Raphael Stevens

Monday – Friday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM ET

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Thursday said that investors who believe the Federal Reserve can pull off a soft landing should have bank stocks on their shopping list.
“If you’re like me and you think the Fed can actually do some needle-threading and engineer a not-so-incredibly-hard crash landing, then these companies will make fortunes from higher rates,” the “Mad Money” host said.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Thursday said that investors who believe the Federal Reserve can pull off a soft landing should have bank stocks on their shopping list.
“If you think we’re headed for a full-blown recession, it’s right to avoid the bank stocks. But if you’re like me and you think the Fed can actually do some needle-threading and engineer a not-so-incredibly-hard crash landing, then these companies will make fortunes from higher rates,” he said.

The “Mad Money” host highlighted three bank stocks specifically as buys. 
Here is the list:

Wells Fargo
Morgan Stanley
Bank of America

“At these levels, I think Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America already reflect the recession worries, but they don’t reflect the earnings upside from the Fed’s rate hikes. … That’s why they’re worth buying,” he said.
His comments come after the Fed raised its benchmark interest rate by 75 basis points on Wednesday, marking the biggest jump since 1994. 
While stocks rose on the heels of Powell’s announcement, the bank stocks’ gains were modest. The major indices reversed Wednesday’s gains and then some on Thursday.

Cramer said the bank stocks should have rallied more than they did on the day of the Fed’s announcement, as a higher-interest environment is often good news for banks.

Stock picks and investing trends from CNBC Pro:

“Every time the Fed tightens, it means the banks can take your deposits and then instantly earn higher risk-free returns by putting them in short-term Treasurys,” he said.
“Of course, a Fed-mandated slowdown will also hurt the banks — more defaults, less demand for loans — but I think any potential weakness will be much more than offset by these much higher net interest margins,” he added.
Disclosure: Cramer’s Charitable Trust owns shares of Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley.
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Monday – Friday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM ET

It’s that time again! “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer rings the lightning round bell, which means he’s giving his answers to callers’ stock questions at rapid speed.

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Capital Southwest Corp: “We don’t know what they really own. … I don’t recommend those stocks because we can’t really tell what they’re in.”

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Terran Orbital Corp: “It’s one of those newer companies that doesn’t have any earnings. You know how I feel about those guys.”

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Oshkosh Corp: “They make things, do stuff, return capital and it’s very good, and therefore it is a buy into this weakness.”

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Facebook is openly copying TikTok, and calling it out as a significant competitor.
But Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s head of global business solutions, says his company specializes is entertainment, not social media.
TikTok hasn’t seen an advertising slowdown despite what other companies are saying, Chandlee said.

ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok app is displayed in the App Store on a smartphone in an arranged photograph taken in Arlington, Virginia.
Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

TikTok is fully aware that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is retooling the Facebook and Instagram apps to be more like its own popular short video service. But TikTok has no interest in mimicking Facebook.
“Facebook is a social platform,” Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s president of global business solutions, told CNBC in an interview on Thursday. “They’ve built all their algorithms based on the social graph. That is their core competency. Ours is not.”

Chandlee, who spent 12 years at Facebook before joining TikTok in 2019, said his former employer will likely run into trouble if it tries to copy TikTok, and will end up offering an inferior experience to users and brands.
Facebook launched Instagram Reels in 2020 as its first real foray into the short-form video market. Last year, it brought the service over to its core Facebook app.
“We are an entertainment platform,” Chandlee said. “The difference is significant. It’s a massive difference.”
Facebook app chief Tom Alison told The Verge this week he sees TikTok increasingly stealing share from the world’s largest social network. Facebook plans to modify its primary feed to look more like TikTok by recommending more content regardless of whether it’s shared by friends.
“I think the thing we probably didn’t fully embrace or see is how social this format could be,” Alison told The Verge.

Facebook’s recent performance backs that up. Meta’s stock price is down 52% this year, underperforming the Nasdaq, which has dropped 32%. In April, the company said revenue in the second quarter could drop from a year earlier for the first time ever.
Earlier in the year, Zuckerberg acknowledged the increased competitive pressure from TikTok and said, “This is why our focus on Reels is so important over the long term.”
TikTok is owned by China’s ByteDance, which is privately held.
Chandlee said history is not on Zuckerberg’s side, and compares its current problem to the challenge that Google faced when it was trying to take on Facebook at its own game.
“You remember when Google was creating Google+,” Chandlee said. At Facebook, “We had war rooms at the time. It was a big deal. Everyone was worried about it,” he said.
But no matter how much money Google poured into its social-networking efforts, it couldn’t compete with Facebook, which had become the default place for people to connect with friends and share photos and updates.
“It became clear Google’s value was search and Facebook was really good at social,” Chandlee said.
“I see the same thing now,” he added. “We’re really good at what we do. We bring out these cultural trends and this unique experience people have on TikTok. They’re just not going to have that on Facebook unless Facebook entirely walks away from its social values, which I just don’t think it will do.”
Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Chandlee added that he has deep respect for Zuckerberg and views both Facebook and Google as strong competition. However, he noted that TikTok has an array of competitors across the world, including businesses in e-commerce and live streaming.
Chandlee said he hasn’t seen a slowdown in ad spending on TikTok, despite what’s being reported by companies such as Snap, which told investors that ad revenue is being hurt by inflation and the threat of recession. Snap’s stock has lost almost three-quarters of its value this year.
“I’ve heard there’s going to be a slowdown in the ad market, anywhere from 2% to 6%, but we have not seen it,” Chandlee said. “We’re not seeing the headwinds that some others are seeing.”
WATCH: Snap has a TikTok problem, says Lead Edge Capital’s Mitchell Green

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Thirty-six percent of U.S. employees with salaries of $100,000 or more are living paycheck to paycheck, double the share in 2019, according to Willis Towers Watson.
The highest earners are the only income group that reported an increase over that time.

South_agency | E+ | Getty Images

More than a third of high-earning American workers feel strapped for cash — a share that has risen dramatically in recent years.
Thirty-six percent of U.S. employees with salaries of $100,000 or more are living paycheck to paycheck — twice as many who said they were in 2019, according to a survey conducted by Willis Towers Watson, a consulting firm.

That’s more than the 34% of workers who earn $50,000 to $100,000 a year who are living paycheck to paycheck, though lower than the 52% of paycheck-to-paycheck workers with incomes of less than $50,000, according to the survey.
However, the high earners are the only group that saw an increase in their paycheck-to-paycheck ranks in the last three years.
More from Personal Finance:How young adults can start building creditInflation forces tough spending choices on some older AmericansCost to finance a new car hits a record $656 per month
“Employees at higher pay levels aren’t immune to living paycheck to paycheck,” said Mark Smrecek, the financial wellbeing market leader for North America at Willis Towers Watson.
Willis Towers Watson polled 9,658 full-time employees from large and midsize private employers in December and January 2022, before the most recent inflation readings.

The findings are similar to a recent LendingClub survey that found 36% of people earning at least $250,000 a year live paycheck to paycheck.

Inflation may push more to live paycheck to paycheck

Quickly rising costs for food, transportation and other areas of household budgets may put further stress on families’ ability to save money, Smrecek said.
The Consumer Price Index was up 8.6% in May from a year earlier, the highest inflation reading in about 40 years. The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by 0.75 percentage points on Wednesday — the largest increase since 1994 — as part of an ongoing effort to rein in consumer costs.
“These numbers are likely to increase if we see these inflation results continue,” Smrecek said of people living paycheck to paycheck.

Housing expenses, debt present budget challenges

The drivers of financial stress differ depending on income. The highest earners cited housing expenses as the most acute challenge, whereas low earners were more likely to report difficulties with debt, for example, Smrecek said.
While the survey doesn’t break down specific housing expenses, employers have anecdotally pointed to increased costs for rents and mortgages as workers relocated residences during the pandemic, Smrecek added. Higher-income employees are more likely than lower earners to have jobs that allow them to work remotely.
Some financial planners recommend Americans who are strapped for cash try adopting a 50-20-30 rule to bring their spending into line. This involves allocating 50% of after-tax income to essential expenses, 30% to discretionary expenses, and the remaining 20% to savings, investment and debt reduction.

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Airline stocks have dropped more than the broader market.
Spring and summer travel demand have surged despite higher fares.
Economic concerns from inflation and recession risk have weighed on airline stock prices.

An American Eagle aircraft taxis as a Southwest Airlines aircraft lands at Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, January 24, 2022.
Joshua Roberts | Reuters

Packed planes. Sky-high airfare. An end to Covid testing for international arrivals. So much is going in airlines’ favor these days — except their share prices.
The sector’s latest drop is surpassing a broad market swoon as investors weigh the chances of a recession and just how aggressive the Federal Reserve will get to tamp down the sharpest increase in consumer prices since the early 1980s.

American Airlines dropped 8.6% on Thursday, hitting the lowest price since November 2020. Southwest Airlines fell 6%, hitting a nearly two-year low. Delta Air Lines and United Airlines each shed more than 7%, while the NYSE Arca Airline Index, which tracks 18 carriers, lost more than 8%.
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve lifted interest rates by three-quarters of percentage point, the biggest increase since 1994, in an effort to tame inflation.
“If you’ve flown on a plane lately, planes are very full and plane tickets are very expensive,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday.
Strong travel demand following more than two years of the Covid-19 pandemic has been a boon to airlines, with Delta, United and American recently forecasting a return to profitability. Carriers’ executives have said travelers have been digesting higher fares.
Airlines have been supply constrained. Delta, JetBlue Airways, Spirit Airlines, Alaska Airlines and others have cut summer flying plans to give themselves more wiggle room for routine disruptions and in some cases to address labor shortfalls.

Airline CEOs will meet virtually with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg late Thursday to discuss how prepared they are after a surge in delays and cancellations this year, according to people familiar with matter.
There are some signs that the travel boom could begin to cool, albeit from high levels. Fare-tracker Hopper on Wednesday said domestic airfare fell for the first time this year, with round trips going for $390, down from $410 in mid-May. It said this was in line with usual seasonal trends.
Start-up U.S. airline Avelo on Thursday said it was cutting its fares 50% to all 25 destinations “to help provide some inflation relief for folks during these uncertain times.” 
What will be key for airlines going forward is demand after the summer travel surge, when business travel usually picks up. Business owners worried about a recession and in some cases even announcing layoffs could scale back plans for travel.
“The market is just reacting to anything that’s cyclical, anything that’s considered sensitive to the economy,” said Savanthi Syth, airline equity analyst at Raymond James. “As frustrating as it is to watch the stocks … we are going into this recession like we’ve never gone into one before.”
She pointed to strong, pent-up demand from the pandemic, stronger consumer savings and airlines’ buildup of liquidity during the pandemic, meaning they won’t have to load up their balance sheets with expensive debt.

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Businesses are turning to younger workers to fill holes in the labor market as the pandemic lingers.
Thirty percent fewer teenage workers secured jobs in May than during the same month in 2021.
For those willing to work, the pay is competitive.

When Jennifer Sutton opened her small business, Guest Haus Juicery, in September 2021, she turned to teenage workers to fill gaps in the hiring market.
Sutton initially thought her two teen employees would staff the register at her Park City, Utah-based cafe, but a tight labor environment forced Sutton to think differently about how she could best utilize the hands.

“They’ve proven to be incredible workers. They’ve jumped in, not only checking our customers out in front of the house, but they help out in the kitchen,” Sutton said. “They are eager to learn and do new things.”
The summer hiring season has long been bolstered by teenage workers looking to earn extra income during their downtime from school and extracurricular activities. But the typical teen hiring spree has yet to kick in for 2022 as the pandemic lingers, and young workers are finding they have more leverage to ask for higher pay, new opportunities and more flexibility around vacations or sports.
“We foster a pretty social, high-vibe environment here that’s appealing to them. However, it does not mean that there’s an option to pay them less or dump more hours on to them,” Sutton said. “They’re looking for work, but they’re making asks and know what they’re looking for. They want flexibility. They want to be able to take summer vacations, and they know they can get competitive pay.”
Sutton pays her younger workers, ages 15 to 17, between $12 and $14 an hour, plus tips — nearly double Utah’s minimum wage. She’s looking to hire three more teens this summer, as tourism picks up.
Roughly 153,000 teens, ages 16 to 19, secured jobs in May, according to an analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics by global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That’s 30% below the 219,000 jobs added in the same month last year and the lowest teen hiring level for the month of May since 2018.

The lag in summer teen hiring so far mirrors a slowdown from summer 2021, when 41% fewer teens found jobs than in 2020, according to Challenger. The summer of 2020 saw the most teen jobs added on record, with 2.1 million teenagers landing positions between May and July. This year Challenger projects younger workers will secure 1.3 million jobs in that same span, below an annual summer average dating back to 1998 of 1.4 million.
Challenger noted that teens might be waiting for the school year to officially end before seeking employment. But for those willing to work, the pay is competitive.
For the first four months of 2022, average hourly wages for teen workers increased nearly 4 times faster than the increase among all workers, notching 2.8% wage growth for those 15 to 19 years old, compared with 0.8% growth across age groups, according to data from payroll platform Gusto.
Some bosses, such as Sam Ballas, owner of an East Coast Wings and Grill location in Clemons, North Carolina, are going the extra mile to keep their teenage workers on the payroll.
When Ballas opened his restaurant in September 2020, teens made up about 35% of his employee base. Now he’s offering competitive pay and looking to hang on to teens he’s recruited in the last two years, rewarding them with raises and opportunities.
Ballas, also the CEO of the chain, said he occasionally reaches out to younger workers before they take on new roles after college, highlighting the opportunity for higher-level positions in the company. They earn $9 to $15 an hour in the front of the house and up to $18 in the back of the house.
“When you do see a talent in these young people, you quickly escalate the wage to stay competitive,” Ballas said. “You don’t want to lose them to a competitor.”
He continues to encourage them to come back to work during time off from school.
For teen workers such as Chloe Biggers, who works for Ballas, the upward mobility has paid off. She started working at East Coast Wings and Grill at age 16, at $8 an hour. Two years later she’s earning up to $14 an hour, depending on whether she’s hosting or handling carryout orders.
Biggers said the extra cash has been helpful in offsetting the effects of inflation.
“Prices have definitely inflated, so these pay raises definitely do help, and the extra hours definitely do help. Especially when I want to go out with friends,” she said.

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Fanatics has tapped former Dick Clark Productions CEO Mike Mahan to lead its trading cards and digital collectibles business.
Fanatics Collectibles, which launched in 2021, includes its NFT arm Candy Digital, sports trading card brand Topps, and zerocool — a trading cards brand solely focused on pop culture, art and entertainment.
Mahan started his career as an investment banker for Bear Stearns and most recently struck a deal with male grooming company Manscaped to take it public in a $1 billion SPAC deal.

Dick Clark Productions CEO Mike Mahan (R) and guest attend the 2018 Billboard Music Awards at MGM Grand Garden Arena on May 20, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Jeff Kravitz | Filmmagic, Inc | Getty Images

Sports platform Fanatics said Thursday that it has tapped former Dick Clark Productions CEO Mike Mahan to lead its trading cards and digital collectibles business.
Fanatics Collectibles, which launched in 2021, includes its NFT arm Candy Digital, sports trading card brand Topps, and zerocool — a trading cards brand solely focused on pop culture, art and entertainment.

Mahan stepped down from his role at Dick Clark Productions, known for major television events like the Golden Globe Awards and the Billboard Music Awards, in 2020. Starting his career as an investment banker for Bear Stearns, he most recently struck a deal with male grooming company Manscaped to take it public in a $1 billion SPAC deal — yet to be completed — through his blank check company Bright Lights Acquisition Corp.
“Our collectibles business has seen tremendous growth since launching last year, and we couldn’t be more confident in bringing Mike on board to shape the bright future of this division and its alignment within our larger Fanatics digital sports platform,” Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin said in a statement.
Mahan will report directly to Rubin.
“As a collector and passionate sports fan, Mike’s vision for both the trading cards hobby and emerging digital collectibles properties, driven by exceptional products, will further position Fanatics as a leader in these categories, creating incredible opportunities for fans, collectors, hobby shops, retailers and our partners.”
Fanatics is the majority owner of Candy Digital, and Mike Novogratz, founder of crypto merchant bank Galaxy Digital, also owns a stake. The company’s board members include Novogratz, Rubin, and investor Gary Vaynerchuk. Investors include SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, Insight Partners and Pro Football Hall of Famer Peyton Manning.

Though it will remain as its own entity, Candy Digital CEO Scott Lawin will report to Mahan within the Fanatics Collectibles reorganization.

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“I could not think of a more perfect next step in my career than to lead the incredibly talented teams within Fanatics Collectibles, where I’ll have the opportunity to combine my entrepreneurial passions that lie within sports, marketing, and content creation, with my love for trading cards and collectibles at large,” Mahan said in a statement.
“The worlds of trading cards and digital collectibles have been forever reshaped over the past several years, and these new assets and the connections they create have the ability to bring fans and collectors closer than ever before to the players, teams and entertainers they love.”
Last week, Fanatics announced that Topps is launching a line of trading cards featuring college athletes this fall, a deal that the company said will cut some players in on the profits and pair them up with school logos on cards for the first time.
Fanatics most recently raised a $1.5 billion funding round in March that values the sports platform company at $27 billion. The company ranked No. 21 on this year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list.

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