We recently published 10 Stocks on Jim Cramer’s Radar. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed.
After social media giant Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)’s shares fell following its latest earnings report, Cramer took the contrarian view and defended the firm’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. The CNBC TV host did not hold back when discussing the firm:
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“[After David Faber commented that Cramer was frustrated with the conference call despite Meta’s sizable user base] I thought that the revenues were terrific. The reaction to the conference call is that, finally we’re at the point where people are spending too much. And he is spending too much. People did not like Mark Zuckerberg’s assurance that you have to spend.
Jim Cramer hired a bodyguard after threats from retail investors during the 2021 meme stock rally.
Cramer says he believed the stock never should have passed $400.
GameStop shares have been volatile since the meme craze. The stock is down 15% in 2025.
Jim Cramer‘s take on the meme stock mania of 2021 drew the ire of a powerful group that was swaying markets during the pandemic: retail traders.
The “Mad Money” host recounted that he had to hire a bodyguard after he angered some retail investors in 2021 at the peak of the pandemic’s bout of meme stock mania that boosted GameStop and other stocks to dizzying heights.
Cramer, who was in the hospital recovering from a back surgery at the time, said he thought he was hallucinating when he saw shares of GameStop rip higher, he said during an episode of Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast on Monday.
After shares of the gaming retailer quadrupled, Cramer said he ripped out his catheter and phoned Carl Quintana and David Faber, two of his fellow hosts at CNBC.
“[I] said, ‘This is ridiculous. Everybody has to sell.’ After that, it was 24/7 bodyguard,” Cramer said.
In January 2021, Cramer called into CNBC from the hospital and urged GameStop investors to sell.
“Take the home run. Don’t go for the grand slam. Take the home run. You’ve already won. You’ve won the game. You’re done,” Cramer said on the network’s “Squawk on the Street” program.
Cramer told retail investors to sell GameStop when he called into CNBC from the hospital.Noam Galai/Getty Images
Cramer, a former hedge fund manager known for his bold stock calls on the air, said he believed GameStop stock shouldn’t have been valued above $400, which it briefly soared beyond as shares ascended to their peak during the pandemic.
The stock ended up plummeting to around $10 a share in mid-February as hype for the struggling retailer finally died out.
GameStop stock has been on a rollercoaster ever since its short-squeeze in 2021, but it retains a dedicated following among some retail investors, who periodically reignite fresh meme-like rallies.
GameStop shares traded around $27 on Monday. The stock is down about 15% year-to-date.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sat down for a sprawling interview with CNBC anchor David Faber on Tuesday following Tesla’s 2023 annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas.
During the course of their approximately hour long conversation, Musk reflected on:
How he has managed a takeover of Twitter so far and what lies ahead. Among other things, he said Twitter’s Community Notes feature has cost Twitter $40 million in business when two big clients reduced spending after their ads received community notes accusing them of false advertising. He also claimed that when the acquisition closed, Twitter had negative $3 billion in annual cash flow and $1 billion in the bank. “The analogy I was using was like being teleported into a plane that’s in a nosedive headed to the ground with the engines on fire and the controls don’t work….”
He also defended his own tweets that were widely criticized as lending credence to conspiracies about George Soros and a recent mass shooting event in Allen, Texas, insisting “I’ll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it.”
His personal views and habits when it comes to work and productivity. He said he takes only two or three days off per year, works seven days a week and gets six hours of sleep a night. He also said he believes it’s morally wrong for people in the “laptop class” to advocate for working from home when service workers, such as people who work in factories, still have to show up in person.
Tesla’s ability to weather rocky economic cycles. Musk said that the next 12 months will be difficult for Tesla from a macroeconomic perspective because of increased interest rates pinching consumer budgets. But he also said Tesla could take advantage of Tesla’s “real-time information on demand” for its cars to adjust pricing effectively.
He believes the Fed is going to be too slow to lower interest rates when the economy slows, and that will hurt consumer demand. “You can think of raising the Fed rate as somewhat of a brake pedal on the economy, frankly,” Musk said. “It makes a lot of things more expensive. So if the car payment or your home mortgage is absorbing more of your monthly budget then you have less money to buy other things.”
What would happen to the global economy if China makes a move to control Taiwan. “The Chinese economy and the rest of the global economy are like conjoined twins. It would be like trying to separate conjoined twins. That’s the severity of the situation. And it’s actually worse for a lot of other companies than it is for Tesla. I mean, I’m not sure where you’re going to get an iPhone, for example.”
His involvement in the early days of ChatGPT-developer OpenAI, saying that it exists only because he wanted a non-commercial alternative to Google’s growing dominance in AI. He expressed disappointment that the company has abandoned its non-profit roots. And he said he is no longer friends with Google co-founder Larry Page. “The final straw was Larry calling me a ‘species-ist’ for being pro-human consciousness instead of machine consciousness.”
His political views, including his belief that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and it wasn’t stolen, but that he thinks there was at least some voting fraud. He also said he voted for Biden but hinted he wasn’t happy with his choice, saying “I wish we could have just a normal human being as president.”
UBS agreed to buy its embattled rival Credit Suisse for 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.2 billion) Sunday, with Swiss regulators playing a key part in the deal as governments looked to stem a contagion threatening the global banking system.
“With the takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS, a solution has been found to secure financial stability and protect the Swiss economy in this exceptional situation,” read a statement from the Swiss National Bank, which noted the central bank worked with the Swiss government and the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority to bring about the combination of the country’s two largest banks.
The terms of the deal will see Credit Suisse shareholders receive 1 UBS share for every 22.48 Credit Suisse shares they hold.
“This acquisition is attractive for UBS shareholders but, let us be clear, as far as Credit Suisse is concerned, this is an emergency rescue. We have structured a transaction which will preserve the value left in the business while limiting our downside exposure,” said UBS Chairman Colm Kelleher in a statement.
The combined bank will have $5 trillion of invested assets, according to UBS.
“We are committed to making this deal a great success. There are no options in this,” Kelleher said when asked during the press conference if the bank could back out of the deal. “This is absolutely essential to the financial structure of Switzerland and … to global finance.”
The Swiss National Bank pledged a loan of up to 100 billion Swiss francs ($108 billion) to support the takeover. The Swiss government also granted a guarantee to assume losses up to 9 billion Swiss francs from certain assets over a preset threshold “in order to reduce any risks for UBS,” said a separate government statement.
“This is a commercial solution and not a bailout,” said Karin Keller-Sutter, the Swiss finance minister, in a press conference Sunday.
The UBS deal was scrambled together before markets reopened for trading Monday after Credit Suisse shares logged their worst weekly decline since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. The losses came despite a new loan of up to 50 billion Swiss francs ($54 billion) granted from the Swiss central bank last week, in an effort to halt the slide and restore confidence in the bank.
News of the deal was welcomed by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in a statement. “The capital and liquidity positions of the U.S. banking system are strong, and the U.S. financial system is resilient. We have been in close contact with our international counterparts to support their implementation,” they said.
Credit Suisse had already been battling a string of losses and scandals, and in the last two weeks, sentiment was rocked again as banks in the U.S. reeled from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
U.S. regulators’ backstop of uninsured deposits in the failed banks and the creation of a new funding facility for troubled financial institutions failed to stem the shock and is threatening to envelop more banks both in the U.S. and abroad.
Credit Suisse Chairman Axel Lehmann said in the press conference that the financial instability brought about by the collapsed U.S. regional banks hit the bank at the wrong time.
Despite regulators’ involvement in the pairing, the deal gives UBS autonomy to run the acquired assets as it sees fit, which could mean significant job cuts, sources told CNBC’s David Faber.
Credit Suisse’s scale and potential impact on the global economy is much greater than U.S. regional banks, which pressured Swiss regulators to find a way to bring the country’s two largest financial institutions together. Credit Suisse’s balance sheet is around twice the size of Lehman Brothers’ when it collapsed, at around 530 billion Swiss francs as of the end of 2022. It is also far more globally interconnected, with multiple international subsidiaries — making an orderly management of Credit Suisse’s situation even more important.
Bringing the two rivals together was not without its struggles, but pressure to stave off a systemic crisis won out in the end. UBS initially offered to buy Credit Suisse for around $1 billion Sunday, according to multiple media reports. Credit Suisse reportedly balked at the offer, arguing it was too low and would hurt shareholders and employees, people with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg.
By Sunday afternoon, UBS was in talks to buy the bank for “substantially” more than 1 billion Swiss francs, sources told CNBC’s Faber. He said the price of the deal increased throughout the day’s negotiations.
Credit Suisse lost around 38% of its deposits in the fourth quarter of 2022 and revealed in its delayed annual report early last week that outflows have still yet to reverse. It reported a full-year net loss of 7.3 billion Swiss francs for 2022 and expects a further “substantial” loss in 2023.
Expectations are high that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates by a quarter point next week, but the central bank could still swiftly change policy if the financial system becomes stressed. After a wild ride, fed funds futures Thursday reflected more than 80% odds that the central bank would raise rates by 25 basis points next Wednesday. A basis point equals 0.01 of a percentage point. Ethan Harris, head of global economic research at Bank of America, said the firm expects the Fed to hike by a quarter point, but the central bank could change course if necessary. “We have the Fed hiking three 25-basis point hikes, including next week,” he said. “That’s on the assumption that the regulatory efforts to support the banking system are effective and that the further negative news is limited, so the Fed can shift its focus back to inflation. It’s a close call for next week because it really depends on what the markets are doing when the Fed meets.” On Thursday, stocks closed higher, with shares of regional banks climbing. Treasury yields also rose as investors learned that a consortium of 11 banks agreed to deposit $30 billion into First Republic Bank . Participating institutions include JPMorgan , Citigroup , PNC and Truist. Earlier, the European Central Bank went ahead with a half-point rate hike . Concerns about the health of Credit Suisse were also calmed after t he Swiss National Bank Wednesday said the bank is well capitalized and that it would provide liquidity if needed. A fluid situation Worries about bank contagion following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank drove buyers into Treasurys and pounded risk assets, like stocks and oil. The 2-year Treasury yield has traded with big swings since then. The yield, which most reflects Fed policy, rose to 4.17% in late trading Thursday, from a low below 3.9% in morning trading. Yields move opposite price. Market odds for a Federal Reserve rate hike rose sharply Thursday, up from 50% Wednesday. Those expectations have swung wildly. They were at 50% after big swings Wednesday, but there had also been traders who expected a half percentage point hike prior to the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. As news came out on First Republic, the odds were at one point above 85% Thursday afternoon before falling back to closer to 80%. Economists have varying views on how the central bank will respond to recent U.S. bank failures and worries about Credit Suisse. JPMorgan economists expect the Fed to raise rates next week and one more time in May. But Goldman Sachs economists said they think the policymakers will hold off on a hike. Moody’s Analytics expects no rate increase and anticipates the Fed could signal it is finished with hikes. “This is a fluid situation. If you’re the Fed, you want to be very flexible here,” said Bank of America’s Harris. “If you go into the meeting with the markets under stress, there’s a pretty good case for not hiking. On the other hand, if things are calm and you feel good about containing the crisis, you probably go ahead with the hike. The hike is a positive signal to markets. It says the Fed is not panicking.” An opportunity to reverse course, if needed Harris said if the Fed hikes, there is precedent for the central bank to temporarily reverse course if things go bad. “Let’s say regulatory measures and the targeted approach of supporting individual institutions doesn’t seem to be working,” he said. “At some point, the Fed can cut rates to deal with the financial problems.” For instance, in 1987, the central bank cut rates immediately after the stock market crash and then resumed hiking again, Harris noted. Also, the Fed trimmed rates in 1998 because of the demise of Long-Term Capital Management, but then it went back to hiking. “That’s a good example of where the Fed can juggle two problems at the same time,” he said. “You deal with the immediate crisis, and once things are calmed down and things are less fragile, you go back to your regularly scheduled program.” Harris said the economy could see some impact. “I think it would be surprising if there wasn’t some negative impact on the growth picture, even if the crisis gets resolved quickly,” he said. “It’s kind of another little warning sign to people that the economy is likely to be weak going forward.” If the economy is strong enough, the Fed could send the wrong message if it does not hike. “If they don’t hike when the economy is strong, they make it look like there’s some skeleton in the closet,” Harris said. He said that unlike during the great financial crisis in 2008, the financial system does not look vulnerable, and consumers are in better shape. “In the current period, you don’t have a big sector like the housing market with a big collapse in credit standards,” Harris said. “You’re stress-testing the economy and the markets when you hike rates… It’s like Warren Buffett’s expression: You find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.” Harris said it’s not surprising there was some fallout from the speed and magnitude of the Fed’s policy moves, which began a year ago when the central bank lifted rates from zero for the first time. The fed funds rate range is now at 4.50% to 4.75%. “The Fed went from being remarkably dovish to extremely hawkish. Some institutions are going to get into trouble when there’s that dramatic a shift in the interest rate environment,” he said.
Disney chose to rehire Bob Iger as chief executive after receiving internal complaints from senior leadership that Bob Chapek was not fit for the job, according to people familiar with the matter.
The executive change came together quickly, blindsiding Chapek and his closest allies. Disney’s board reached out to Iger on Friday, without any other serious candidates in mind to replace Chapek as CEO, CNBC’s David Faber reported Monday, citing sources.
The board’s outreach to Iger and discussion to replace Chapek came after the board married internal complaints about Chapek’s leadership with concerns following Disney’s most recent quarterly earnings report, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions were private. One of the executives to express a lack of confidence in Chapek was Christine McCarthy, Disney’s chief financial officer, two of the people said.
Christine M. McCarthy, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer The Walt Disney Company.
Source: The Walt Disney Company
McCarthy was Iger’s CFO before he departed as CEO in 2020, holding the role since 2015. She has an established relationship with the board given her longevity in the position, the people said.
A Disney spokesperson declined to comment. Chapek didn’t respond to a request for comment.
On Sunday, Disney said it would replace Chapek with Iger as chief executive, effective immediately. Chapek had come under fire for his management of Disney in the last few years. Chapek was notified on Sunday night, Faber reported.
Chapek and his inner circle were caught off guard by the news, one of the people said. The status of Chapek’s right-hand man, Kareem Daniel, is murky and dependent on the direction Iger wants to take at the company, two of the people said. Daniel leads Disney Media and Entertainment, a division created through Chapek’s reorganization of the company. Iger has never been a fan of the reorganization, which has caused internal consternation for nearly two years.
Iger has consistently heard complaints from his ex-colleagues throughout the year about Chapek’s leadership style and decision to pull away budgetary power from Disney’s creative executives, according to people familiar with the matter. Several specifically noted Chapek’s plan to move 2,000 Disney employees from California to Florida, which was then delayed, showed a level of callousness toward employees’ lives that didn’t jive with Disney’s family-friendly culture.
While some internal CEO candidates were identified who might be able to take the job over time, the board didn’t want to put someone new in that position given all various pressures on the company, Faber reported.
Disney reported fiscal fourth-quarter earnings earlier this month, disappointing on profit and certain key revenue segments. The company had also warned that its strong streaming numbers would likely taper off in the future. Three days later, Chapek told executives that Disney would cut costs through hiring freezes, layoffs and other measures. The memo about cost-cutting led to some internal pushback against Chapek, one of the people said.
The company’s shares rose Monday following the news of Chapek’s replacement.
