spends so much time working with the community at sites before it builds the plant. They could avoid a lot of these problems by being more proactive. Even if local polls aren't doing their jobs, they should be telling the hyperscalers to pay up or hit the road. Now, I got to tell you, it's tough to keep up with a couple of months of change in this new
world. But no matter what, I think you have to try. I just want to do it in some way I can understand like the stuff that Joanna teaches you. In the end, unlike so many of the professionals I meet, I don't think AI will ever be my second nature. But one thing I'm glad about, for some younger people, AI has become first nature. If you live your life through your own lens like I do, you'll always have an edge on the people and probably be a lot more satisfied with your own lot in life if you make it maybe your third nature. I'd like to say there's always a market somewhere and I promise to find it just for you right here on Mad Money. I'm Jim Kramer and I'll see you Monday.
All opinions expressed by Jim Kramer on this podcast are solely Kramer's opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC or its parent company or affiliates and may have been previously disseminated by Kramer on television, radio, internet, or another medium. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Kramer as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. Kramer's opinions are based upon information he considers reliable, but neither CNBC nor its affiliates or subsidiaries warrant its completeness or accuracy, and it should not be relied upon as such. To view the full MadMoney disclaimer, please visit cnbc.com/madmoney
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