Visits: 3
The resurrection in shares of Turtle Beach, a high-end headset maker whose products are popular with video gamers, stunned even CNBC’s Jim Cramer.
“How do you go from $2 to $22 in nine months?” the “Mad Money” host wondered on Wednesday. “Simple: this rally is all about the rise of these insanely popular battle-royale games like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.”
Thanks to either stellar planning or sheer luck, Turtle Beach happened to release the first Xbox-compatible wireless headset in 2017 just as the battle-royale craze was kicking off. Gamers who wanted to communicate with their fellow players flocked to Turtle Beach’s products, sending the company’s revenue through the roof.
“That’s how you get a 1000-percent rally,” Cramer said. “It just so happens that Turtle Beach makes the most popular headset that’s used with the most popular video game around at the moment.”
But Cramer wasn’t sure the hype could last. He reminded investors of when shares of Turtle Beach almost reached the $90 level in 2013 before collapsing and ending up in the single digits.
“This is a boom and bust story. … If you own this one, here’s what I think you should do: you should ring the register,” Cramer said, recommending Logitech instead. “I get that people want something close to a pure play on Fortnite – which I think, by the way, is peaking – but I can’t recommend a company that makes headphones after its stock has run from a buck and change to $22.”
As the worldwide price of oil hit its highest level for 2018 on Wednesday, Cramer mused on what the milestone could mean for the U.S. energy market.
“When it comes to energy, we have a big problem in this country,” he said, referring to the holdup in the Permian Basin in Western Texas.
Numerous oil and gas producers are discovering large quantities of new, untapped oil in the Permian oilfields, making it something of a hot spot for the U.S. energy industry.
But “the oil is basically landlocked,” Cramer explained, because “there’s not enough pipe to take it to the Gulf Coast, where it can be refined or shipped overseas. That’s why this kind of crude, from the Permian, trades at a big discount to the global price.”
But after Wednesday’s surge — during which Brent crude futures grazed the $80 level and West Texas crude futures topped $70 — that discount looked like it could soon be eradicated, Cramer said.
For the last six months, Cramer has been backing the “cloud kings,” his favorite cloud-computing stocks that represent one of the market’s most popular secular growth stories.
But the cloud kings aren’t right for everybody. The underlying companies — like Salesforce.com and Adobe, to name a few — are already huge, meaning their growth is somewhat limited. That may translate into less volatile stocks, but not all investors want steady movers.
“If you’re on the hunt for a turbocharged rally and you’re willing to take some additional risk, you want to search for smaller, up-and-coming cloud companies that are still making their names,” Cramer said on Wednesday.
That’s why he came up with a new group, the “cloud princes,” for investors who feel like they can take on some more risk — for a potentially greater reward — in their speculative portfolios.
Who are the cloud princes? Coupa Software, Tableau Software and HubSpot, to name a few. To get the rest — and see what makes them market royals — click here.
Small business optimism hit an all-time high in August, topping its Reagan-era record, and CNBC’s Jim Cramer knew investors would want a way to play the surge.
But “this kind of reading is very hard for Wall Street to process,” the “Mad Money” host warned of the National Federation of Independent Business’ report on Wednesday.
“Small businesses are off the radar because, well, they’re small. Professional money managers care about big business and medium business, but small business is outside their area of expertise. And that’s why they’re so easy to miss,” Cramer said. “But when you actually look at them, they’re on fire.”
So Cramer set out to find some publicly traded securities investors could get behind to make money from the small business boost.
For his top recommendations, click here.
In all his years working in retail, Five Below President and CEO Joel Anderson hasn’t seen better results from opening new stores than at his discount chain, he told CNBC on Wednesday.
“I’ve been in retail a long time and this is the best new-store economics I’ve ever seen,” Anderson said in an exclusive “Mad Money” interview with Cramer. “Less than a one-year payback. Incredible, right?”
Shares of Five Below have been soaring, hitting all-time highs after the teen-targeting retailer’s sales topped Wall Street’s earnings estimates. The company now has 692 locations in 33 states.
And when it comes to other pressures on low-cost retailers, the most glaring of which is the U.S.-China trade dispute, Five Below seems to be hedged against those, too.
“We’ve got a lot of product here” in the United States, Anderson told Cramer. “Obviously, we have some product from China. All our t-shirts are made in Honduras. Some amazing apparel here comes from India. So [we’re] really not hostage to any one country.”
To watch Anderson’s full interview, click here.
In Cramer’s lightning round, he rattled off his take on callers’ favorite stocks:
Iqiyi Inc.: “I’m recommending no Chinese stock right now. I don’t like the way the PRC is trying to pop up stocks. And, by the way, if the president looked at all of the junk that they’re issuing on the New York Stock Exchange, I think what the president would say is, ‘You know what? Hey, China, until you get your act together, we don’t want your IPOs.’ But that would involve a kind of big chain of think[ing] there, you know.”
Prudential Financial Inc.: “How the heck is that stock down 15 percent? That’s a good company. [CEO John] Strangfeld’s doing a really good job. 3.7 percent yield. I’m going to endorse that.”
Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable trust owns shares of Salesforce.com.
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