As industrial stocks stall and the technology sector runs hot, Jim Cramer said it will be tempting to view the trend as a sign of the overall economy weakening.
"I think that would be a mistake. To me, the techs are roaring while the industrials languish because investors keep gravitating to the companies that will have the most upside in the second half [of 2017] now that it looks like the Trump steamroller has run out of gas," the "Mad Money" host said.
Before President Donald Trump came to somewhat of a standstill with Congress, banks and industrials topped the charts on expectations of repatriation, lower corporate taxes, and bountiful deregulation.
But corporate tax and health care reforms seem to have taken a backseat to the Comey-Russia uproar, and disagreement in Congress on how to implement the policies is not speeding the process.
Cramer found that some of the market's few winners are tied to Chinese infrastructure projects. Chinese excavator sales were up by triple digits in April, and U.S. construction giants Caterpillar and Cummins are seeing their orders rise.
"All I can say is thank heavens for Communist China. We need a major infrastructure program, but our Republican-controlled Congress hates spending money, so our companies will just have to piggyback off the Chinese," Cramer said.
It's no secret that merger and acquisition activity has been a key to Zoetis' rise. The animal health giant is a high taxpayer, and CEO Juan Ramon Alaix said that if lawmakers in Washington pass corporate tax reform, the company would not slow its takeover streak.
"We still have opportunities to bring new companies in the core business, but also in the complimentary, diagnostics or genetics or biodevices," he told Cramer on Monday, touting the company's recent acquisitions of Nexvet, Pharmaq, and Scandinavian Micro Biodevices.
Spending on takeovers would, however, come second to investing in the business by way of research and development, manufacturing, and commercial initiatives, Alaix said, adding that any additional cash would be returned to shareholders via dividends or share buybacks.
Cramer also sat down with Magellan Midstream Partners Chairman, President and CEO Michael Mears to hear about developments in the oil transport space, especially under an energy-friendly administration.
"As light oil production grows in this country, it's going to overwhelm the capacity of U.S. refiners to consumer light oil. And the oil coming out of the Permian [Basin] in particular is getting lighter and lighter. That oil has to go to the export market, so it's giving us opportunities to build infrastructure," Mears told Cramer on Monday.
And as those U.S.-based players ramp up production, Mears said his business sees three paths for growth.
"One of those is additional crude oil pipelines. We're looking at expanding out of the Permian [Basin] down to Corpus Christi. The other area is crude oil exports. We're building a facility in the Houston area called Seabrook Logistics for crude oil exports and we're looking to grow that in Corpus Christi. And the third is really refined products exports, which we don't talk about as much, but as we have so much abundance of cheap crude in this country, refiners are going to continue to run and they're going to export that," Mears explained.
With another round of retailers gearing up to release earnings, Cramer looked back at some of the sector's latest reports to see if they are really as bleak as their stock movements suggest.
"If you take a second look at the crucial reports from Macy's, Kohl's, Nordstrom [and JC] Penney, you find things that you can like about these, even as none of them truly stands out as must-own stocks," the "Mad Money" host said, turning to Macy's first to prove his point.
Though the market responded accordingly to Macy's big earnings miss, sending the stock down to six-year lows after the department store chain reported a whopping 4.6 percent drop in same-store sales, Cramer said the 6.4 percent yield could be a safety net for investors while Macy's shutters its less profitable stores.
Cramer said that the stock might not have gone down so much if there was not so much idle buzz about a possible takeover. And, he added, Macy's still has some real estate value left despite moving too slowly to monetize it.
"It's not a total debacle, although I could argue Macy's is the weakest of the four," Cramer said.
Finally, real estate investment trust EPR Properties has an eclectic assortment of properties including movie theatres, retail centers, ski resorts and charter schools, and President and CEO Greg Silvers offered retailers a partial answer to their foot traffic problem.
"Everybody's looking for experiential, but entertainment doesn't solve bad demographics. If we have a bad property, entertainment's not going to fix that. Entertainment makes good properties better," Silvers told Cramer on Monday.
EPR Properties uses entertainment to bolster business from its golf entertainment centers to its water parks, but Silvers was hands-off when it came to helping the retail industry at large, though the CEO did recall the mall once being a part of the experiential economy.
"We're not a foreteller of retailers going away. It really needs to be right-sized. We are over-retailed, probably, as a country, and we need to get down to right size," Silvers said.
In Cramer's lightning round, he shared his take on some caller favorite stocks, including:
AbbVie Inc.: "This is one of the finest drug companies around. I think the answer is to buy, buy, buy. It's really good."
Broadcom: "Broadcom is so terrific. I know it hit an all-time high again today, but it's still not expensive, and I think [CEO] Hock Tan's got it going. I think it can go even higher from here."
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