The reopening stocks led Wall Street higher on vaccine optimism, but investors may want to be selective about what stocks they pick up with the market at or near highs, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Monday.
“The real issue in this market is faith. The buyers have faith in the future, something that feels out of place right now for most people, with Covid cases skyrocketing. Those in despair are sellers or they’re doing nothing,” the “Mad Money” host said.
“But the believers? There doesn’t seem to be a price that they won’t pay, at least for the moment.”
The comments come after the 30-stock Dow Jones and broad S&P 500 indexes ran to new highs during the session, boosted by another positive report about vaccine research, this time from Moderna, which reported a 94% effective rate in a late-stage trial.
The Dow rose more than 470 points to a record 29,950.44 close, 1.6% higher from Friday. The S&P 500 ran 1.2% to 3,626.91. The Nasdaq Composite rose less than 1% to close at 11,924.13.
Among the advancers Monday were restaurant holding company Darden Restaurants, conglomerate Honeywell International and entertainment giant Disney, all beating the market’s gains. Darden, the parent of Olive Garden, increased 2.3% to a $110.08 close. Honeywell surged 3.5% to $208.59, and Disney rallied 4.6% to $144.67.
“These companies have been crushed by Covid. There’s zero hope that the next quarter will be any good,” Cramer said. “Yet it doesn’t matter. The buyers keep coming not for their companies but for their stocks.”
Their stocks, with the exception of Honeywell, are traded just above where they left off in 2019, prior to the global pandemic that put a dent in global economic activity and threw the U.S. into a recession. Shares of Honeywell, which has exposure to the ailing aerospace industry, are up almost 18% year to date.
“I have to believe, you know who I think this is the work of: youth,” he said. “No one who’s been in the business for any length of time in the last 30 years would make these trades.”
Disclosure: Cramer’s charitable trust owns shares of Disney and Honeywell.
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