U.S. Futures Fall as Oil Tops $100; Cramer Flags Meta Upgrade and Record Treasury Yield Gap
U.S. stock futures fell Sept. 10 as oil topped $100 a barrel and producer prices rose 0.4%, ahead of Friday's CPI and the Fed's Sept. 16 vote. CNBC's Jim Cramer also cited analyst moves on Meta, health-care stocks, Casey's, Kimberly-Clark and FedEx Freight, plus a record U.S.-China Treasury yield gap.
Cramer wrote that it was a great time to be opportunistic. He said the CNBC Investing Club's September monthly meeting at noon ET would discuss the state of the markets and reveal six names to buy at that time.
JPMorgan upgraded Meta to buy from hold and raised its price target to $820 from $640. The analysts said the stock still had meaningful upside potential because it was in the early stages of releasing frontier models and AI-driven products beyond advertising. Cramer agreed, saying the shares still looked cheap and were worth a look.
HSBC raised price targets for its health-care group, including Johnson & Johnson and Eli Lilly, citing strong pipeline updates and a lower sector risk premium. HSBC also raised AbbVie, Bristol Myers, Pfizer and Merck. Cramer said he had named Lilly one of his favorite "fantasy picks" on Mad Money this week.
The yield gap between the 10-year U.S. Treasury and China's 10-year yield was the largest ever at 3.17 percentage points, according to a Financial Times report cited by Cramer. Bond selling pushes yields higher because of their inverse relationship. The 10-year U.S. yield rose to more than 4.9% that morning, its highest level since November 2023.
Latham & Watkins, the nation's second-largest law firm, bought its own Nvidia GPU servers and began customizing its own AI models without using OpenAI or Anthropic, according to the Financial Times report cited by Cramer. Rene Mendoza, the firm's chief information officer, said they did not want to put client information on any cloud vendor's platform.
KeyBanc lowered its price target on Casey's General to $780 from $970. Cramer wrote that it was not a terrific quarter even though the company beat earnings expectations. Inside same-store sales at the convenience-store chain rose 3.2%, down from 4.3% growth a year earlier and below the 4.1% consensus estimate. The shares fell 15%.
Wells Fargo lowered Kimberly-Clark's price target to $105 from $110, arguing the company's price-to-earnings multiple felt less anchored as it worked through its purchase of consumer-health company Kenvue. Cramer said his Investing Club initiated a position in the paper-products company this month and believed the added scale would allow it to lower its cost of goods sold and centralize some operations.
Bernstein lifted its price target on Jersey Mike's Subs by $1 to $27. Cramer said he saw a clear path to much higher prices, after CEO Charlie Morrison told him the previous night about tripling the number of domestic stores and going overseas; Cramer called it a potential next big chain and a great franchiser.
Bernstein initiated FedEx Freight with a hold rating and a mixed view, pointing to higher-than-expected costs and growing pains from the spin-off. Cramer said the stock's recent slide had less to do with the company's fundamentals and more to do with concerns over tariffs and high oil prices.