Cramer's First Hour -- Retail Sales: Solid Report, Better Than Expected; Revisions Revised Up -- September 17, 2024

Locator: 48606CRAMER.

Cramer's first hour: a mix of facts, factoids, opinions from various sources -- often not cited -- while listening to Cramer's first hour on CNBC.  

Hyperscalers: bingo. Mentioned at 8:30 a.m. by Jim Cramer.

August retail sales: up one-tenth of a percent; forecast, to be negative, minus 0.2%. First number; revisions going forward.

• ex autos: +0.1% vs +0.2% estimate
• past numbers: upward revisions

GDPNow: new estimate to be released later today. Above numbers suggest GDP estimate could rise. Link here. GDPNow released today: 3.0%; up from 2.5% September 9, 2024.

MSFT: up $8 / share. Raises dividend 10%; announces $60-billion share buyback.

All tech: looking better.

AAPL: not tech, but "consumer electronics."

Personal investing: SRE by rule.

Palantir:

Fed cut: coming. And no one understands why we need a cut. LOL. 

Can anyone see the pattern? It appears the soft landing / hard landing is "defined" less than six months after the first cut is made. So, we finally have a timeline. If we get a fed rate cut today and if the cuts continue as expected, if we don't have a recession in March, 2025 -- 1st / 2nd quarter 2025 -- then we have a soft landing.

Dow at an all-time high and investors still want a 50-bp cut in the Fed rate.

Tech: absolutely remarkable. That $60-billion shareback is bigger than most companies. 

Savings: still 30% greater than what it was pre-Covid (end of 2019).

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• I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
• I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
• See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. 
• Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them. 
• Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
• I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
• And now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Nvidia.