Cramer Remix: This unlikely subscription service has others following its lead

Investing

Investors looking to seize on the rise of over-the-top streaming services and increased cord-cutting should look no further than a few key stocks, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Friday on “Mad Money.”

While the devices and ecosystems that enable streaming — think Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Comcast, as well as smaller players like Roku — are worth considering for some exposure, the streaming service providers are the real long-term winners, he said.

That’s because, when it comes to over-the-top entertainment, the hardware is “not where the big money is,” the longtime stock-picker explained.

“In this business, content is king,” he said.

Cramer’s favorite pick in the streaming space might come as a surprise: The Walt Disney Company.

But there are other surprising winners, too, including World Wrestling Entertainment, which has become something of a pioneer in its niche sports-broadcasting industry, the “Mad Money” host said.

“The truth is, tons of companies are getting into the over-the-top space,” Cramer told viewers. “World Wrestling Entertainment has an incredibly successful subscription streaming service and the stock’s given us some gigantic gains, nearly quadrupling over the past 18 months or so. WWE got it right and now other sports organizations are following in their footsteps.”

Click here for some other ways to play the rise of streaming.

Wells Fargo President and CEO Tim Sloan responded Friday to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s repeated calls for his firing after a 2016 scandal in an interview on CNBC.

“She can have that opinion,” Sloan, a frequent target of the Massachusetts senator and longtime Wall Street watchdog, told Cramer on “Mad Money.” “I think, if I’m not doing my job, as opposed to someone having an opinion about me that isn’t always an informed opinion, then, of course, it would be appropriate that I’m not in this role.”

Warren, who is exploring the idea of a 2020 bid for president, asked the Federal Reserve in October to maintain its growth cap on Wells Fargo until the bank fires Sloan for his implication “in the bank’s repeated and egregious misconduct.”

Still, Sloan argued that he was the best man for the CEO job.

He also explained how Wells Fargo is helping customers who have been affected by the government shutdown, which President Donald Trump temporarily ended on Friday.

Click here to watch and read more about Sloan’s interview.

The stock market might have run too much this week to hold its gains during next week’s “earnings Super Bowl,” Cramer said Friday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average rounded out its fifth straight week of gains.

“It’s the busiest week of the year and we’re coming in hot, maybe too hot, seeing as the market roared today on earnings and hope: hope that the government shutdown really might end, hope that we could get a trade deal with China soon, hope that the Fed won’t surprise us when it meets next Wednesday,” he said. “Maybe there’s too much hope and too much hype.”

With that possibility in mind, Cramer turned to his game plan for the week ahead, which will see earnings reports from Apple, Tesla, Facebook, General Electric, Amazon and more.

Click here for his full game plan.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that China has much more to lose than the United States in the countries’ ongoing trade war, Cramer argued Friday.

“In the long run, it’ll be cheaper for them to come to the table and give President Trump the concessions he wants,” he argued.

What makes him so sure is that, stacked side by side, the Chinese and U.S. economies are in very different places. China’s unemployment rate is headed towards the 5 percent level, whereas the United States’ is “flirting with 3 percent,” he said. The Chinese economy has slowed dramatically, while U.S. weekly jobless claims are at their lowest levels in decades.

The bottom line? From Cramer’s perspective, it seems like China will eventually have to come to the table.

“We can afford to wait this out. They can’t,” he said. “So there should be a lot more hope that the Chinese will give in. Sooner or later, they have to.”

In Cramer’s lightning round, he raced through his responses to callers’ favorite stocks:

Comscore Inc.: “I think that this is a pyrrhic victory that they’ve had versus Nielsen. I don’t want to touch it. It doesn’t have the growth I need.”

E-Trade Financial Corp.: “I think it’s good. I do lament – I did a piece earlier this week about the day before Christmas and how there was just another annihilation in the stock market and more individual investors left, which makes it tougher for me to recommend any of these stocks because there are no refs in our game. No one’s looking out for the little guy and it’s driving me crazy.”

Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable trust owns shares of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Comcast, Disney and Facebook.

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