?Jim Cramer: Here's Why the Market Hasn't Stopped Rallying
- While Dollar Tree has had some problems with tariffs, the big guys, Walmart (WMT) , Target (TGT) , Amazon (AMZN) , and, so far, Costco (COST) , haven't felt the pain, which means that their customers haven't felt the pain. So while tariffs have hurt select retailers, and while Manny Chirico, CEO of PVH Corp. (PVH) , the apparel company, says they will begin to hurt next quarter, the sky is falling narrative just hasn't played out. Inflation is subdued. It hasn't really mattered. I can't tell you how few expected this, especially the graybeard economists almost all of whom live in ivory towers and never seem to buy anything.
- The enterprise is very soft, but not as many companies are levered to the enterprise as you might think. Today Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) told a tale of woe, similar to that of Cisco (CSCO) . There are just too many people having to sign off on deals these days as companies grow conservative, because who in heck knows how much they should budget for in 2020 with the tariffs hanging over them. Big companies, the kinds that buy tens of millions of dollars' worth of equipment, are gun-shy. They don't want to make a mistake. In contrast, though, people are flush and are spending on equipment like crazy, as we saw from Best Buy (BBY) this morning. Kohl's (KSS) last week might have said that women's apparel is weak but Dick's Sporting Goods (DKS) told a different, much more positive story. Hence the dichotomy of stock price direction.
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- As much as the impeachment hearings had good ratings -- it doesn't look like any Republican has broken ranks with the president. Hence, this is more like the attack on Bill Clinton than the impeachment of Richard Nixon. By this point already in the impeachment proceedings, Senate Republicans were deserting Nixon with some making a grand, sweeping point of it. Unless some Republican senators break with the leadership, this will be a proceeding that's dead on arrival -- and none has broken ranks. None. It is entirely possible if this continues, that the Democrats might actually bring the United States, Mexico and Canada trade treaty out of Congress just to show that they aren't obstructionists.
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- Finally, employment is incredibly strong, I mean like lights-out strong. It remains incredibly easy to find a job as anyone who listened to the Dollar Tree call learned, as they are having a hard time finding workers to fill their distribution centers. These are admittedly unskilled jobs, but they are entry level positions that night have gone begging otherwise.