CNBC's Jim Cramer told investors on Thursday they should consider the performance of stocks during the pandemic to better understand today's economy.
"If you want to understand this economy, it's all about knowing what happened in the past and then looking for ways to extrapolate it to the future," he said. "The pandemic may be over, but we are just now finding out how our habits have changed — some permanently, and some, in retrospect, not at all."
Cramer said he believes considering the past is necessary to best analyze market action in the present. According to him, stocks are still heavily influenced by Covid, even though it can be difficult to figure out exactly how.
For example, Conagra, which makes packaged and frozen foods, had been doing well before the pandemic. Consumers appreciated the company's inexpensive meals, but they turned away when Covid inflation drove up prices, Cramer said. However, the stock has recovered, and Cramer suggested it won't be a "one quarter phenomenon." He asserted that consumers are sick of cooking and are willing to buy frozen meals again.
Cramer said personal computer stocks suffered a Covid hangover after many workers returned to the office. But these companies' ties to artificial intelligence helped their shares pop later, he added, naming outfits like Dell and HP.
"Sometimes the past is so crazy, so nuts, that it distorts everything," he said. "And that's what's happened with Covid, which disrupted so many things to the point where it's still with us, even though the pandemic ended more than two years ago."
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