Mad Money

Cramer Remix: Zillow's risky move has not paid off

Key Points
  • CNBC's Jim Cramer reveals why the real estate company’s strategy in the housing market was the wrong move at the wrong time.
  • The "Mad Money" host also sits down with the CEO of Florida's largest medical marijuana company.
Cramer Remix: Zillow's risky move has not paid off
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Cramer Remix: Zillow's risky move has not paid off

Zillow's foray into home-flipping has not been paying off for the online real estate broker, CNBC's lamented on Monday after Zillow's stock lost 1.73 percent.

"Investors ... don't want an interest-rate-sensitive company that owns homes; they bought Zillow because it's a high-margin, asset-light online real estate play with a fabulous multi-year growth story," the "Mad Money" host said. "In short, it's not what the shareholder base signed up for."

Beyond that, with interest rates on the rise, it's "a terrible time to start flipping houses," Cramer continued, noting that even the homebuilders have cautioned investors about a pause in the housing market.

"It drives me nuts when a great company makes an unforced error. Zillow was in fantastic shape just six months ago," he said. "We loved their attempts to corner the real estate advertising market. Then they decided to move into a totally new, totally risky business at what may be the worst possible time, and the stock has since cratered."

And while Cramer remains a fan of Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff, who appeared on "Mad Money" in May to discuss the home-flipping move, he couldn't steer investors towards the stock.

"I can't recommend the stock here. You don't double down on the housing market when the Federal Reserve is putting its jackboot on the industry's neck. Hubris is not investable," Cramer said. "That said, it's not too late for Zillow to forget this new business and pivot back to a model that Wall Street loves."

Under-the-radar reasons for Monday's wacky session

Dowell | Getty Images

As the on Monday, with some stocks reversing their early-day sell-offs into the close, Cramer pointed out some under-the-radar reasons for the moves.

Concerns around may have been the most obvious — higher inflation and rising rates tend to slow the economy — but Cramer said several other factors were at play in Monday's odd trading session.

First, the bond market was closed due to the federal holiday, so investors looking for recession-proof deals turned to stock-picking in European and Asian markets, Cramer said.

But those markets "were all crushed — , Asia because China's stock market got obliterated," he explained.

"Those who don't know anything except that they like to trade off of overseas markets, they just sold, sold, sold," he said. "That worked until the afternoon when other buyers came in, oblivious to Europe and Asia, ... and instead, these people just wanted to get some bargains in an oversold market. That prevailed a lot in the last hour and a half."

Click here for the rest of Cramer's analysis.

Cramer's power ranking: Communication services

Fireworks explode over the Cinderella Castle at The Magic Kingdom, part of Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
Vanessa Carvalho | Brazil Press Photo | LatinContent | Getty Images

In football as in the stock market, Cramer often finds it helpful to look at the "power rankings" — the dynamic, to-the-minute listings of the best performers.

"Like football, the standings at the moment might be obscuring some real staying power that you'll only notice after doing a deeper dive," he said on Monday. "Now that the third quarter's in the bag, I'll be rolling out the Cramer Power Rankings for the rest of the year, sector by sector."

The "Mad Money" host started with the communication services sector. Late last year, index operators S&P Dow Jones Indices and MSCI decided to meld the telecommunications sector and the media group, creating an industry classification known as "communication services."

The new stock group accounts for 10 percent of the and ranges from telecom to TV to online properties. High-profile names like and make up the hodgepodge sector, so Cramer found no better place to start his power rankings.

Click here for his top five winners.

Trulieve CEO talks transition from opioids to cannabis

Kim Rivers, CEO, Trulieve
HIGHLIFE Media | YouTube 

Florida patients with serious conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder are increasingly opting for medical cannabis over opioids, the CEO of the state's first and largest fully licensed medical marijuana company told CNBC on Monday.

"We're seeing a huge transition," Kim Rivers, the CEO of Trulieve, told Cramer in an exclusive interview. "That's actually one of our initiatives in front of the [Florida state] legislature this upcoming session, to introduce policies to say instead of only having opioids as an alternative, why not medical cannabis?"

With over 80,000 patients and 17 retail locations in the state of Florida, Trulieve offers 90 cannabis-based products that help treat a series of conditions including seizure conditions, cancer and AIDS. A bulk of Trulieve's patients also suffer from PTSD given Florida's large veteran population, Rivers said.

To watch and read more about her interview, click here.

Breaking down the jobs report: Transportation

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell speaks during a press conference in Washington, DC, September 26, 2018. 
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

Cramer also noticed a counterintuitive trend in last Friday's jobs report. While Wall Street has been worried about rising transportation costs for some time, the numbers told a different story, he said.

"When you look at the numbers here, 24,000 including 5,000 as couriers, you see very little new employment year over year, just 174,000," he said. "I think the whole trucking industry got caught flat-footed by the new federal safety rules that dramatically limit the number of hours a trucker can drive. Why isn't anyone talking about this change besides me?"

The government's move took a lot of people by surprise and escalated the need for truck and delivery drivers, something that can boost transportation inflation more dramatically than previously expected, Cramer explained.

"Here's the thing: this transportation number should've been up much more," he said. "If it doesn't start going higher, we're going to be saddled with some real bad inflation from the supply chain: manufacturing to distribution to retail to your door."

Click here for the five most important numbers from the jobs report.

Lightning round: Don't take the plunge with VAC

In Cramer's lightning round, he flew through his take on callers' favorite stocks:

: "Man, this thing has fallen out of favor like you wouldn't believe, which makes me think that people feel it's a rate play. In other words, as rates go up, people buy fewer timeshares. I'm not going to disagree with that assessment. I do think the stock is oversold, but holy cow. If it's a rate play and rates keep going higher, you're not going to make any money here."

: "Remember what just happened here. First of all, let's not be too hard on ourselves. The stock's up 37 percent. Second, there was a fintech program out of fintech and into the banks. This is just money sloshing around. I almost wanted to go to my charitable trust today and tell the club members, 'We should be thinking about Mastercard.'"

Disclosure: Cramer's charitable trust owns shares of Facebook.

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