Jim Cramer’s top 10 things to watch in the stock market Monday

1. Wall Street flashes Monday. This follows a strong week for the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, which on Friday topped its November 2021 all-time high. The S&P 500 also closed at a record. Back-to-back gains were not enough to keep the Dow positive for the week. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is on Capitol Hill this week and the employment report is out Friday. My Sunday column looked at why success of a high-profile IPO would be bad for the market.
2. Super Micro Computer is added to the S&P 500 and surges another 16%. Before Monday’s open, the stock was already up nearly 220% in 2024. The S&P shuffles comes as The Wall Street Journal says Club name Nvidia is a bubble. Gee thanks! Nvidia adds 2% to its more than 65% increase so far this year. Despite the stock price surge, I think Nvidia is among the cheapest and most undervalued of our Super Six, which was the subject of a weekend commentary. Nvidia CFO Colette Kress presents Monday afternoon at the Morgan Stanley tech conference.
3. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, hits Club name Apple $1.95 billion antitrust fine. The Commission says Apple favors distribution of its own music streaming services. In a fiery statement, Apple says Spotify would stand to gain the most from the EU pronouncement. At the same time, Apple announces new versions of its 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air laptops with its latest M3 chip.
4. JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines are ending their merger agreement. Not too surprising after a federal judge in January blocked the deal. Spirit Airlines drops 15% on the news and JetBlue gains 3.5%. JetBlue will pay Spirit a $69 million breakup fee. While the deal was pending, Spirit shareholders received about $425 million in total prepayments.
5. Club name Ford says it will double F-150 hybrid production. Sales of hybrids in February rose 31.5% year over year. Electric vehicles rose 80%. But that’s against last year’s lumpy production, which had fits and starts.
6. Macy’s bid goes to $24 per share from real estate focused investing firm Arkhouse Management. Shares of Macy’s jump 15% on the news but still trades below the offer price. A real estate retail play again? Aren’t we tired of trying that? You cannot load this thing with debt again like was done in 1992. You cannot load this thing up with a ton of debt like in 2021.
7. Powell delivers his semiannual assessment of the economy to the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday and the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday. Expect Powell to be grilled about when, or even if, rates will be cut. I’ve been saying for a while now the economy is too strong to be thinking about near-term cuts.
8. OPEC+ keeps its price curbs but the U.S. will be pumping 13.5 million barrels. Oil prices turn lower Monday after getting modest bumps highs on the news. Natural gas, while up 7.5% on Monday, has dropped more than 40% in the past 12 months.
9. In real adjusted income, nat gas is the lowest in the 21st century. I have Coterra Energy CEO Tom Jorden on Mad Money tonight. The Club holding is 50/50 oil and natural gas, and, as this past quarter showed, it can be nimble. The stock has been pretty muted this year, though it is looking Monday to complete a three-day winning streak.
10. JPMorgan says Alphabet will get its Gemini back on track after social media lit up with examples of how the AI’s image generation tool created historically inaccurate pictures. Backlash erupted and Google pulled the feature. JPMorgan analysts say don’t give up on Alphabet and predicts it will close the AI gap with Microsoft-backed OpenAI over time.

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