Wall Street turned on four of its longtime favorite stocks following earnings on Thursday. Suddenly, companies that have been remarkably consistent hit speed bumps and created what Jim Cramer described as a "bizarre earnings season."
"What we really have in each case is a set of expectations created by stocks that have been moving up consistently —expectations that were too much for each of these companies' managements to muster," the "Mad Money" host said.
Google-owner Alphabet, Visa, Microsoft and Starbucks all reported earnings Thursday, and in each case the market pronounced the quarters subpar and sent the stocks tumbling after hours.
Still, Cramer noted that each of those stocks had a magnificent run.
The darned thing was priced for perfection and we didn't get it. So it is getting clobbered.Jim Cramer
For instance, Cramer was impressed that Starbucks' earnings were better than expected on almost every line, including excellent numbers in China. But because investors are used to Starbucks knocking it out of the park, the quarter just wasn't enough.
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Microsoft also underwent a major transformation from a legacy P.C. company to embracing the cloud. Therefore, Cramer interpreted the quarter as a continued transformation. Yet, the company's numbers weren't good enough to please investors who rang the register.
The only problematic miss, in Cramer's perspective, came from Alphabet, which simply failed to deliver on both the top and bottom line. After a series of better-than-expected earnings and sales that fueled the stock higher, its 17 percent top-line growth just wasn't enough.
"The darned thing was priced for perfection, and we didn't get it. So, it is getting clobbered," Cramer said.
In this kind of a situation, Cramer advised to simply sit back and take a deep breath. When the smoke clears, they could start to climb back.
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