We’re in one of those markets where nothing seems to be going right. The pain starts early with S&P futures and Nasdaq futures showing double depth in the evening. However, the reliable S&P short range oscillator is not oversold enough to hold your nose and buy something. So I feel like I’m just sitting there. But the relevant word in my first sentence is “seems”. Because there’s actually a lot of things at work. So much so that it begs the question what is actually going wrong in this market. Consider the case of Wells Fargo. This was a quarter that was universally hated by the analyst community, with a price-to-earnings ratio of 12, despite a perfunctory price target hike. When I spoke with CEO Charlie Scharf, I was excited to see how he was leveraging the strength of the franchise to expand into M&A and initial public offerings to make big bucks. Why not? In 2008, Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia, which had previously been merged with Prudential, AG Edwards, and First Union. The latter had actually acquired Wachovia, but kept the name because Wachovia was considered a better brand. All these intermediaries were very good and had many transactions. But those disappeared with the Great Recession and the consolidation of everything under the Wells Fargo roof, which soon found itself dealing with so many regulatory issues. Despite the bank’s national reach, it has done little M&A, certainly less than companies like Centerview Partners and Lazard, and doesn’t think much of Wells as an underwriter. This is unacceptable to Mr. Scharf, who knows everyone in the industry and knows there is talent available at rival banks. JPMorgan, for example, has a lot of executive talent that was passed on because CEO Jamie Dimon, who worked with Mr. Scharf for 24 years, decided to stay at the helm for much longer than anyone thought (as long as 20 years). Charlie knows that in the new world of artificial intelligence, he can do much more with less. He cut about 23% of his workforce, became much more efficient, and recognized the limited value of brick-and-mortar stores, even though his bank had a more local feel. So what he’s done is he’s assembled a team of senior bankers who, given the chance, could have run JPMorgan and other companies, and he’s told them to build M&A and underwriting operations, which are far more profitable and less risky than lending. It’s working. He is winning contracts and moving up the global mergers and acquisitions league table. I bring this up because Wells Fargo’s stock fell on analyst comments and rose when smart people who spoke directly to Charlie, not through the filter of NIM-NII-obsessed analysts, realized that Charlie was going to at least give Bank of America and Citigroup a run for their money. In two years, we’ll be laughing at how wrong the analysts were. In a bad market, a comeback like this doesn’t happen. Yet no one is paying attention to what’s happening at Wells Fargo. JB Hunt is a similar story. We have been monitoring both the depth and length of the trucking and logistics downturn and are surprised by the group’s lack of resilience. However, over time, this cycle played out normally, with weaker players declining and then prices consolidating before JB Hunt reported some surprising upside this week. Even though the stock price was expected to crash, you still made a profit. This is a big reason why we value FedEx Freight and added to our position earlier this month. The company, which spun off from FedEx on June 1, enjoys cyclical tailwinds. Or consider the biotech group, which almost always disappoints. Not this time. The best biotech ETF, SPDR S&P Biotech, is up more than 27% this year, even though most experts say inflation is accelerating. A wave of very large biotech acquisitions is underway, but not all of them involve companies acquired by Eli Lilly. Although this is a bull market group and not as important as chipmakers, it is important to recognize that the rise in biotechs is a feature of a very positive trend in stocks. Or consider something original that has been completely overlooked in the multi-technology chaos: Stripe’s proposed acquisition of PayPal. I always hear how great Stripe is doing, but I don’t understand why they feel the need to buy PayPal, which is in some kind of sick spiral. But its consolidation in the fintech space could be incredible for a market with too many players, including Fiserv, Global Payments, Toast, Fair Isaac, Block, and Affirm. We can proceed with M&A activities and acquire at least some of the new stocks that come to market. Finally, in the retail industry like Target, or the railroad industry like Union Pacific, or the airline industry like Delta Air Lines or United Airlines, if you tell even a half-decent story, you can make a sizable return to help your overall performance for the year. Now comes the real question of what’s going on with this tape now. The fact that there are half a dozen positive things happening right now compared to what’s happening in the tech industry tells us that the market is trying hard to provide some discipline to tech companies. Think of it like this: Now that seven days of earnings have been reported, reporting good numbers will drive the stock up, but reporting numbers that initially looked bad can still push the stock up even more. Think Wells Fargo or even PepsiCo. But anything that touches technology can be your downfall. Consider hyperscalers. For a moment, it looked like we were going to see a trade where hyperscalers would start moving higher as component stocks peaked. It seemed too good to be true, and it was. I had a fun two days that brought me back to Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. Then they started descending again and could continue to descend further. I discussed this at our July monthly meeting on Thursday. I was debating bringing up this very topic in a meeting, but when I saw how much money was made from that sweetheart deal with SK Hynix, I thought maybe I was wrong. And even after the SpaceX-Cerebras deal, there was still money to be made quickly in an IPO. But SK Hynix turned out to be temporary, and while others can call it fixed, things related to data centers will still be tough. Part of the pain comes from the enormous leverage currently being wielded across the memory spectrum, including Seagate, whose stock price mysteriously rose on Friday, Western Digital, Sandisk, SK Hynix, Micron, Arm, AMD, Intel, and more. We were forced to back out of being a disciplined buyer of Intel because this deal is unwinding like wildfire, with the seller being endlessly forced and unsure of when it will end. Trust me, Intel is a great buy here, but it could still fall if the hedge fund community is going to crush borrowing to buy these stocks. Last week we added two positions. I’m confident Inter will do well, but I don’t like to go down that quickly on a trade. Actually, it would have been better to buy it on the way. I know I’m not alone in this. Relaxing is a form of discipline. If you look at what happened to SpaceX, for example, you can just be thankful that the underwriters did their best to benefit everyone. They priced it as they asked, they put it in good hands as they asked, but then it got taken over by memesters who actually thought they could manipulate one of the biggest stocks in the top 10 through overnight buying. Welcome to the real world, everyone! SpaceX itself is talking about some discipline. Generally, if you own a new security, you cannot and should not short it. Brokers often say they can’t find stocks to lend to short sellers. But that doesn’t seem to be the case this time. Rather, it appears that the underwriters have a good idea of where all the soon-to-be unlocked shares are, allowing short sellers to combine their short sales with shares that will unlock over time. I mean, it’s not technically short selling, so it’s legal, or at least OK with this government. Surprisingly, the decline in SpaceX stock appears to be an orderly one, similar to some of Tesla’s earlier selloffs when true believers relished the opportunity to buy more products at better prices. It has not led to significant declines in space, energy, self-driving cars, etc. The big unanswered question is how many such great opportunities can exist outside of technology until tech-biased people realize they’re not making enough money and it’s simply not worth the risk. There are no bubbles in technology. The potential for memory-rich companies like Amazon and Meta to breakout in 2027 could explain what we’re seeing. However, we understand that if easy money continues to be made in other sectors this earnings season, money will flow out of the tech sector. If you’re bullish on technology right now, you need to worry that every day seems very risky. The engineer is tied to the railroad tracks, and is somehow freed just before the locomotive crashes, only to be tied again the next day. Eventually, he realizes that it is better to stay on the train than avoid being hit by it. I say: Everyone on board. (See here for a complete list of Jim Cramer Charitable Trust stocks.) As a subscriber to Jim Cramer’s CNBC Investment Club, you will receive trade alerts before Jim makes a trade. After Jim sends a trade alert, he waits 45 minutes before buying or selling stocks in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim talks about a stock on CNBC TV, he will issue a trade alert and then wait 72 hours before executing the trade. 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