Business

Monday – Friday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM ET

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday said that next week’s jam-packed week of earnings and economic data releases could result in good news for the Federal Reserve’s battle against inflation.
Cramer said that he has his eye on the FOMC’s meeting next week, which is expected to conclude with a 0.75 percentage point interest rate increase.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday said that next week’s jam-packed week of earnings and economic data releases could result in good news for the Federal Reserve’s battle against inflation.
“This market’s trading like next week, we’ll see some real signs that the Fed’s winning its war on inflation, and they can, therefore, ease up on the rate hikes going forward… I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the market got it exactly right,” he said.

Cramer named two important economic events he’s watching next week: the FOMC’s next meeting, which is expected to conclude with a 0.75 percentage point interest rate increase, and the nonfarm payroll report.
“You can’t get a reduction in wages until you see many people losing their jobs, and that’s what the Fed needs to see,” he said.
Cramer also previewed next week’s slate of earnings. All earnings and revenue estimates are courtesy of FactSet.
Tuesday: Eli Lilly, Uber, Devon Energy, AMD
Eli Lilly

Q3 2022 earnings release at 6:25 a.m. ET; conference call at 9 a.m. ET
Projected EPS: $1.91
Projected revenue: $6.89 billion

The company has the chance to shine now that health care stocks are some of the new market leaders, he said.
Uber

Q3 2022 earnings release at 7:05 a.m. ET; conference call at 8 a.m. ET
Projected loss: loss of 18 cents per share
Projected revenue: $8.11 billion

Cramer said that if the company reports that there are plenty of drivers but customers can’t afford rides, that’ll be great news for the Federal Reserve.
Devon Energy

Q3 2022 earnings release at 4:05 p.m. ET; conference call on Wednesday at 11 a.m. ET
Projected EPS: $2.12
Projected revenue: $4.16 billion

While the company is doing well, investors shouldn’t buy shares of oil companies when the economy is weakening, he warned.
AMD

Q3 2022 earnings release at 4:15 p.m. ET; conference call at 5 p.m. ET
Projected EPS: 70 cents
Projected revenue: $5.69 billion

Cramer said he’s interested in knowing if AMD is losing market share to Intel.
Wednesday: Humana, CVS, Qualcomm
Humana

Q3 2022 earnings release at 6:30 a.m. ET; conference call at 9 a.m. ET
Projected EPS: $6.27
Projected revenue: $22.82 billion

CVS

Q3 2022 earnings release at 6:30 a.m. ET; conference call at 8 a.m. ET
Projected EPS: $2
Projected revenue: $76.74 billion

“I fear that CVS is considered a Covid play. Humana is a post-Covid darling,” Cramer said.
Qualcomm

Q4 2022 earnings release at 4 p.m. ET; conference call at 4:45 p.m. ET
Projected EPS: $3.14
Projected revenue: $11.33 billion

He said he wouldn’t be surprised if the stock went up even on a guidance cut, given how much shares of Qualcomm have declined this year.
Thursday: Starbucks, PayPal, DoorDash
Starbucks

Q4 2022 earnings release at 4:05 p.m. ET; conference call at 5 p.m. ET
Projected EPS: 72 cents
Projected revenue: $8.32 billion

He said he expects the company to report a solid quarter.
PayPal

Q3 2022 earnings release at 4:15 p.m. ET; conference call at 5:30 p.m. ET
Projected EPS: 96 cents
Projected revenue: $6.81 billion

“I think PayPal has a chance to regroup here, as their flagging days have probably ended,” Cramer said.
DoorDash

Q3 2022 earnings release at 4:05 p.m. ET; conference call at 5 p.m. ET
Projected loss: loss of 59 cents per share
Projected revenue: $1.63 billion

He said that DoorDash is “inviting skepticism” since people aren’t getting their food delivered as frequently as they did during the height of the Covid pandemic.
Disclaimer: Cramer’s Charitable Trust owns shares of Eli Lilly, Devon Energy, AMD, Humana, Qualcomm and Starbucks.

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Monday – Friday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM ET

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday recommended three stocks investors should add to their portfolios to take advantage of hot travel demand.
“People aren’t shifting from online to in-person shopping,” he explained. “They’re going places. They’re doing things.”

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday recommended three stocks investors should add to their portfolios to take advantage of hot travel demand.
Here are his picks:

Cramer named travel as one of five recession-resistant market leaders that are emerging, while tech stocks have been hammered during earnings season. 
Part of the reason tech companies have suffered recently is because the economy isn’t in “lockdown mode” due to Covid anymore, according to Cramer. 
He highlighted Amazon’s most recent quarterly results as an example. The company missed Wall Street expectations on third-quarter earnings and issued a soft fourth-quarter sales forecast on Thursday. 
“People aren’t shifting from online to in-person shopping,” he explained. “They’re going places. They’re doing things.”
Work-from-home plays are also unlikely to work in the current market, Cramer added. He warned that auto stocks are another potential casualty of the changing economy, since they’re still dealing with supply constraints from the height of the pandemic.

“That must change, or the stocks will languish,” he said.
Disclaimer: Cramer’s Charitable Trust owns shares of Disney.

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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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EQT Corp: “I’m going bullish, because I believe in natural gas.”

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Frontier Group Holdings Inc: “I’m not going to go against an airline when people seem to want to travel more than they want to talk with people. So, let’s stay with it.”

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The SEC has agreed to settle a civil lawsuit against a man accused of five penny stock pump-and-dump schemes, court filings revealed.
The man, David Ferraro, is accused of using his prolific Twitter account to assist a second defendant, former federal fugitive Justin Costello, on the stock schemes. The SEC said they allegedly netted almost $800,000 in illicit profits in those efforts.
Costello, 42, himself is accused in both the SEC’s civil complaint and a related federal criminal indictment of posing as a billionaire, a Harvard MBA and a twice-wounded Special Forces Iraq war veteran to swindle investors and others out of $35 million.

Arrows pointing outwards

FBI Poster for Justin Costello

The Securities and Exchange Commission has agreed to settle a civil lawsuit against a man accused of five separate penny stock pump-and-dump schemes, court filings revealed on Friday.
The man, David Ferraro, is accused of using his prolific Twitter account to assist a second defendant, former federal fugitive Justin Costello, on the stock schemes. The SEC said the duo allegedly netted almost $800,000 in illicit profits in those efforts.

Costello, 42, himself is accused in both the SEC’s civil complaint and a related federal criminal indictment of posing as a billionaire, a Harvard MBA and a twice-wounded Special Forces Iraq war veteran to swindle investors and others out of $35 million.
Ferraro, a 44-year-old resident of Radford, Va., was not charged in the criminal case against Costello, which like the SEC suit was filed several weeks ago in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Washington state.
But the indictment refers to Costello’s unidentified, unindicted co-conspirator with Ferraro’s initials, engaging in the same conduct that the SEC complaint alleges.
Ferraro agreed to settle the SEC’s case without admitting or denying the allegations. A judge still needs to sign off on the SEC’s proposed agreement to close the case, which doesn’t apply to Costello.
The deal would permanently bar Ferraro from participating in any offering of penny stocks.

The judgment also said a judge would determine whether it is appropriate for Ferraro, who is accused of violating the Securities Act and the Exchange Act, to disgorge any “ill-gotten gains” from his schemes, as well as any civil penalty.

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An SEC spokesman told CNBC, “We have no comment beyond public filings.”
Ferraro’s attorney, Jeffrey Cox of Boca Raton, Florida, declined to comment on the motion for judgment, noting that a judge had not yet signed off on it.
Cox also declined to say whether Ferraro had cooperated with federal prosecutors in the case against Costello, who has pleaded not guilty.
A civil attorney for Costello did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Costello was arrested earlier this month by an FBI SWAT team in a remote area outside San Diego days after failing to surrender to face charges of securities and wire fraud as he had agreed. He was carrying tens of thousands of dollars in U.S. and Mexican currency, a bogus ID, gold bars and multiple bank cards and checkbooks, prosecutors say.
He was ordered held without bail pending trial, and ordered sent to Washington state.
The SEC complaint said that Costello met Ferraro in mid-2019 when Ferraro was an investor in Costello’s company, the publicly traded GRN Holding Corporation, and had been posting about the company on various investor message boards.
Ferraro was a frequent user of Twitter with the handle @computebux, which had more than 10,000 followers. Nearly 90 percent of the almost 13,000 tweets Ferraro posted from 2019 through mid-2020 referenced a specific stock or stocks, the SEC alleges.
“In each Stock Promotion scheme, Ferraro recommended a penny stock that he and/or Costello owned to Ferraro’s Twitter followers and the public,” the SEC complaint said.
Ferraro understood that his tweets “would cause … the stock price to increase,” according to the complaint.
“In his promotional tweets, Ferraro did not disclose that he and/or Costello intended to sell their own holdings of those stocks into the inflated market that Ferraro’s tweets helped create. Ferraro also did not disclose that Costello had agreed to pay Ferraro a portion of Costello’s profits from certain of the Stock Promotion Schemes,” the SEC alleged.
The stocks promoted in the scheme included Canal Capital Corp., Foothills Exploration, REMSleep Holdings, Clancy Systems International, as well as two firms that merged, Hempstract and Riverdale Oil and Gas Corp.
“Through these alleged schemes, Costello and Ferraro together made approximately $792,000 in illicit trading profits,” the SEC said in a press release earlier this month.
The complaint said that in 2019 and 2020 Ferraro separately engaged in stock promotion schemes involving the penny stocks Powerdyne International and South Beach Spirits.

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Shares of DWAC, the SPAC that is supposed to take Donald Trump’s Truth Social, rose Friday.
The decline comes as Twitter is taken over by Elon Musk, who previously said he would reinstate Trump’s account.
Trump created Truth Social after he was banned from Twitter following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

The TRUTH Social website is seen on a mobile device with an image of former US president Donald Trump in the background in this photo illustration in Warsaw, Poland on 23 February, 2022.
Nurphoto | Getty Images

Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp., the blank check company set to take Trump Media and Technology Group and its Truth Social platform public, rose Friday as Elon Musk took the reins at Twitter.
Musk has previously said that he would reinstate Trump’s account on Twitter, which was banned after the Jan.6, 2021, Capitol riot. The former president had around 88 million followers on Twitter, but he’s amassed only 4.37 million on Truth Social.

DWAC shares closed more than 3% higher Friday, amid a broader market rally, after dipping earlier in the day. The stock has fallen more than 67% so far this year to $17.07. Its 52-week high was $101.87.
Barring legal intervention, Trump Media currently has until December to complete the merger with DWAC and go public. A shareholder vote is set for Thursday to extend that deadline to September 2023, but the past four such votes have failed to garner the necessary 65% shareholder approval.
Trump posted on Truth Social Friday praising Musk’s acquisition, but also touting his own platform.
“TRUTH SOCIAL has become somewhat a phenomena. Last week it had bigger numbers than all other platforms including TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest,” Trump wrote. “I am very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands, and will no longer be run by Radical Left Lunatics and Maniacs.”
DWAC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ex-president’s platform still has to clear some legal and financial hurdles.
A Securities and Exchange Commission whistleblower complaint from a former Truth Social executive, William Wilkerson, alleged that Trump Media and DWAC discussed a merger prior to DWAC’s announcement, which would violate securities laws. The merger is currently the subject of a federal criminal probe.

DWAC has previously warned that a failure to extend the deal may result in the SPAC liquidating, and Trump has warned that he may not need the hundreds of millions from the deal.
“If they don’t come with the financing I’ll have it private,” Trump said to supporters in an early-October rally in Michigan. “Easy to have it private.”
The ex-president has gathered a fair share of private financing for Trump Media and Technology Group.
High-profile investments include $9.8 million from Karl Pfluger, an oil executive and brother of Trump-endorsed U.S. Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas.
A spokesperson for August Pfluger told Reuters that he doesn’t have a personal investment in Trump Media & Technology Group, saying: “He earned the endorsement of President Trump long before the creation of Truth Social.”
Other investors include Patrick Walsh, a former associate of Trump Media Chief Financial Officer Philip Juhan, who has a $6.2 million stake. Roy Bailey, who was the co-finance chair of Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, gave $200,000 to Trump Media. George Glass, Trump’s ambassador to Portugal, gave $500,000. Texas fruitcake mogul Bob McNutt invested $100,000.
About $1 billion more in private investing was set to come through DWAC upon the completion of the merger, but a key deadline passed in September, allowing investors to pull their stake. Since then, at least $138 million in financing has been pulled.

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General Motors is suspending its advertising on Twitter following Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform.
“We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership,” GM said.
GM and Musk’s Tesla are rivals.

DETROIT — General Motors is suspending its advertising on Twitter following Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform, the company told CNBC on Friday.
The Detroit automaker, a rival to Musk’s Tesla, said it is “pausing” advertising as it evaluates Twitter’s new direction. It will continue to use the platform to interact with customers but not pay for advertising, GM added.

“We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership. As is normal course of business with a significant change in a media platform, we have temporarily paused our paid advertising. Our customer care interactions on Twitter will continue,” the company said in an emailed statement.
Under CEO Mary Barra, the Detroit company was among the first automakers to announce billions of dollars in spending to better compete against Tesla regarding electric vehicles.

A General Motors sign is seen during an event on January 25, 2022 in Lansing, Michigan. – General Motors will create 4,000 new jobs and retaining 1,000, and significantly increasing battery cell and electric truck manufacturing capacity.
Jeff Kowalsky | AFP | Getty Images

Other auto companies, including Ford Motor, Stellantis and Alphabet-owned Waymo, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on whether they plan to suspend advertising or discontinue using the social media platform in wake of Musk’s $44 billion buyout of Twitter. Electric truck maker Nikola said it had no plans to change anything regarding the platform.
The future direction of Twitter has been central to the takeover story. Musk has said he is a “free speech absolutist,” who would restore the account of former President Donald Trump, who was banned over his tweets during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Musk said on Friday that he plans a “content moderation council” and will not reinstate any accounts or make major content decisions before it is convened.
Musk also said in a statement to advertisers this week that he cannot let Twitter become a “free-for-all hellscape.”

Henrik Fisker, CEO of EV startup Fisker Inc., deleted his Twitter account earlier this year when Twitter’s board accepted Musk’s bid to buy the company and take it private. Fisker Inc. continues to use Twitter, which every major automotive brand utilizes for customer engagement and marketing.
Musk has long boasted that Tesla does not pay for traditional advertising, a cost that has added up for conventional automakers’ brands through the years.
Instead, Tesla rewards people who run, or are members of, Tesla owners’ clubs as well as other social media influencers who promote the company’s products, stock and Musk on social networks, especially Twitter and YouTube as well as on fan blogs.
They are often granted early access to Tesla products, like the company’s Full Self Driving Beta software, and given passes to company events where attendance is limited.
In September 2020, Tesla weighed a stockholder proposal to begin strategic, paid advertising to educate the public about its vehicles and charging network. The Tesla board recommended against it, and shareholders voted with the board against starting to pay for traditional ad campaigns. 
In the company’s annual report for 2021, Tesla wrote: “Historically, we have been able to generate significant media coverage of our company and our products, and we believe we will continue to do so. Such media coverage and word of mouth are the current primary drivers of our sales leads and have helped us achieve sales without traditional advertising and at relatively low marketing costs.”
It reported marketing, promotional and advertising costs that were immaterial for the years ended Dec. 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019 in financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
— CNBC’s John Rosevear contributed to this report.

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The subvariants BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 now represent 27% of infections in the U.S., a significant jump from the week prior when they made up about 16% of new cases.
They are likely resistant to Evusheld and bebtelovimab, key antibody treatments that protect people with compromised immune systems.
President Joe Biden this week cautioned people with compromised immune system that they in particular are at risk this winter

A rendering of COVID-19 new Omicron sub-variant BQ.1.1
Koto_feja | E+ | Getty Images

Two omicron subvariants that are resistant to key antibody treatments are on the rise in the U.S., according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The subvariants BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 now represent 27% of infections in the U.S., a significant jump from the week prior when they made up about 16% of new cases, according to CDC data published Friday.

Omicron BA.5, though still the dominant variant, is diminishing every week. It now represents about 50% of infections in the U.S., down from 60% the week prior, according to the data.
President Joe Biden this week warned people with compromised immune systems that they were particularly at risk this winter because antibody treatments are not effective against emerging subvariants.
BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 are likely resistant to Evusheld and bebtelovimab, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Evusheld is an antibody cocktail administered as two injections that people ages 12 and older with moderately or severely compromised immune systems take to prevent Covid-19. Bebtelovimab is a monoclonal antibody taken to treat Covid after an infection.
Biden urged people with weak immune systems to consult their physicians on what precautions to take. Dr. Ashish Jha, head of the White House Covid task force, said the U.S. is running out of options to treat the vulnerable because Congress failed to pass more money for the nation’s Covid response.

“We had hoped that over time as the pandemic went along, as our fight against this virus went along, we would be expanding our medicine cabinet,” Jha told reporters this week. “Because of lack of congressional funding that medicine cabinet has actually shrunk and that does put vulnerable people at risk.”
It’s unclear how well the new boosters will protect against variants such as BQ.1 and BQ.1.1. Jha has said the boosters should offer better protection than the old shots because these subvariants are descended from BA.5, which is contained in the updated vaccines.
Two independent studies from Columbia and Harvard this week found that the omicron boosters did not perform much better than the old shots against BA.5. The Food and Drug Administration said the studies were too small to draw any definitive conclusions.
The CDC, the FDA and the White House Covid taskforce believe the new shots will prove more effective because they are better matched to the circulating variants than the first generation vaccines.
“It is reasonable to expect based on what we know about immunology and the science of this virus that these new vaccines will provide better protection against infection, better protection against transmission and ongoing and better protection against serious illness,” Jha told reporters in September.
Jha called for all eligible Americans to get the omicron booster and their flu shot by Halloween so that they are protected when families start gathering for the holidays.

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Pending home sales suffered a worse decline than expected from August to September, as mortgage rates surged.
Economists had predicted a 4% drop. Sales were down 31% year over year.
Excluding April 2020, at the start of the Covid pandemic, the pending home sales index is at its lowest level since June 2010.

Pending home sales, a measure of signed contracts on existing homes, dropped a much worse-than-expected 10.2% in September from August, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Economists had predicted a 4% decline. Sales were down 31% year over year.

This marks the lowest level on the pending sales index since June 2010, excluding April 2020, when the Covid pandemic was in its early days.
Realtors point squarely to sharply higher mortgage rates, which had sat at record lows for the first two years of the pandemic. The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage was right around 3% at the start of this year, but then rose swiftly, crossing 6% in June, according to Mortgage News Daily. It pulled back a bit in July and August, but then began rising again, crossing 7% in September, when these contracts were signed.

A Coldwell Banker “Under Contract” sign stands outside a property in Washington, D.C.
Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

“Persistent inflation has proven quite harmful to the housing market,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “The Federal Reserve has had to drastically raise interest rates to quell inflation, which has resulted in far fewer buyers and even fewer sellers.”
Mortgage demand and new listings are dropping, too, because homeowners are unwilling to give up their record-low interest rates to trade up to a much higher one. For potential buyers, the increase in rates means the monthly payment on a median-priced home, with a 20% down payment, is now close to $1,000 higher than it was in January.
“With wages falling behind on account of inflation, and rates rising, buyers’ purchasing power has been reduced by over $100,000,” said George Ratiu, senior economist at Realtor.com.

“As we look to the remainder of the year, we can expect interest rates to continue their upward trajectory. The Federal Reserve’s monetary tightening has not yet made a dent in inflation, which means that the bank is expected to hike its policy rate further,” he added.
While red-hot home prices are starting to cool and even drop in some local markets, the decline is not enough to make up for the increase in interest rates. Home prices are up more than 40% since the start of the pandemic, fueled largely by those rock-bottom interest rates early on.
Regionally, pending home sales dropped 16.2% month to month in the Northeast and were down 30.1% year over year. In the Midwest, sales were down 8.8% for the month and 26.7% from one year ago.
In the South, sales retreated 8.1% for the month and were down 30.0% year over year, and in the West, the most expensive region in the nation, sales fell 11.7% for the month and were down 38.7% from the year before.

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