Mad Money 06/17/26 | Audio Only

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 Cramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Cramerica. My friends just trying to save a little money over here. My job is not just to entertain, but to do some teaching, try to explain all this stuff. So, call me 1-800-743-CBC. Tweet me, @JimCramer. If you follow stocks with any regularity, you'll notice this profound pattern where the same stocks just go up and up and up while others, the vast majority, merely languish.

The leadership stocks that seem to have no ceiling are in tech, but not the techs we're used to. Not the household names, and most certainly not the hyperscalers, those giants that made up FAANG and the Magnificent Seven. Those stocks barely move at all. And often when they do, guess what? It's down.

Lately, the tech leaders, they're far more obscure, and many of them aren't in the averages. So, when I tell you the Dow dropped 507 points, the S&P lost 1.2%, NASDAQ declined 1.35% — the House of Pain — mostly because of hawkish statements from the new Fed chief at today's press conference, understand that we're missing something important.

Oh, by the way, I could talk all day about whether we get Fed hikes or we stay the same. But you know what I'd rather do? I'd like to try to help you make some money. I think it's more significant. Anyway, I'm going to talk to you about the stocks that work even today that are in tech that are not the hyperscalers, certainly not Microsoft.

The semiconductors are, and their friends that are benefiting from a spectacular shortage. Stocks like Micron, which reports on the 24th, Seagate, Western Digital, Sandisk. These companies make semiconductors for memory and data storage that are less complex than anything that would come out of Nvidia. But these companies can't make them fast enough.

They keep putting through price increase after price increase after price increase. And they are making many devices we use more expensive. Just this evening, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Apple's going to have to raise prices because of these memory chips. So their stock prices, they just keep rallying.

And the rest of us, the House of Fame. Almost every day an analyst who hasn't kept pace with these stocks raises their price targets for each of these. Then the next analyst has to raise the price targets. Then the stock has overshot the earlier ones. Then another one comes in and raises and raises and raises. And that's how these stocks have gone up so much.

It's a giant game of leapfrog. The price target boosts are gigantic, even if pricing for the products is just creeping up gradually. Look, I get it. This is how Micron got up 266% this year. Seagate jumped 287%. Western Digital rallied 313%. Sandisk has galloped 725%.

These are phenomenal gains based on shortages for DRAM. Just the kind of stuff that Apple's talking about — kind of memory chips that our data centers desperately need too. Then there's another tier. We got shortages in commodity semis because we also got shortages in semiconductor capital equipment that you need to make the commodity semis.

So KLA up 96%. Lam Research up 119%. Applied Materials rallied 131%. We know from the fabulous Gary Dickerson, the CEO of Applied Materials, that his company's been able to get long-term contracts for the first time ever, assuring multiple earnings bumps down the road.

Finally, there's the supplier of computers and components for the data center. Dell up 233%. Marvell Technology up 241%. Arm Holdings up 283%. Oh boy, the analysts play leapfrogging these daily. Oh, I'm raising prices, raising price, raising price. Yep. All these stocks have this endless parade of raising price targets, and nearly every time it pushes them higher.

I mention all these shortage players because they have passionate fan bases. They're like winning teams, and the stocks rarely go down on the days when the price targets are raised, including today. It doesn't matter if the stocks are up very big. Look, maybe tomorrow it will because of the Apple statement. I don't know.

See, at one time in my career, I would have said that it was insane to buy these stocks after they've already rallied so hard. You just have to say you missed them and you move on. End of story. Unless you feel like kicking yourself or missing out, something I used to do quite often. But I'm now convinced that that's the wrong way to approach some of these stocks.

As I told CNBC Investing Club members at my noon meeting today, there's an endless debate going on in this market that revolves around passion versus rigor. You see, rigor would imply that you missed it, move on. Passion says it could go up more and you didn't miss it. There's plenty of upside left because things are just that good. That's passion.

So, the goal should be to find the next big one that may have gone up and try to catch it when it's down and getting ready for its next leg higher. Today gave you some opportunity. See, Fed Chief Powell, he came out swinging, making it clear the Fed no longer has a bias for cutting rates.

Many of the Fed officials want to raise rates because, from their perspective, the economy is running too hot. Tightening could be coming soon. And that news, which came out at 2 p.m., immediately caused the market to roll over.

Which is when you want to pounce, and which stocks do you want to buy? Okay, I told club members that the answer is my new favorite stock in this market: Intel. We know the story. We had the CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, on our show, and he was talking about how we're going to need a ton of CPUs. Those others were DRAMs. I'm talking about CPUs, are Intel's bread and butter.

As the demand for agentic AI explodes, it's all about the ratio. Initially, we needed one CPU for every eight GPUs. GPUs are what Nvidia makes. Then it moved to one CPU for every four GPUs. And thanks to the rise of inference and agentic AI, it will soon be one for one. In fact, Lip-Bu Tan told us it could go to as many as four CPUs for one GPU. Four CPUs. That's incredible.

CPUs are Intel's wheelhouse. It's going to produce an explosion of business for Intel. The stock still finished up 3.5% today on a really horrible day, but it did pull back a couple bucks from where it was trading before the Fed statement.

Another key part of the Intel story is the chip manufacturing business, which is similar to what Taiwan Semi does. It's foundries. With Taiwan Semi operating near full capacity as hundreds of billions, but potentially trillions of dollars flow into AI infrastructure, customers increasingly need alternative sources of advanced chipmaking from Taiwan Semi. That's great for Intel's foundry business.

Companies are increasingly looking for U.S.-based supply to protect against geopolitical risk. Another reason to like Intel. Now, under the previous CEO, Intel spent billions of dollars on foundries, and they were a mess. Under Lip-Bu, who's a real engineer, the problems have been solved.

There are going to be foundries coming online for several years now, and I'm confident that they'll all end up being solidly profitable. Today, we learned that Intel has started production of an 18A chip node foundry, which, if successful, could get some orders from Apple. Elon Musk's giant TerraFab project is another Intel partner. There could be many things occurring. These are all because of Lip-Bu Tan.

I know it wasn't that long ago that this crown jewel, this national treasure, was on the ropes. Stock fell around $18 at its lows last year. First the government then had to come in and buy stock literally to save them. Since then, Lip-Bu Tan has been able to fix one area after another after another, and the results have been extraordinary. Stock's going up more than 100 points.

Now I could stand here and tell you, hey, 100 points, but you sure didn't miss it, sucker. But as I've said over and over, that kind of thinking doesn't work with this group right now. Hasn't for a couple of — hasn't really for more than a year. There's a revolution going on, and this revolution requires as many CPUs as possible. CPUs are Intel's wheelhouse. It's the king of volume.

We're going to need it because I think CPUs may end up being like the DRAMs are now, the ones that just caused Apple to raise prices, which means you're going to get to a shortage level and you're going to get number bumps and price target boosts galore.

Here's the bottom line. I don't want to throw away the discipline of not touching a stock that's rallied like crazy. But when it comes to tech hardware that's connected to the data center, I think sometimes you may not even have a choice. You can't afford to care about where these stocks have been. You should only care about where they're going. And when it comes to Intel, I think the answer is up.

All right. Now, we're going to Hope in Ohio. Hope?

Hi. How are you?

I'm great, thanks.

All right. Here's the deal with Marriott. Okay. I have told, and I've said this to the CEO, this is what I call an upstock. Every time Marriott goes down, you have literally — if you take a look at the chart — you've had to pull the trigger, and I'm sticking by that. And you know, it's really incredible. I don't feel that way about any other hotel company. Marriott is the best.

Now I'm going to go to Sunny in Illinois. Sunny?

Oh man, that's a powerful geographical booyah you threw at me, and I thank you for it. What's happening?

Get Rich Carefully. You know, it was an okay seller. I thought it would have been a better seller. I mean, never supposed to talk about book sales. That's like stock. Let's move on.

I loved it. I thought it was a good read. I read it to myself periodically, you know, just to, you know,

No, 2:47. That was the problem. I got up at 2:47. No, I'm not kidding. Until I discovered the wonders of chemistry. I got up at 2:47 every single night for over 30 years. Never 2:48 and never 2:46. It broke up a whole marriage. It was so — it was terrible.

It was clockwork. 2:47. 2:47. Unbelievable.

2:47. It was like I thought it was like some sort of Twilight Zone.

And I always woke up like, you know, without the coffee, you know, like I've been to Dunkin' Donuts 17 times. I don't know how it happened. Oh yeah. What stock? I'm sorry. Sorry, I got a little carried away there. Was having a little fun. I'm sorry. You don't pay me to do that, partner. What do we got?

I do all the things you're not supposed to do in TV. Every single one of them.

Thank you. Thank you. What are we doing?

For the first time, I'm going to tell you something. For the first time, I'm going to give you a twofer. You gave me a twofer. I'll give you a twofer. For the first time in like 17,000 years, when I used to get up at 2:47, I like Archer Daniels Midland and I like Tyson Foods. I'm not kidding. I like ADM and I like Tyson. You know what? It's remarkable. These are two stocks that I hated since 1847.

All right. Anyway, look, sometimes you have to stop thinking about where a stock has been. You got to start thinking about where it's going to go. Otherwise, you could be missing out on some big gains. I'm not kidding, but Archer Daniels is really right here on Mad Money tonight.

SLB held its digital investor day early today, and I've got the company's top brass to run through the highlights. Man, are they smart. Then Ford — they rejected me in 1983 from a job. Just wanted to point that out. Then Ford's got this new energy division. I'm going to find out what's going on over there. And later on, I'm going to spice things up with the CEO of Ingredion to learn more about its deal to acquire TATE & LYLE. So stay with Cramer.

What do we do with the oil service stocks now that peace seems to be breaking out in the Middle East, putting pressure on the price of crude? Today, SLB, the old Schlumberger, was in New York for an investor day meeting that was all about its digital business. These guys have incredible technology that helps oil and gas producers improve their performance.

Now, it's still a real small part of their business, roughly 7% of revenue last year, but it's growing rapidly. It carries higher margins than the rest of the company. It's a modern growth business with an iconic institution. It's celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, and just one small part of what makes SLB such a special organization.

Earlier today, I had a chance to speak with Olivier Le Peuch. He's the CEO of SLB, about his digital investor day. Take a look.

Olivier, I have long revered your company, and I'm talking about for 40 years for so many different reasons. You've given me a new one. This digital day is probably, I think, seminal because it defines exactly, first, how hard it is to do what you do. But second, you've come up with a way to make it so all your customers can do much better, and it's through digitizing things. It's through AI. Tell us about this fantastic day that you had.

Well, what I took away from this is capital efficiencies, cycle time reduction, increased recovery, operational performance — all the things that make it so that the scarce resource that is oil is drilled more effectively, brought to the surface more effectively, and also, of course, making these companies more valuable. It seems like that without digital, we're kind of running out of the easy stuff, aren't we?

And for SLB, you're talking about like the way we look at a software company. You have annual recurring revenue, allows me to build a model that has nothing to do with the price of oil. Frankly, it has to do with what you offer. It's decorated.

Now, one thing that caught my eye was Nvidia. I didn't know you guys have been with Nvidia since 2008, but Nvidia is a very special partner of yours. I know that we all know that as AI, I don't think people realize how integrated they are in your company.

Okay. In your documents, in your text, it's very clear. You talk about Libya. You give the example: 110,000 barrels a day, Libya, and what you do. Maybe you can describe to people so that people understand how integrated all this technology is.

Well, it's very clear you can take the data, merge it with the hardware, and do a terrific job. Now, will that work in, say, Venezuela, where we don't really know what's going on, but we need you to bring it back?

How far behind are they versus what you're doing now?

And the war between Iran and the United States revealed that there are shortages everywhere. We don't have enough. We're a couple million barrels short from energy security pretty much everywhere. So has your phone — I mean, I don't know, we probably don't have a phone anymore — has your PC been ringing off the hook with the need to bring this technology, which, because you have the domain data, you have the platform, you can move much faster than everybody else?

Well, this is a very exciting time for you guys. You're so far ahead. And what really matters, I think, for those of you who own an oil company, shares, whatever, this is how they're going to make more money: is by bringing in the technology of SLB. Not because they know how to drill well, because I don't think they know how to drill well without you. Olivier Le Peuch is the CEO of SLB, which is the pride of an industry that I have followed forever because it is by far the best there is. Thank you so much.

Last month, Ford Motor rolled out a new business called Ford Energy, which is their bet on battery storage. In response, the stock shot up from 12 bucks to nearly $18 in less than three weeks. Although, since then, it's pulled back to just under 14. So, how seriously should we take this whole idea of Ford Energy? What does it do? Okay, let me walk you through this.

About five years ago, when electric vehicles still seemed like the future of the auto industry, Ford made some major investments, like everybody else, including an $11.4 billion effort to build battery plants in Kentucky and Tennessee. Then the demand for electric vehicles just fell off in the United States. The international market was captured by the Chinese. In the end, Ford's electric business has racked up nearly $17 billion in cumulative losses over the past four years. And that's weighed on the stock.

So near the end of last year, Ford decided to stop throwing good money after bad. They scaled back their electric ambitions dramatically. After they dissolved their big electric vehicle partnership with SK Innovation, that Korean firm, Ford got the battery plant in Kentucky, and they decided to pivot that business to supplying energy storage for the data center and the electric grid.

Last month, we got more information when the company formally introduced Ford Energy. That's a wholly owned subsidiary of the Ford Motor Company. At the time, management said that they've been quietly working on —

This effort for the better part of a year, securing supply chains, readying manufacturing sites, and aligning its technology with the demand for domestic energy storage. They plan to supply at least 20 gigawatts worth of battery capacity per year. That's a huge amount. With the first customer deliveries planned for late 2027, that is not that far from now. We know that demand for these big backup batteries is growing like crazy because all the new data centers really can't afford to go offline. At the same time, if the companies behind the data centers want to rely on renewable fuels like solar, they need lots of storage so they can still operate when the sun goes down.

Now, consider the timing of last month's announcement. Ever since the market bottomed after peak Iran worries in late March, the averages have been rallying aggressively, led by pretty much any stock that's connected to the data center. When Ford unveiled Ford Energy, they suddenly got a patina of data center exposure. And once some analysts started pushing the story, well, the stock just roared.

Now, I saw this happening, but you know what? I didn't want to chase this one. And I'm glad I waited because this month, Ford stock has been pummeled.

This no longer feels like some white-hot momentum name with the stock back below 14. We can't ask soberly and legitimately though if this battery business could be a legitimate reason to buy the stock of Ford Motor. Let me first say this. This is not some insane rebrand. Like Allbirds, the shoe maker sold its shoe business in late March, then pivoted to New Bird AI in early April in a desperate bid to stave off bankruptcy. Hey, by the way, Allbirds just announced today it's named a new CEO and rebranded again. This time it's Smartbird. Godspeed to Smartbird. But this Ford move is nothing like that desperate, opportunistic pivot.

Ford's still an auto company that, after its pullback from the electric vehicle market, suddenly found itself with a bunch of surprisingly useful battery plants. After that debacle, they had a bunch of lemons. So, they decided to make lemonade. And it just so happens that this economy has a real thirst for lemonade. In time, I believe that Ford can legitimately become a real player in the battery storage space. Between their manufacturing expertise and the fact that these battery storage solutions will be made in America, I bet they could be a fairly attractive supplier for customers in search of these products, which mostly means electric utilities, data center builders. Also, until we see some signs that the ravenous demand for AI infrastructure is being sated, something we certainly haven't seen so far, then I am operating on the assumption that there will be a ton of demand for these batteries. But in the end, this is a smaller business that may pay off in the future, not something that really matters right now.

Assuming Ford can hit its targets, and I don't know if it can, the energy business won't be reflected in their numbers until late next year, except as a cost. That said, Ford already looks like it trades at a very reasonable price. It trades just over eight times this year's earnings estimates, a 4.3% dividend yield. And again, that's before doing any battery sales. However, it's not like Ford's benefited from having a cheap stock. This thing's had a low multiple for years and all it's done is bounce on the bottom. It's been a big disappointment to me. In the end though, Ford's an automaker and it's going to trade like an automaker for the foreseeable future. Their core car business is doing okay for now. In the first quarter, unit sales were down four, but revenue is up six and the company had a big earnings beat, although most of the beat came from a one-time tariff refund. As an automaker, there are two things you have to worry about: higher gasoline prices and interest rates. Ford sells lots of gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs, and those sales are often dependent on financing, which is less enticing when rates are high. But if the war with Iran is really coming to an end soon, something that seems more likely than ever, even if it's not a sure thing, that will keep pushing down the price of oil, resulting in cheaper gasoline and possibly lower interest rates. The Fed can't cut rates right now because of inflation, and there's nothing more deflationary than cheaper oil. So, here's the bottom line.

I love what Ford is doing with the battery business. I really do. But it's not going to give you that much lift right now. If you're thinking longer term though, I mean, I'm talking out like two, three years. That's not that long. Well, it sure does make Ford a more attractive investment. I didn't want to recommend the stock when it was screaming higher last month in response to the news. But now that it's drifted down to $13.96, well, let's just say it's a different story. If you believe oil and rates are coming down as I do, then you've got my blessing for the first time in many years to buy the stock of Ford Motor. Let's go to Charles in California, please. Charles.

I'm doing good, Charles. How are you?

Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.

It's got so much debt, see that's the problem. See Charles, like instead of like, Vertiv doesn't have a lot of debt, or CoreWeave's got a lot of debt. CoreWeave and Oracle are the two outliers, man. They got a ton of debt, you take your pick there. But you know what? If you want a little springload, I think Charles, Oracle is fine. CoreWeave is even more juiced. All right. Now, we're going to start with Oliver in Connecticut. Oliver.