To CNBC's Jim Cramer, the court decision to let telecom giant AT&T buy Time Warner without any conditions sent a message to the Justice Department: you don't understand the new reality.
"We now live in a world where the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Google and Netflix can put these old-line media companies out of business if they don't get their acts together and cut costs," the "Mad Money" host said Wednesday as the market digested news of the deal.
Cramer called it "a clarion call" for established media players like Disney and Comcast, both of whom are vying for pieces of Twenty-First Century Fox, to "do everything they can" to push back on the success companies like Netflix have seen with their new-age models.
"Judge Leon's decision to let [the] AT&T-Time Warner deal happen is all about trying to save the traditional media in a world where the odds favor its extinction," he said. "For old media, the costs are too great, the revenues are too meager, and the whole industry is on a collision course with FANG."
Cramer on Fed rate hike: Don't panic
The Federal Reserve's Wednesday interest rate hike — the central bank's second for 2018 — shouldn't stir legitimate worry among investors, Cramer said Wednesday.
As the Dow Jones industrial average fell nearly 120 points after the Fed implemented its quarter-point hike, Cramer argued that the widely anticipated move incurred a natural reaction among Wall Street watchers.
"Recognize that owning stocks just got harder," he said. "Higher rates are not a positive for the market. They're a negative."
Every rate hike tends to push at least some buyers out of the stock market because lending automatically becomes more expensive, he explained. And with the Fed indicating that two more hikes are on the horizon, he could understand why some bulls were on the fritz.
"Still, there is zero reason for panic," Cramer told investors. For more on his opinion, click here.
RH CEO addresses stock's monster recovery
When RH CEO Gary Friedman started buying his company's stock at its $27-a-share low, he recognized that investors were missing "exactly what we told them," he said Wednesday.
Friedman, who joined Cramer for an exclusive interview, said he bought into the Restoration Hardware parent's shares four times in the last year just to prove his confidence in the new strategy.
"Despite that, I think we were the seventh-most-shorted stock in all of the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange," he said.
Those shorts worked out to RH's advantage. Shares of the home design giant soared over 30 percent on Tuesday after the company delivered a blowout earnings report.
So what exactly were investors and short-sellers missing? Find out here.
The $100 billion club
Over the years, Cramer has found that in a bull market, the winners tend to keep winning.
So as stocks slid on Wednesday following the Fed's rate hike, the "Mad Money" host unveiled a new way for investors to find high-quality companies with long-term prospects: the $100 billion club.
His concept was simple: to examine public companies that have reached market capitalizations of $100 billion or more in the last 12 months.
"Why should we care about these mega-cap stocks? Because unlike an index, the $100 billion club isn't selected by anyone. There's no nominating committee. The only way a company gets its name on this list is by producing years and years of gains," Cramer said.
"In the last 12 months, this club has seen 15 new members," he continued. "That's a lot, and it turns out this list is a veritable who's who of what's working."
Lightning round: Keep your specs in check
In Cramer's lightning round, he flew through his take on callers' favorite stocks:
Karyopharm Therapeutics: "You're out there on your own, I've got to tell you, because that is a very, very speculative situation for a billion-dollar company and I cannot endorse it here."
Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc.: "Look, we have always said the same thing: oncological specs we are willing to accept as long as we understand that they are specs and nothing more because they tend to get takeover bids."
Disclosure: Cramer's charitable trust owns shares of Facebook, Amazon and Google parent Alphabet.
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