CNBC's Jim Cramer knows that sentiment matters when stocks are constantly being driven higher by a raging bull market.
But the "Mad Money" host also knows that sentiment is extremely difficult to measure. So Cramer has started asking people why they don't like the market. So far, he's been met with a cacophony of eye-opening answers.
One major reason Cramer has heard is that people can't afford to invest in the stock market, despite Cramer's advice to start with small investments and build on their gains.
Often times, Cramer asks if they like their iPhones. When they say they do, he asks why they wouldn't go buy shares of Apple.
"They typically screw up their faces and say, 'I don't know. I have no idea.' Well, let me tell you something. The company that is Apple reported tonight and it was one of the greatest blowouts I have ever seen," Cramer said. "Spectacular revenue growth, amazing earnings, a re-acceleration in China, bountiful services stream, and you just try getting an [iPhone] 10. Just try."
Cramer said that he was proud of his faith in Apple CEO Tim Cook, adding that so many people are "oblivious" to Apple's stock and the plays that benefit when it soars, like Broadcom.
"No one got Apple right except for us," he said. "What a shame, as this company, with a market cap approaching what could be $1 trillion, could have made fortunes for people if they would just understand that you can own — not trade, but own — a piece of this amazing company."
Playing payments
Cramer has been following the bull market in payment processing and the rise of digital transactions for a while, pounding the table on plays like Visa and PayPal.
But there are more ways to play the global cash-to-credit shift besides credit card companies and payment processors, so Cramer decided to analyze Global Payments, an international merchant acquirer that enables retailers to accept electronic payments.
"The stock of Global Payments has rocketed up more than 48 percent year to date, so good that, yes, I'm kicking myself. I wish I had highlighted it earlier," he said. "These guys own the client relationships in the payments business and they're the ones who set pricing. They also have some e-commerce, cross-border and gambling-related solutions."
Vouching for Facebook and Tesla
After negative reactions to Facebook's and Tesla's respective earnings reports on Wall Street, Cramer made a somewhat contrarian call.
"You know what? I think the stocks of these two companies could reverse and go higher after a couple of days of selling," the "Mad Money" host said. "It has to do with the way they handle their conference calls after they report their earnings, and how they approach their investor bases and make their promises."
Cramer began with Tesla. The automaker posted a larger-than-expected loss in the third quarter due to production problems with its Model 3 sedan.
Elon Musk, Tesla's outspoken CEO, tried to mitigate analysts' concerns on the conference call, acknowledging the production issues but saying that, once they're fixed, Tesla could become a production machine with the highest profitability in the industry.
The Street responded in kind, sending shares of Tesla down nearly 10 percent on Wednesday. But individual investors could respond differently, Cramer said.
Dominion Energy CEO talks Facebook deal
Data centers comprise one of the hottest areas in the market, so hot that even utilities like Dominion Energy are reaping the benefits, Dominion Chairman and CEO Tom Farrell told CNBC.
"We did a deal with Facebook," Farrell told Cramer on Thursday. "They're going to open a very large data center in central Virginia and we did a special rate, we constructed a special rate that we would be able to provide them and other large industrial customers for data centers in particular that will power the data centers completely from renewable energy."
Facebook's data center will be powered entirely with solar energy, Farrell said, adding that Dominion's data center business will only be ratcheting up in the future.
"We did a different kind of a deal, but also very creative, with Microsoft about a year ago to bring a data center of theirs here as well," the CEO said. "More than half the internet traffic in the United States runs through our service territory and we provide the electricity for all those data centers. We've already opened 11 new ones this year."
Federal Realty CEO: No one tenant can tank our business
The difficulties that the retail sector has been having have managed to seep into investors' feelings about retail-based real estate investment trusts, or REITs.
But Don Wood, the president and CEO of shopping center REIT Federal Realty Investment Trust, told CNBC that the stock market's bad action shouldn't reflect on his company.
"First of all, diversification is – certainly in your business, certainly in our business – critical. So when you do look at the income streams from Federal, you absolutely see no one tenant that makes up more than 3 percent of the earnings base," Wood told Cramer on Thursday.
With office, retail, residential and lifestyle facilities in its portfolio, Federal Realty has hedged strongly against any one tenant's potential damage, Wood said.
"The idea is that no one tenant can throw us off our game. It needs to be a collusion of a whole lot. And so far, we haven't seen that," the CEO said. "The bottom line is, if you were to liquidate this company asset by asset, you'd do a heck of a lot better than what it's trading for, even after today. So that says something to me."
Lightning Round: Two thumbs up for EXAS
In Cramer's lightning round, he sped through his take on some callers' favorite stocks:
Exact Sciences: "Everybody knows the same thing, which is the sales are unbelievable for the colorectal product and I think that it's a good company and I think that the product itself is saving a lot of peoples' lives. So I've got two thumbs up for that one."
Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp.: "Look, I think it's a terrific story. The information technology stories that we like? That's a good one, you know we like Accenture very much, and the one that I tell club members is worth buying is a company called DXC [Technology], which was down 81 cents today. I'd pick that one up even more than [Cognizant]."
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