Cramer Remix

Cramer Remix: Where the money leaving retail stocks could be headed

Cramer Remix: Where the money leaving retail stocks could be headed
VIDEO1:0201:02
Cramer Remix: Where the money leaving retail stocks could be headed

From President Donald Trump's travel restrictions to the United Airlines fiasco, Jim Cramer figured the $250 billion travel industry could be Wall Street's next big short.

But that was not the case. Sharply better-than-expected earnings reports started trickling down from the travel cohort, and soon it became clear that those who bet against it were in trouble.

"Now, you could argue that all of this is just pent-up demand after travel did indeed drop briefly when Trump's bans were in effect before the courts halted them," the "Mad Money" host said.

But the "Mad Money" host believes in the power of experiential spending, and suggested another variable that could be boosting travel's numbers.

"That money may just be coming out of retail," he said. "Remember, travel is as experiential as it gets, meaning it's something you can put on your Facebook page. Retail? It's just a chore made easier by Amazon. No wonder the travel and leisure stocks have been defying the short-sellers. They're the exact right place to be."

An American Airlines Inc. McDonnell Douglas MD-82 plane sits parked at a gate while a United Continental Holdings plane taxis down the runway at LaGuardia Airport in the Queens borough of New York.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

With oil prices teetering around $46 a barrel, Cramer turned to the charts of technician Carley Garner, the co-founder of DeCarley Trading and his colleague at RealMoney.com.

In January, Garner said that the price of crude was stuck trading between the mid-forties and mid-fifties. Sure enough, after rallying to $55 in April, oil dipped back down to the mid-$40s on Tuesday.

In her chart tracking West Texas Intermediate crude over the last six months, Garner noticed that two key indicators that show when securities are overbought or oversold put oil in oversold territory.

"On previous occasions, Garner notes that oil eventually rallied out of holes like this one," Cramer said. "When crude gets ... this oversold, she says it's typically the kiss of a death for a bear market, although oil generally retests its lows or even makes slightly lower lows before rebounding. That's crucial. Garner suspects this time will be no different."

Workers at an oil well in Kazakhstan.
Shamil Zhumatov | Reuters

Cramer also sat down with Brent Saunders, the chairman and CEO of Allergan, to hear more about how the company's aesthetic products, like its fat-freezing CoolSculpting technology, are gaining traction with younger generations.

"We're seeing more young people enter the medical aesthetics [space]," Saunders told Cramer on Tuesday. "We're seeing it become less stigmatized. People are putting it on Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram."

And with the stigma around medical aesthetics softening, Saunders said another unexpected group is starting to feed into Allergan's wheelhouse.

"We're seeing males start to move into the market. In fact, 30 percent of all CoolSculpting patients are men, which is 10 percent for Botox, so that's a gateway for men," he told Cramer.

Hill Street Studios | Blend Images | Getty Images

Then, with the CBOE Volatility Index, the stock market's fear gauge, dipping to its lowest levels in over 10 years, Cramer had to figure out why worries are so low and whether it is a red flag.

First, the "Mad Money" host noted that the index, known as the VIX, is not a perfect measure of overall fear in the market. It is based on put and call options on the , but excludes the various other ways to bet against the market that have emerged since it was created.

Still, the VIX is not obsolete, and after going through the six obvious reasons why fear may be dwindling, Cramer found one that investors may not be seeing.

After all, the VIX does not measure how many and how much hedge funds are betting against the market and individual stocks. And not many big-league money managers are thrilled about the current state of the stock market, Cramer said.

"I think that if we had an actual poll of hedge funds we'd find overwhelming negativity ... about this market because it's too high, the valuation's too expensive, it needs to come down," he said. "The hedge fund VIX is probably off the charts after this run."

Finally, Cramer sat down with XPO Logistics Chairman and CEO Brad Jacobs, who said that his transportation and logistics services is burgeoning thanks to the habits of people who shop online.

"We're big in e-commerce," he told Cramer on Tuesday. "About 26 percent of our business is either retail or, more importantly, e-tail, e-commerce. The e-commerce customers buy 10 things and they return a handful of them. So we do the reverse logistics. It's a big and growing business."

Jacobs also said that while XPO's first quarter earnings report beat the Street's estimates, it is more helpful to look at the business in two categories: transportation and contract logistics.

"Transportation is kind of sluggish, actually. There's a lot of capacity. We have to work hard to get the results we're getting. Supply chain business is coming to us. There's just a lot of e-commerce business coming to us," Jacobs said.

In Cramer's lightning round, he flew through his take on some caller favorite stocks, including:

Western Digital: "OK, we took a little off the table for the club because we had a gain. Letting the rest run. Why? Because I genuinely believe that it still will be part of this Toshiba mix, and that's how you're going to get the next leg. But I think selling some is good because no one ever got hurt taking a profit. Let the rest run."

: "Man, that thing acts so bad. Shopping centers, you know what, it's a no-go. It's just a no-go. I'm not going there. I'm just not."

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