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  1. Home
  2. / Jim Cramer

Jim Cramer: Don't Make the Mistake of Thinking the Market Is All About the Fed

From Adobe to Zendesk, plenty of stocks will rise or fall regardless of what the central bank does.
By JIM CRAMER Jul 26, 2019 | 04:19 PM EDT
Stocks quotes in this article: AYX, OKTA, ZS, ZEN, SPLK, INTU, TTD, WDAY, ADBE, TWTR, F, GOOG, GOOGL, NVDA, TXN

The most ridiculous aspect of the commentary about this market is that every time that stocks go up, we think the Federal Reserve can't move and the gains will be repealed.

Now, I've demonstrated time and again that there is real weakness in this economy, just as there are plenty of companies that are doing poorly. In fact, there are plenty of stocks that are just now getting back to where they were when the Fed made its last move up on interest rates in December.

But what should matter to you is that you might have been brainwashed into thinking that all that matters is the Fed, not the companies that are involved. That's why I keep bringing up companies like Alteryx (AYX) and Okta (OKTA) , Zscaler (ZS) and Zendesk (ZEN) , Splunk (SPLK) and Intuit (INTU) . Or Trade Desk (TTD) . Or Workday (WDAY) and Adobe (ADBE) .

These are companies whose stocks are levered to their companies' fortunes, not to the Fed. They're classic super-growth companies that have great businesses that scale -- and are performing useful services that allow for companies to get better sales for lower costs.

Now, the macro people don't know a Zscaler from a fish scaler, and they don't want to find out. They're like the chartists who say: "Don't tell me what the company does, just show me the charts."

They relate the strength of Alphabet (GOOG) , (GOOGL) to the strength of the U.S. economy - which is, of course, totally false. They think of Twitter (TWTR) like it's Ford (F) . They regard Nvidia (NVDA) as the same as Texas Instruments (TXN) .

I get that. These are people who are trained on the precept that it doesn't matter what a company does, the information around it is perfect. So, they consider stocks as one asset class instead of hundreds of companies that will have disparate fortunes.

But as long as those players ignore the reality of the substance of work that underlies the 500 stocks in the S&P 500, they'll forever underperform. That's because individual companies aren't hostage to what the so-called professionals really think they are. In many cases the stocks of companies that moving up today are simply hostage to themselves.

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Action Alerts PLUS, which Cramer co-manages as a charitable trust, is long F, GOOGL and NDVA.

TAGS: Fundamental Analysis | Investing | Investing basics | Markets | Stocks | Jim Cramer | U.S. Equity |

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Let's look at that recent downgrade of 'dull' Morgan Stanley and see why exciting is best left for the stadiums and amusement parks -- and not stocks.

Jim Cramer: America's Toughest Job? Finding Workers

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It's the question of our time: Where are the people willing to take on these better paying gigs? Let's see what's going on and what we need to happen.

Jim Cramer: Here's How Analysts Can Be Off By a Wide Margin

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Sep 24, 2021 12:02 PM EDT

Let's look at the reactions to Nike, Costco and Salesforce to see what happens when they're viewed from a real world perspective.

Jim Cramer: It's Pure Insanity That We Don't Make Chips Here in the U.S.

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Sep 23, 2021 11:05 AM EDT

While the big guns meet at the White House about the global chip shortage, the president and these companies are approaching this all wrong.

Jim Cramer: Go Ahead, Have a Cow, but I Say Powell and Xi Are Bulls

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Sep 22, 2021 3:51 PM EDT

We rallied, because China's President Xi and Fed Chair Powell made decisions that they knew would lead to rallies.

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