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Your capital's at risk. Other fees may apply. The tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and is subject to change. My mission is simple. To make you money. I'm here to level the playing field for all investors. There's always a boom work at somewhere, and I promise to help you find it. Mad Money starts now. Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Kramerga, the people of my friends. I'm just trying to make you a little bit of money here. My job is not just to teach, but also to do some entertaining. So call me at 1-800-743-CMBC or tweet me at Jim Kramer. You know, you can tell a heck of a lot about what's winning and what's losing on a huge daylight today. Sure, we know that the market's short on a vague meeting of the minds between President Trump and some key people running around, causing the Dow to surge 1,325 points. S&P's short 2.51%. And then ask that rockin' to 2.80%. Nice. Now, we don't know how real the ceasefire is, how much is finesse, how much will be needed to be nailed down still. But we do know that oil just had its biggest one-day decline in six years. Coming back down to the mid-90s, a pretty darn good sign that the ceasefire has a real chance to survive. I think one of the great values of a daylight today is a close scrutiny of the biggest gainers and losers in the session. Because they give you a window to what can work when things are a little more calm and more important, what can't work. Because if it ain't work today, on a daylight today, it probably ain't going to work at all. First up, when I bruise the biggest gainers in the Dow, Nasdaq, the S&P, I see a mixture of interest rate-sensitive, travel and leisure and data center stocks. It's a little more eclectic than you might think. I mean, what, the biggest gainers in the Dow today? Sherwin Williams, Caterpillar, Home Depot, Goldman Sachs. That's a pretty extraordinary set of leaders. When you think about it, it's about a truce in Iran. When you see these four going up, it means investors believe that interest rates are coming down. By the way, they were coming down and then they did go up near the end of the day. It's hard to fathom Sherwin Williams being the winner from peace in the Middle East, isn't it? But hope springs eternal as some might think the housing market could be thawing. Now, this is the worst housing market when it comes to transaction volume in decades. The housing stocks itself, 44 years old, that's the average age of a house. But when you see that pent up demand, you think that people will go to Home Depot to get paint, the natural water of things, they aren't. Home Depot hit a two-year low just yesterday. It's been a terrible time for housing. Yet today the stock shot up more than 5%. At the beginning of something new, I say you need a couple of persistent hate cuts before you can say that. Now, Caterpillar's different. Caterpillar's up there as a reminder of how terrific this market could be. Caterpillar represents infrastructure money, construction money, and data center money. It's been such a hoarse... All aboard! Because the company's got multiple ways to win. I think Caterpillar moved up the prospect of more infrastructure, perhaps worldwide more construction. Because rates came down, at least for most of the session. And of course the data center because you need cat generators to back up the usual power sources. I think the data centers may actually have hidden opportunities. You can string cat engines, maybe even thousands of them, and tie them together, and then plug them directly into the natural gas patches we have all over the country. And power data centers without raising electric rates. How about this Goldman Sachs? Alright, there are multiple reasons to own this stock once you think the coast is clear. I know there's plenty of money there that could be destined for takeovers now. I think there'll be a rush of deals as this administration is incredibly pro-deal-making. They never met a merger they didn't like. Unless it involves the president's political enemies, that is. And it represents a lot of advisory business for the investment banks. Now, Goldman reports next week. I think it should be a good one, as we told members of the CBC Investing Club. We've owned the stock for a long time. That said, some of the biggest scanners just to be tell a different story entirely. Right off the bat, you see Carnival. Now, the cruise lines are the first to be battered and the first to recover, as they're regarded as bargain vacations. And that's a realistic thing. United Airlines is there too. The Norwegian cruise did well too, again, the travel segment. But after that, we have a cluster of names that become a fixture and not a good one. I know, controversial. But Sandisk, Land Research, Western Digital, Seagate, these are all texts of a certain sort. One's related to memory, a low-tech portion of the cohort that happens to be in high demand, happens to be in shortage. You need memory in the data center, tons of it. People didn't see a comment. Sandisk and Western Digital make the stuff. Sandisk makes the equipment that makes the memory, so the demand for that is off the charts. What's the matter with that? Simple. We want the data center to grow, but we want it to grow by putting bigger and better equipment into the warehouses full of service. I regard Western Digital and Sandisk as a tax on the system. They can just keep raising rates because there's not enough supply, low intellectual property that makes building data centers more expensive, that makes the user pay more. Fortunately, on the upswing, there are some high intellectual property fiber optics and networkers further down the large gain list, but not enough to counteract the pernicious nature of the endless memory shortage. Okay, look, I want to see a video on that list. Not Sandisk. It's not happening. Now, lots of things are loved or an update, but as you imagine, there are not a lot of hate spread around. And when you find it, let's just say it's eye-opening, maybe eye-popping. Some of these losers are real obvious. No surprise, Chevron's the worst performer to dial today, right? I mean, hey, listen, given that oil's down roughly 15% and lived by the price of oil, died by the price of oil, Verizon's right there too. Hard to figure this one out. Might be connected to the coming IPO of SpaceX, which owns Starlink. IBM's a bit of mystery too. The last quarter, okay, so it's a tad suspect, but I think the buy on this model pullback is the right thing to do. Then we have the killer, the one that matches up with the biggest losers in the NASDAQ. Salesforce down almost 4%. Geez, you think that this enterprise software stock could catch a break? I think it is the best agent software that allows ersatz people to come alive, answer questions flawlessly, also has a modern way to communicate with slot. But Salesforce has a bunch of silos that have software as a service models, and anything in that space is considered guilty until proven innocent, thanks to the rise of AI, even if it makes no sense at all. Why don't you think of it like this? If companies are paying by the worker for software as a service, and AI allows them to have fewer workers, then you have to say to yourself, how can Salesforce make as much money as it used to? I get that. Plus, who knows if Anthropa can help you code a Salesforce knockoff with lightning speed? I get that. I just don't know how existential it really is. We have the same narrative we worked at, another one that was down bailing today, it's a software play that can be duplicated by AI gremlins, it was down 6.5%. Then there's Intuit, which keeps getting it down 5% today. Then the guys buying TurboTax, now you don't normally see this stock getting run over during tax season, it's not even that expensive. But the sellers? Sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. Come on, stop. Now we see something obvious, a diamond back, that's the most aggressive drill in America, that's down less than 5%, that's expected. Lined up as L and L commodity chemical makers are benefiting from the man-made petrochemical shortage caused by the war. Now a lot of give-ups from those two, but you know what, I'm not so sure how easy that is to give up on these. As some of the endless price tags were caused by destroyed plastic refining. Taking out of capacity, those facilities won't come back anytime soon. I'm a believer that you can own Dow or Lion Dow. Wow, I'm out there. But here's the bottom line, when you go through these lists of the best and worst performers, you can see what's worth owning when things calm down and what's untouchable. When the market gets hammered again, you know what the professional money managers will reach for. It's a great way to figure out what can take you higher and what's just a plain old dead end. Let's take questions. Let's go to Gabriel in Illinois. Gabriel. Hi, James. How are you today? I'm doing well. How about you? Good. Thank you, James. I always listen to you. I know the kind that's CNBC, so I really appreciate everything you guys do all day long. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let's go to work. Let's go to work. Thank you. Yes, I wanted to ask about restoration hardware. I know that having some difficulties and a lot of money that they owe, but what do you think for the long term, maybe 12 or 24 months? Okay, so Gabriel, here's the problem. Look, I like RH. I love going there. I know Gary Freeman, but I also like a good balance sheet, and it no longer has a good balance sheet. And I don't recommend stocks on this show with balance sheets that I find questionable, because that always, in 21 years, has come back to hurt me, always. So the answer is I can't recommend it as much as I like to stuff. Let's go to Mike and Louisiana. Mike, Mike, Mike. Jim, hello from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Oh, really? Okay. Gary, didn't know that. Okay, what's going on? This consumer staple stock is that multi-year lows do the poor results and poor near-term outlooks, but as a longer-term play, how do you feel about general mills? I was talking with the team earlier about, I was talking to Jeff Marks, about that I saw Smucker, SJM, and poured a good quarter, and it went up for about a minute, and then it just got crushed. I can't recommend a stock general mill, 6.67% yield. It does not stop the decline. I'm going to have to say no. I don't have a reason to recommend general mills. So I'm just going to have to say pass, pass. Wow. All right, make sure you go through these lists of the best and worst performers. It's really fun. It's the best way to see what's worth owning when things calm down and what's untouchable. And by the way, you learn something every time you do it. Oh, man, money tonight. Oh, here's a big one. CrowdStrike is one of the companies partnering with Anthropic on its buzzy new Frontier AI model. I'm hearing all about the partnership that you must know about, you must learn about when I sit down with the cybersecurity company, CO. Then ahead of the Masters this week, and I'm teaming off a few of my favorite golf stocks to see whether the fairways can expect to see more green and heavy. You picked some good ones last year and FinTech stocks are all the rage right now. But which ones are fit for your portfolio? I'm taking a deep dive into one that you called in, called Bread Financial, and I'm telling you if it's toast or is toast another stock. Stay with Kramer. 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They've been working on a new frontier AI model called Mythos. And during the process, they realized that it's incredibly adept at spotting what are known as zero-day vulnerabilities. Basically software flaws that even the developers don't know about. Rather than release Mythos into the wild, where criminals can use it to hack into everything, and Thropik established something called Project Classway. Bring together a bunch of tech companies and cybersecurity firms to fix this stuff. For example, they bought in Kramer Fave CrowdStrike, which we own for the Childhood Trust. Lately, I've been trying to explain why CrowdStrike can't simply be replaced by these AI platforms. And I think Anthropik actually just did a perfect job of making that point for me. But don't take it from me. Let's check in with George Kurtz, the founder CEO of CrowdStrike, to learn more about what's going on here. Mr. Kurtz, welcome back to Man Money. Great to be here, Jim. Thank you, George. Now, zero-day. We've got to go over this. Because this is what we're talking about. Zero-day vulnerabilities. And what I want you to know is, and what I want you to do is explain what a zero-day vulnerability is and why these flaws are so important to find and match, and then patch now. Well, Jim, this has been the bane of the security industry for a long time. So as you might imagine, humans write code now, computers write code, but for many years, humans wrote code, and humans make mistakes. So the code that they actually write has security flaws that can be exploited or taken advantage of by the adversary. And there's thousands and thousands and thousands of these security flaws. Many of them go unnoticed for years or decades. And obviously, having a technology like Mithos and a large language model that can find these and surface these is a good thing for patching your vulnerabilities, but could be a bad thing if the adversary's got a hold of it and used it for malicious purposes. Now, what I'm trying to figure out is how Project Glasswing started. When I read it, I thought to myself, George, I'd have a hand on this because I don't know if even the great people who run Anthropic knew as much as you do about these things. Well, I think it's a reflection of what we've been doing with Anthropic behind the scenes and I think our position in the security industry at large. I've said to you for many times, you can't have AI without security. And I think there's a recognition of that. There are the experts at it. The security industry at large has a lot of information about this and in particular, CrowdStrike does. And if you're a net data creator, which we are, our agents, our security agents and sensors create data, we have a unique data set. You need that data for AI. And one of the biggest things that's holding back AI adoption is security. Right now, I can tell you, Jim, I'm with 30 of our top customers at our customer advisory board meeting. And the number one topic is securing AI so they can go faster. To the point where management teams are actually measuring how many people are using AI in their organization and scorecard and giving them grades on it if they're not going fast enough. So that's the kind of deal that we're dealing with. That's how big of a deal it is and why we're part of the solution here. Well, why hasn't anyone found these vulnerabilities before? Well, they're very complex. So in the old days, you'd have humans go through code, then you've got automated solutions that were around for a long period of time. But I think what we're seeing here with Mithos is that it has a fantastic ability to chain vulnerabilities. So a program isn't as simple as just one piece of code, right? There's all these dependencies and what's known as libraries and it can look across the entire code base and it can actually identify and chain vulnerabilities together where one issue, one minor issue might be small in the grand scheme, but when you chain them together and you link A to B to C to D, then you have a massive security exposure. And it's very good at that because that's what it understands and it could operate at large scale to find those. And that's where it gets really scary if it falls into the wrong hands and the adversary doing that on their behalf. I listened to that and I say to myself, how in heck did people think that your business would somehow be hurt and disrupted by an anthropic when it sounds like that without your business, they can't even release this product? Well, absolutely. I think when you look at what we're talking about AI and again, Jim, these are concepts that we've chatted about before. I just want to simplify. You're going to have a higher volume of attacks because AI is out there. It's going to find vulnerabilities that have never been found before. You're going to have less time to actually patch these vulnerabilities. So a higher volume, less time. This is a simple equation. On average, it takes about five days for an adversary to create a working exploit when there's a vulnerability that's announced, five days. This is going to go down to five minutes. So this whole cycle of finding a vulnerability and patching is going to get totally disrupted and thrown on its ear. And what you need are technologies like CrouchRack to create mitigating controls where as you're patching these things, you still have protection in place and you've got to control to keep yourself safe and prevent these adversaries from taking advantage of it. So it's only really going to accelerate the adoption of security technologies like CrouchRack. All right. Now, can AI replace cybersecurity totally eventually? Or has it always got to be somebody else that is overseeing? Well, I mean, AI is a part of the solution. I started the company using AI. It was machine learning at the time. We use large language models. We created large language models on our own. We've got small language models. And the thing that's important to realize, Jim, we actually can take advantage of Methos ourselves from a defender perspective. So think about this. They've created a fantastic model. And what we're talking about is finding vulnerabilities and the adversaries potentially using it. But now for the first time, the advantage has been from a large language model perspective has been tilted toward the defenders. And we get to use that model as well to defend against these adversaries. And we get to use it without the guardrails. So we get the full power of the model to be able to defend against these. And that's only one element, of course, of what we've built over the last 15 years. But that means it's a great partnership. And we're excited. I was talking to Dario this morning from Anthropic, the CEO, and it was all about the partnership and how we continue to work together. And that's why we're excited to be part of this announcement. Well, do you think that there are... Is this going to be one of those things where we are going to find out who really is just another SaaS company and who is something that we should not even regard as being software like your company? I've been trying to get people to understand that CrowdStrike is not software. It's something entirely different. I only use the term appliance. That's like the old days. But there are some companies that are not valuable. Is that not true? That are in your business that are not valuable? Yeah, Jim, there's two types of companies. There's one company that's going to be disrupted where you're just taking data in and you're kind of visualizing it and slicing and dicing it, if you will. And there's others that like CrowdStrike are net data creators. Our software agent, our security agent or sensor creates security telemetry. We see what's happening across literally millions and millions upon millions of endpoints and workloads around the world. And that data is incredibly valuable. That's what we use to train our models. And you can't get that by going to Reddit. You can't get that by scraping data off the internet. So we've spent 15 years building this sort of massive data moat. And again, we get the benefit of using that with our customers and leveraging these models that are available, like Methos, as well as the models we've created. So that's why it becomes very sticky. And you're going to have the have and the have nots. We certainly believe we're in the have category because it's very difficult to replace our agent, what we've built, plus our cloud infrastructure, plus the 15 years of domain knowledge. Security expertise actually matters, Jim. And you can't just roll in and say you're a security expert because you can, you know, how to use cloud code or something along those lines. Well, when you put together Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrossFit, Google, JPMorgan, Chase, The Linux, Foundation, Microsoft, Nvidia, Palo Alto Networks, other Palo Alto Networks than you, I don't see these. I think these other guys are, I think that they're victims. They're not predators. Well, the other folks involved, it's great that we've got the biggest companies in the world, but we're one of two security companies, pure play security companies that are there in the largest software security pure play. So we're delighted to be part of this. I think, again, it goes to the validation point of where we play in the ecosystem as being an important element to securing AI. And as I said, you know, companies want to go faster with rolling out AI. Obviously, the model creator, the frontier labs want more AI in the consumption. And the ability to consume tokens is just amazing. If you play with any of these technologies, you know, you can zip through tokens very quickly and everyone wants to use it, but you have to secure it and you want to go faster. And security is going to be an accelerant to rolling out AI and making companies successful, making the lab successful, and making the security companies like CrouchRike successful as well. Well, I'm glad you came on because I think people are starting to realize it's not that Anthropics going to destroy you. Companies that you need to be symbiotic. You have to have you or else then I think that whoever brings the, boy, whoever brings them in can really hurt. They don't want that. That was what was so great about Glasswing. They were very open about it. They can't do it alone. So I want to thank George Kurtz from your 30 person, your conference. Yeah, I mean, we got just in one day, we got 30. We have another 30 rolling in. Again, these are some of our biggest customers around the world and they're here because they give us ideas. They tell us what they want and they help form our roadmap and good things happen when you listen to your customers, Jim. All right. Thank you, George Kurtz, CEO of CrouchRike and thank you for explaining everything to us. We do need to learn about this and I'll talk to you soon. Thank you. We have money's back after the break. Coming up, the Azaleas are in bloom and the green jackets have been pressed. So settle in for a round of Kramer's favorite golf stocks. Next. Tomorrow morning the 90th Masters Tour is being held. Marcus is being hosted by theличical Marcus Marcus Marcus Marcus Marcus tournament kicks off at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia and here at Mad Money we've got a tradition of checking up on the golf stocks right before the tournament and we're not bad at it. Alright look, we do this not just, well it's not just because of fun, or frankly because our research director Ben Stotto might leave to work for the golf channel if we didn't, but because some of the golf stocks have been big time winners, although I don't want to rule out seeing Ben doing some odd jobs at our sister station ideally in full golf get up. Now in recent years there really only been two golf pure plays worth considering. A Kushnet Holdings, the parent company of Titleist in Footjoy, among other golf equipment brands which has the extremely apropos ticker G-O-L-F and then there's Calaway Golf which has gone through some significant changes over the past few years as it first merged with and then broke up with Topgolf the driving range entertainment venue. When we last looked at the golf stocks a year ago I steered you heavily toward a Kushnet which has been the steadier, more consistent player. I said you're getting a great buying opportunity thanks to the post-Liberation day tariff meltdown and while I liked the Kushnet I warned you to steer clear of Calaway until they finally broke up with Topgolf. Well one year later I'm happy to report that a Kushnet worked out great, it's up 59%, that's more than double the S&P during that same period. This one's been a reliable long-term winner, it's up nearly 480% since it came public a little less than a decade ago. So what's been going on here? Honestly it's just good solid execution. The parent company of Titleist leading performance equipment brand that's had the number one professional gopal for over 75 years. Footjoy, their footwear and a power brand has been the number one shoe on the PGA Tour for eight decades and they've got a few other brands a Voki Designs for wedges, a Scotty Cameron for putters, Pinnacle for gopals, shoes, but you know that's spelled KJUS for outerwear. A Kushnet's US sales were very solid last year but it got even more growth from Europe, the Middle East and Africa up 11.2% plus the company ended last year on a particularly strong note with 7% sales growth in the fourth quarter thanks to 10% growth from Titleist including 19% growth in golf clubs. Now Kushnet's earnings lines don't, look they don't look as strong as the sales lines with some cost pressures related to tariffs taking a bite out of the company's probability like so many other companies. That said, analysts expect a big bounce back for earnings this year. Then Wall Street Consensus is predicting nearly 20% earnings per share growth for 2026 and that's not bad. All told in steady she goes for a Kushnet. The wonderful here is that after this run the stock's actually more expensive than it's been in a long time. It's trading at 26.5 times this year's earnings estimates. It's not cheap. This isn't like last year when the tariff driven sell off was giving you a great entry point. Kushnet barely sold off on the war with Iran and now it's erased those losses thanks to the ceasefire. I think the stock deserves a premium because I believe they can make the numbers. But I don't blame anyone who's hesitant to pay up for this one especially after a jump 4% today. Maybe you want to wait for the next market wide pullback. So I'm happy with the Kushnet but I've got to admit that I was too negative on the old Topgolf Callaway which is now simply known as Callaway Golf like the old days. A year ago I said that I'd take a fresh look at Callaway as a value play once its breakup was complete but it turns out the market didn't need to wait. Callaway's stock started running last summer even before we knew exactly what the Topgolf breakup would look like and partly because the company managed to put up a series of better than expected numbers. Finally last November Topgolf Callaway announced it would sell 60% of its stake in the Topgolf driving range business along with Top Tracer its golf technology business to a private equity firm called Leonard Green for $1 billion. Destruction to do was clever. First the sale of majority stake in Topgolf in top ratio was cleaner than a spin-off as it could happen much faster. Second the sale to a private equity firm took the process of valuing Topgolf out of the public's hands. When Topgolf Callaway was at its lows over the last year the market was effectively assigning no value to the Topgolf business. None which public investors had totally written off. But the sale of Leonard Green valued Topgolf at roughly $1 billion and also assigned some value to Top Tracer too. Previously that business was simply buried within the broader Topgolf Callaway businesses. Third Callaway kept 40% of Topgolf which is worth something now that we know that the private equity was willing to pay for it. In early January they completed the sale and the remaining company changed its name back to Callaway Golf Company. Management also announced a $200 million buyback which represents nearly 10% of the market cap at the time. And over the course of the next two weeks investors piled right back into Callaway which climbed from below 12 to a high of 16 in change in late January. It since pulled back to 14 in change where it sells for 34 times this year's earnings estimates. I don't know about that. Can't you step back on the eve of the Masters tournament? I think it's fair to say that golf seems to be in great shape these days even if Tiger Woods is having some depressing personal issues again. Let me put it this way. As we were refreshing ourselves on these golf stories I came across a January note from JPMorgan's Matt Boss, the best retail analyst in the business bar none which really stuck with me. Boss had just returned from an industry conference and the theme of the event was the glory days because compared to the pre-pandemic year golf is seeing many more rounds played, more people are golfing overall and golf is growing internationally even becoming more mainstream thanks to the rise of YouTube golf. Boss was using that notice and an opportunity to upgrade a cushion net from underway to neutral point stands. Here's the bottom line. As we do our annual checkup on the golf stocks ahead of the Masters I see a business that's booming. My favorite long term, a cushion net, remains an excellent performer although it's gotten a little expensive at this point and Callaway caught fire before it finished breaking up the top golf. At this point though I think Callaway's gotten away from us. If I had to pick one right here I'd go with a cushion net, better consistency, better brand quality and cheap at least towards versus Callaway. But you know what? It doesn't matter. The business is back. I think you'll do well on either one. Let's go to Blake at Iowa please. Blake. Jim I'm looking at Nike. It's basically at a price you saw a decade ago with their division yield getting really attractive. It feels like all the bad news is already baked in. Do you think we're finally at a floor here? Is it time to buy Nike? No. Okay look I own Nike for my travel trust. It's been one of my bigger mistakes. I always talk about my mistakes because otherwise you can't learn. I got too bullish. I felt that there could be a term because it's coming to a poorly run previous and that I think that Elliott Hill's doing a good job but the turnaround's not having fast enough. And no, down 32% but I don't think we're done yet. Let's put it this way. I'm not seeing any signs. When we get some signs then we'll make a decision. Right now I'm just saying I made a mistake Nike. When it comes to the golf stocks I see a business that's booming. If I had to pick one I'd go with a cushion net. Much more made money ahead including my deep dive into a stock you called in about called Bread Financial. Then today's rally reveals the importance of one key market tactic. I'm explaining what it is and how it can protect your portfolios. An order calls rabbit fire tonight's edition of the Lightning Round. So stay with me. Last week Steve from North Carolina called in about Bread Financial and he stopped me so I said I'd circle back to it. Bread Financial Holdings BFH4U Home Gamers is a payments and lending company built around private label and co-brand credit cards. Pay-over-time products. Direct consumer savings. Now look I didn't recognize the name because until four years ago it was known as Alliance Data Systems. Over a decade ago we used to have them on semi-regularly. Back then Alliance Data Systems was a strong player in loyalty programs and store sponsored credit cards. The new Bread Financial is basically an old friend wearing a newer FinTech wrapper. And I gotta tell you though I'm not in love with the stock. Look I want to be even-handed so I'm going to start with the posips. Bread Financial is a cheap stock and the business is real. They've got long-standing relationships with recognizable brands. Through its comennity banking subsidiaries it sits right in the middle of a lot of retail finance programs. So this is not some phony FinTech copy. I mean it's real. Real scale. Bread Financial last year with $18.8 billion of end of period loans and adjusted net income of $578 million or $3.8 billion worth of revenue. Their direct-to-consumer deposits have represented 48% of their average total funding. Long term the stock's been ugly performer. But it's up 84% over the past 12 months, trouncing even some of my favorites like Firm, AmEx, Capital One. On top of that Bread has built out a buy now pay later business as well as Bread Savings which offers high yields savings accounts and CDs. So yes there's a real business here. This company is the financing engine behind a lot of branded credit card programs that consumers tend to use without ever thinking about who's underwriting them. But here's the part that jumped out at me once I started thinking. This is not a smooth earning story. Even in comparison to some of its peers, it's a lumpy, cyclical, credit-sensitive story. In 2021 when the old alliance state of business was still benefiting from unusually strong consumer credit performance, during of course the COVID stimulus, it earned about $15.95 a year. In 2022, it dropped to $4.47 a year. Then in 2023, earnings bounced back to $14.74 per year and then in 2024 they fell again to $7.60 per year. Last year you guessed it, they recovered back to double digits at $12.16. Now that's not the kind of earnings trajectory that lets you sleep soundly at night. Now some of that's because Bread's gotten more exposure to lower-ranked consumers and something like American Express. But the earnings volatility is also reserve accounting, charge-off, to liquidate sometimes one-time item story. This is not just a company with a shake of your customer base. It's a company where the business model itself naturally produces messier numbers. And that is why the stock can look cheap one minute and suddenly look very expensive. Of course the customer base is central to this story. Private-label retail credit cards are generally more accessible to consumers with lower credit cards. With the scores. Let me use it. A store card balance held by consumers with credit scores below $720 is typical. So annualized charge-off rates for private-label cards are really double those of general-purpose credit cards. In other words, Bread's borrowers have a lot more dead beats than a typical credit card company. It's tied to the mall card, the store card, the promotional financing offer, a checkout. These can be very good businesses in stable times. Or when the government has its hands on the money printer. But they get a lot harder to handicap unless wealthy consumers start to crack under pressure. Bread's own filings have been pretty explicit that it's been tightening its underwriting standards because of ongoing consumer payment pressure. In early 2024, the company cited lower credit sales, proactive credit tightening, and higher gross losses. The credit metrics have improved off the worst levels, but they're still not pretty. The delinquency rate was 6.5% in 2023, 5.9% in 2024, 5.8% at the end of 2025. It's better, but still a much tougher credit profile than the best-to-breed credit card outfits. I don't like those numbers. If you compare that to Markers Press, its customer base skews wealthier and demand for premium products can stay strong even if the rest of the economy slows down. You know exactly what you're going to get with Markers Press, although it does have, again, a much higher P.E. multiple. And if you want a mainstream lender with more exposure to the mass market, I'd rather own Capital One, especially now that the discovery deal's done. There's a reason we own this one for the Chapel Trust, and I feel so good about it. When Capital One bought Discovery, it became the largest credit card issuer by balances in the United States. That's a very different animal than bread, bigger scale, more diversification, more operating leverage, and more ways to win if you're right on the consumer. And I don't think bread's buy-and-out pay later, whereas I like to call it buy-and-out pay never component, is a reason to buy this one. Bread's pay-over-time business is real, but it's not the core of the story. Yes, I like this category, but if you want to play that theme, you know what, here we go again. I'd rather own Affirm, which I explicitly highlight in how to make money in any market. Affirm is democratized lending by providing financing and small increments for people who don't have the means to buy things up front. And they do it transparently, showing you exactly when and how much you'll be charged. I would rather go with a pioneer like Affirm and Max Levchin. That has a strong relationship with the best of the best, Amazon, Shopify, Costco. That feels like the cleaner way to play this thesis. And I crowd a feel, I say go to the specials. Not a best credit, it's not a broken company, far from it. It has a real niche, solid brand relationships, growing deposit-based management that's spent the past couple of years trying to make the business more resilient. The problem is this. This is exactly the kind of stock that can look fine right up until the consumer weakens. That suddenly losses soar and the earnings power everybody thought they saw vanishes. Right now, Broad sells for less than eight times this year's earnings estimate. It looks cheap, right? On the surface. Stock screams under value. But cheap, simple lenders almost always look cheapest right before you remember why they were cheap in the first place. Yeah, that's the trap. And Wall Street is looking for earnings to come down from 2025 levels in each of the next two years. Each. Here's the bottom line. Bread Financial is interesting, but not compelling enough for me to recommend to you over the alternatives. If you want more exposure to an affluent consumer, you go with American Express. If you want broader scale and a more durable credit card franchise, then it's Capital One, COF. And if you want to play, buy and out pay later, oh come on, rather on a pure play like Affirm, the democratizer of lending. You're wrong. Bread can work in the right environment. I just think there are cleaner ways to play every part of this story. They might as back get to the point. Coming up, you've got questions. Cramers got the answers. Get charged up for a fast-fire lightning round. Next. It is time to talk to the Light Round呵vличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличvличv the best book I've ever read in my life. Thank you very much. You're very kind. Thank you. What's up? I'm here with my two daughters who are super fans and want to say hi. Hi. Hi Jim. Hi Jim. What is awesome is soft on whole things. On. You know what? First of all, thank you for calling in. But it lost its CEO. I don't understand how that happened. It was all very strange. I'm gonna have to say take a pass. I'm sorry, but I love you guys calling in, but I need to take a pass on on. Let's go to Alex in Oregon. Alex. What's up Jim? Thanks for taking my call. I'm calling about more of a mid cap industrial that's kind of transforming from just kind of doing concrete and are still gonna do and feel and moving to concrete. The ticker simple CMC. Commercial metals. I like commercial metals very much, but I'm gonna steer towards Newcore, which had another great session. I think Newcore could be a straight shot through 200. I wish that I had recommended it for my travel trust and made some changes today. Can't change all at once, but NUE is the one you want. Let's go to David in Pennsylvania. David. Hey Jim, how you doing? I'm doing well, David. How about you? Good. All right, platforms. Buy, sell, hold. And if you want that, you just go buy Bitcoin. And I'm happy if you might go buy Bitcoin, but just don't complicate things. Just go buy Bitcoin. Bill and Massachusetts, Bill. Jim, it was a great day to be a club member. Did every one of our stocks go up or what? Thank you. Thank you. What's going on? Incredible. Hey, one stock I wanted to ask you about was Palantir. You know, it's really surprised me because I don't think that this could be heard by Anthropic. It's not gonna be heard by any of the others by OpenAI. And I'm gonna stand by it. I'm gonna stand by Carp. I'm not changing my mind. New book about Carp, so far pretty good. I'm not gonna give up right here. It had a big move last year and it's still digested yet. Let's go to Michael in New Jersey, Michael. Jimbo, love you, love the show. Thank you. Calling about a company, Lightwave Logic, LWLG. I do not know Lightwave Logic. I am going to have to get to work on that one. That one has eluded my Ken. Let's go to Sherry, Sherry in Texas, Sherry. Hey, hey, Ken. What do you really think about Joby Aviation? I'm not a flying car guy. I'm just not. And I've been right not to be a flying car guy, although I do think, by the way, that Boeing is a great stock drone here and they've got a lot of technology for that kind of thing. And that, ladies and gentlemen, conclusion of the Lightning Round. The Lightning Round is sponsored by Charles Schwab. Coming up, Kramer is delivering his big takeaway from today's rally and reminding you why that same guiding principle is the key to making money in any market. Next. Oh, yeah, Jim Kramer. I'm a first time caller, a happy club member. I want to thank him for being the Peaceless Champion of the Debt. Thank you for helping me become a millionaire. I'm going to be becoming a millionaire. Today's spectacular rally explains why you just can't give up on the stock market. You can't try to get out when things look bad, then get back in when it's safe. It's too hard. By the time the coast is cleared, you already missed the biggest move. This time, the best moment to buy was actually when the president used his most aggressive rhetoric. It seemed like he was hinting that he'd be willing to go to extremes to crush Iran. Until this threat, every other verbal attack by the president just brought nothing but vitriol from Iran. So you would have had to be Claire Vooin. Bet that the Iranians would come back with it. Imagine with a multi-point plan and, well, forget it. You'd never be that clueless. It just doesn't work like that. That's right. You'd have had to bet, and it was betting, that the worst day of the entire war, the day when President Trump made his biggest threats, was in fact the best day to invest. It's impossible to reliably make that kind of call. This quinsets precisely how, this is why I wrote how to make money in any market. I emphasized over and over again how you would have missed out all the gigantic moves if you tried to fit in and fit out of this market. I also pointed out that it's the legendary investor, Ken Langeau notes, they're really only about eight days a year where the biggest gains are made. Today was one of those days. You have to stay invested or else you're going to miss it. And how to make money in any market? I also stressed diversification. For weeks, it seemed like a terrific time to own nothing but do-it-all, right? Perhaps with an augmentation of a certain, maybe a fertilizer stock, some chemical stocks. Much of those goal-related gains were annihilated in today's session. Who would have thought that oil would plunge so much in one day? There wasn't even time to take profits. Again, it's too hard to pick them up, just monetary, momentary winners and nail the time. Can't time. Much better to have a balanced portfolio so you don't get crushed when the wind blows in a new direction. We've seen this all before. People remember some of the days at the Liberation Day last year? It seems so obvious that you couldn't be in the market. The White House seemed almost eager to destroy the global economy with absurdly high tariffs in your portfolio with it. But if you sold stocks to avoid the pain, you missed the huge day when the President of Iraq has even repealed something. He seemed to hold so near and dear. You might ask why the market took off so viciously this morning. Couple of reasons. First, there were a ton of investors who actually did leave the market before this. Today, they've frantically tried to re-enter all at once. Second, when the President made his threat to wipe out Iran, you could see a substantial short position developing. Understandable, as I can't imagine nuclear war would be good for the market. Third, the reaction was so swift and powerful that many judged it to be the definite end of hostilities. So if you wanted to get back in, what was too late, just might have was just keep buying all day. I say you need to get past this kind of thinking and accept that over the last 42 years, the period covered by how to make money in any market, you were better off just riding out the financial calamities with the sole exception of the Great Recession. That one was different. It's why I told you to get out in October of 2008 and then circle back a few months later and told you a couple thousand months later that, well, it was time. But you know what? It's true that if you just sat on your hands and you made back your losses after, say, about five years, it was still worth it because the gains from then on were spectacular. So let's use this moment as a searing memory of the importance of staying in. It's the quintessential example of why my strategy is right because if you don't try to ride out the bad days, you end up missing out on the great days when all the huge money is made. Like I said, there's always bull market somewhere. I promise I'll find it just for you right here. I'm Jim Cramer. See you tomorrow. All opinions expressed by Jim Cramer in this podcast are solely Cramer's opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC or its parent company or affiliates and may have been previously disseminated by Cramer on television, radio, internet, or another medium. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Cramer as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. Cramer's opinions are based upon information he considers reliable, but neither CNBC nor its affiliates and or subsidiaries warrant its completeness or accuracy and it should not be relied upon as such. To view the full Mad Money disclaimer, please visit cnbc.com forward slash madmoney disclaimer. Breakups, that is a tricky one. That's why EE is the only major provider who'll give you up to £300 to switch. 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