>> gld >> all i can say is thank k. wasn't enrolled in that. can you imagine b.k. in that dress? shout out to b.k wynn resorts, melms. w-y, in, in. >> that's correct for watching "fast money." see you back here tomorrow at 5:00 for more "fast. "mad money" with jim cramer starts now my mission is simple to make you money. i'm here to level the playing field for all investors. there's always a bull market somewhere. and i promise to help you find it "mad money" starts now hey, i'm cramer. welcome to "mad money. welcome to cramerica other people want to make friends, i'm just trying to make you a little money my job not just to entertain but to educate, do some teaching call me, 1-800-743-cnbc. tweet me @jimcramer. another day, another softer economic number, another step closer to the fed no longer

being your enemy after this cooler than expected consumer price index reading we got at 8:30 a.m. it's now clearer that jay powell, the fed chief, is actually winning the war on inflation, which is why the dow jumped 217 points today, s&p gained .34% and the nasdaq advanced another .64%! that was on the sixth straight month of better inflation numbers. so on the eve of earnings season we can stop worrying about the big picture and talk about what makes individual stocks go higher why don't we start with the basics tomorrow we'll hear from most of the big banks. they'll unleash a slew of numbers. most of them will be actually irrelevant to the stocks but not all of them. what do we care about? loan growth, defaults, how much money they're making off your deposits they're paying you nothing and get you 3%, 4% we'll see a set of headline numbers, the earnings, the revenue, the forecasts it will look simple but it's never simple with the banks. and their numbers are often

impacted by an amalgam of one-time considerations which throws off our ability to make clean apples to apples comparisons with the analyst estimates. now, most of the time the bank stocks instantly go higher or at least most bank stocks then we listen to the conference call, the tone, the refinement of the forecast. the question and answers you know what happens? they give up their gains probably happen again tomorrow we'll also hear from blackrock's larry fink he's the man behind the biggest asset gatherer in the world. he is a tight sxn a great advocate of your rights. shareholders' rights shareholder democracy. that's something i'm going to be talking about with him tomorrow on "squawk on the street," which brings me to what i really want to talk about tonight. oh, i could give you a couple nasdaq stocks that are up. everybody knows how to do that hey, look at that semiconductor. no, i want a little more i feel like doing a little more tonight. i want to talk about the walt disney company first let me tell you, like anyone who bought disney last year i would say i'm plenty

upset. and this is for my charitable trust. we've lost a lot of money on a situation that i felt very bullish about. and i was wrong! i've been to disney world a dozen times. i brought my kids up on disney movies i can't live without espn. disney stock is the first stock i recommended on "mad money" 18 years ago. so i'm neither a sunshine soldier nor a patriot. so believe me when i say i am furious! this company has not done a good job. it's canceled its dividend it's lost billions squandering a stunning amount of shareholder money. let me repeat. shareholder money. like my money. or at least my trust like your money. see, like other publicly traded companies disney's actually owned by shareholders, who give their trust to the ceo and the board of directors to do a great job with their money

at least that's supposed to be how it works but some chief executives don't seem to recognize that they're accountable to anyone. some boards don't think so either now, that doesn't really bother me all that much when the stock's doing well unless we discover some sort of like truly awful criminal enterprise but when the stock's doing poorly, i think management loses that right to be treated with the congenial hail fellow well met attitude that i have, that kind of jeffersonian gandhi thing i do and when the company loses fortunes, like disney did when they surprised us with a $4 billion loss last year, more than double the previous year's loss, you know what? i don't wear gloves. but i'd take them off if i had them on. i'm not going to just throw the towel and walk away. management point blank has done a terrible job here. bob chapek the ceo was fired for his mismanagement and the board brought in -- brought back bob iger, his predecessor, to try to restore order.

they also named board member mark parker the fantastic chairman and former ceo of nike as the new disney chairman it's true disney's doing badly but some of its problems had nothing to do with the deposed chapek, who was picked by iger in the first place remember, they spent $71 billion buying fox's entertainment assets that was a colossal overpay. [ boos ] that ruined, ruined the balance sheet. >> the house of pain >> reckless use of shareholder money. your money my trust's money hindsight 20-20 disney had wanted fox to aumth its new streaming service. but like a general manager who spends way too much on a single -- excuse me, on a single player look at that, i missed the water. bob iger needs to be held accountable. believe me, if disney were a football team every espn analyst would say that whoever was involved with the fox acquisition deserves to be fired. something disney this v should know because, well, they own most of espn

that's not cruel i'm not being mean here's what i'm really doing i am stating what i call facts those are facts not that long ago with disney's stock trading not far from its lows a well-known activist investor, a guy named nelson peltz, took a 9 you 9$00 million position in the company. that's not chump change. he didn't think chapek was doing a good job peltz asked to be put on the board. in november when chapek was fired and iger returned many thought peltz would be appeased and let iger bring back the magic. the magic. peltz wasn't appeased. now he's let's say going to be what, thrilled with the team that bought fox? for what he says was $30 billion more than what it was worth? he's supposed to like that now here's what's key. peltz runs a hedge fund. tryon partners

as long as he's on the board the company tends to outperform the s&p 500 by nine percentage points in any given year nine percentage points the ceos of the companies he has helped have given him glowing testimonials even the wunds like heinz and procter & gamble where he had waged proxy fights to get on the board during the time he's been on the boards he's helped increase investments to drive sales growth and market share performance, reduce cost and overhead and optimize capital allocation decisions all of which are things that disney could use which is why i found it so confounding that disney's board has given peltz a definitive no. despite how poorly the company's performing they gave him a token 45 minutes to make a presentation originally it was only supposed to be 30 minutes peltz pleaded for another 15 and then shortly after they said no thanks, we don't need you on our board. they told him he could observe things, kind of like auditing a class at college but his $900 million skin in the game position seems to be

nothing to them. nor does his wisdom. i'm honestly trying to be as dispassionate as possible about this but i don't understand why disney wouldn't eagerly welcome basically free advice from someone with a tremendous track record when he's on the board. i've done my own reporting on this and found many directors who serve with him sate same thing, he's helpful, not disruptive if you're going to have an activist shareholder peltz is the one you want so now lots of your money, your money if you're a shareholder like my charitable trust where we spent to stop nelson peltz from joining the board, that's nuts even though he's not the guy involved with the disastrous fox acquisition or the disastrous choice to make bob chapek the ceo sure disney will have its excuses just like p & g did when they fought against peltz. ceo even came on the show to campaign against him on the proxy contest. we can tell all sorts of soirz stoirz about how it hurt the company, whatever. but the board, the stewards who haven't done a good job, not the

shareholders and not peltz now someone like peltz has been tremendously successful wants to join them. and they act like that's a problem? that is lunacy we're not talking about naming dopey or sleepy or scrooge mcduck, one of my faves, or pluto or the teacup or the sultan or the beast or the little mermaid to disney's board. we're talking about someone named nelson peltz, who can and will help. hopefully the existing board members who caused disney to lose so much value won't prevail in arguing against taking it let's go to ira in texas ira. >> caller: yes, how are you doing? sn thanks for taking the call you've always mentions products that have good products and good services last week you talked favorably about health care management companies. what's your view on teladoc

>> my problem is they made a really bad merger and when they did that merger that blew them up i don't want to touch it i think there are a lot better ideas out there. bob in indiana bob. >> caller: hey, what's up, jim >> not much, bob how about you? >> caller: pretty good just waiting to go and work. >> all right >> caller: so i got burnt in my portfolio with moen. i bought that around 19 cents. i sold apple to get there. but with my amazon i sold out of there and i bought roughly 750 shares at $1.60 approximately on bed bath & beyond. i'm deciding whether or not if i should -- >> here's what i think you should do. bed bath & beyond has said that it's worried about being a going concern. what that means is they could shut, they could close, they could sell but the main thing you need to know is you have a cost basis that you can take out. you can let the rest run that's fine with me. but i don't want you to lose

money in this. this thing could go to zero and you'll say why didn't i take anything out take out your cost basis tomorrow, let the rest run and see how you do, and i think you'll be fine all right. hopefully the existing board members who caused disney to lose so much value won't prevail in arguing against nelson peltz's help on "mad money" tonight denbury has a handle on all things carbon capture so could the stock be an under the radar green energy play that's also highly profitable? i'm talking to the ceo and over the last couple of months a phenomenon has swept wall street. former ceos returning to right the ship so what should you make of these high-profile power transfers i'll give you my take. and could the latest covid numbers out of china be a worry three years after covid initially made it to our shores? i'm getting the last from the one and only dr. eric taopol and you won't like it. stay with cramer >> announcer: don't miss a second of "mad money." follow @jimcramer on twitter

have a question? tweet cramer #madtweets send jim an e-mail to madmoney@cnbc.com. or give us a call. at 1-800-743-cnbc. ss something head to madmoney.cnbc.com.

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unlike most prognosticators i'm bullish on energy for 2023 the oil and gas stocks won't roar like they did last year but if you identified the best individual stories of the group you're going to do real good with that in mind i want to talk about denbury. that's an independent oil producer that has a long history of using carbon dioxide to get crude out of the ground, a process they call enhanced soil recovery and in recent years they've used that expertise to make a huge push into something they always used the initials for, i wish

they didn't, everybody does, carbon capture utilization and storage. ccus the kind of technology that lets you use fossil fuels without flooding the environment with greenhouse emissions there was a lot of money earmarked for carbon reduction in last year's misleadingly named inflation reduction act. it should have been called the carbon reduction act there's one that's really doing it, it's denbury and they're working and others are going to need their help. statement time because it's also an oil producer this is a rare green energy play highly profitable don't take it from me let's check in with pure joy as far as i'm concerned, chris kendall, the ceo of denbury mr. kendall, welcome back to "mad money." >> thanks, jim great to be here again >> so chris, it seems like that some things are really happening. it seems like for instance you're starting to get your due for what you're doing. which is amazing and even washington's noticing

>> absolutely, jim i think we are i think back on when we first visited back in august two years ago. we were just getting started and since then we have built this business. ended last year with orders of about 20 million ton per year of emissions that will be captured and then transported and stored by denbury i think about that and just the context of the world's total capture and emissions right now, which is about 40 million tons we're i can maing great progress there's a long way to go but we love where we are and we love where we're headed. >> talk about what the inflation reduction act has done because they've put some pretty good pricing in that could maybe get others to work with you to get things done. >> they really did, jim, and it's been just a fantastic couple of years in terms of the whole panorama for carbon capture. we started with the original of

45q tax credit which is provided a $50 per ton tax credit for carbon captured and sequestered underground. that was great because that got us a great start with a bunch of low cost to capture industries like ammonia, methanol, ethanol and so on. so that's where we started and that's where we began going down this path. what's really cool is that once we saw the i.r.a. and we saw that $50 tax credit increased to $85 a ton, what that did, especially when you combine it with continued work to just reduce the cost of capture, is it brings a whole bunch of new industry into the money, say, in capturing their emissions. and these are industries with very hard to evade emissions like cement or steel or even power generation, which is for us kind of the holy grail of getting to the meat of the huge amount of emissions that we have right here in the united states. we're very excited about it. i think the door's just wide

open for a very, very big industry and a big business here >> but at the same time i want people to know this is not -- you are not some company that is -- that is an esg company that also produces energy. you are a huge cash flow you're producing a lot of oil. and frankly your model is very reasonable for others to emulate. >> jim, i think it really is if you look back in our history, as you mentioned at the outset, we began with a focus on enhanced oil recovery using carbon dioxide and what that resulted in is just this great set of experts in handling co2 above and below ground it resulted in these assets that -- of the greatest set of co2 pipeline assets in the united states, moving 14 million tons of co2 right now as we speak every year and so through that business we

built this incredible expertise, incredible asset base, and what i love is just the absolute adjacency of carbon capture to that e.o.r. business all of the expertise that we need to work in ccus is expertise that we developed right there working e.o.r. so we have an ongoing business, got good cash flows and we can translate all of that to fund and build that ccus. >> so let's talk about for a moment, you can be idle and you can dismiss it but there's a company exxon that my partner david faber did a tremendous takeout on they are trying their best to be able to become cleaner, to decarbonize. the natural partner for them to do it is denbury you do work together what do we say about this technology and maybe that exxon needs to buy you in order to get it >> yeah. you know, you mentioned that when we talked a couple of augusts ago. and certainly we think we have something very special, jim.

but when i step back a little bit and i look at what we need as a company, we have the assets, we have the people we have a clean balance sheet with virtually no debt and we have the ability to self-fund that 1.6 to $2 billion of ccus capex that we think you will need to build our business to where we expect it to be by the end of this decade we can do all of that organically. we feel very good about where we are. we're completely focused on building the value of this company as we go forward just as we have over the last couple of years. and that's where we're going to stay focused that's kind of how i think about it, jim. >> well, you know what we're going to have to stay focused because the gulf coast is good. we haven't even talked about all the companies that need you in order to be able to become better citizens. and then hydrogen has been such an important part of what we talk about you guys take action on all of these. i want you to come back. i want you to come to new york i want people to understand that

denbury deserves a lot more credit for what you're doing than people realize. i want to thank chris kendall, ceo of denbury, simple den chris, just keep doing what you're doing you are -- let's just hope everybody emulates your work okay >> we're going to do it, jim thank you so much. >> i believe you are you're a darn good stock too "mad money's" back after the break. coming up, just when you thought they were out, they pulled themselves back in. these ceos all returned to the corner office. what's it mean for their stocks? next

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over the past few months we've seen something a little unusual. in order to turn things around a handful of companies have booted their ceos and replaced them with former ceos or founders

it's like wall street's taking a page from "poltergeist 2." they're back by the way, that's a seminal set of horror movies if you're too young to have seen them. but even if you don't like retro movies the business community clearly has a thing for retro executives almost a year ago now we saw howard schultz come back as interim chairman of starbucks after the departure of kevin johnson. starbucks as we tell investing club members has a new ceo i think he's going to do a good job. i can't wait to spend some time with him but howard had to come back to get things back as they should be now, we've seen three separate companies, disney, stitch fix and world wrestling entertainment be involved in just these kinds of reshufflings let's take them one by one these stories can tell us a lot about how you can create a comeback at a flailing business. we'll start with disney because i'm a long-time fan of this one

to the point where we still own it for the charitable trust as you know from the top of the show disney replaced bob chapek with bob iger, who transformed the company into a powerhouse during his original tenure from 2005 to 2020 but also made that terrible acquisition of fox now, i've got to say the worst mistake iger ever made, though, was picking chapek as his successor. we gave this guy so many chances. sure chapek was dealt a tough hand just as he took over when covid exploded worldwide but the stock lost 55% of its value and a good deal of it was because of his mismanagement he used to run the parks division he's very good at that but his skill set didn't translate to the media side of the business he never managed to put together a compelling narrative to own the stock when he took over disney plus had just gotten going and the stock quickly started trading like a streaming video play which was terrific at the height of the pandemic but it's been awful since the world

went back to normal post-covid even though disney's theme parks were packed and posting great numbers even though this company's got some of the best entertainment franchises in human history at least in terms of earnings power chapek could never get investors to focus on the underlying value because he couldn't brick bring it out. the straw that broke the camel's back was the last conference in early november when disney reported awful numbers but chapek made it sound like everything was -- i was going to say but really fantastic i think is the right word. close watchers of the show know i had high hones for chapek but now i'm glad he's gone and i'm glad they bought iger in as his replacement. because this is a hollywood company and he understands hollywood better than anybody. of course iger's not infallible. he picked a bad successor. and almost as bad as i mentioned he massively overpaid for 21st century fox entertainment assets loegd them up with debt only forcing them to suspend the dividend this was i along-time dividend payer. and like i mentioned top of the

show yesterday acclaimed activist nelson peltz launched a campaign for a board seat i'm dismayed disney is fighting this but hopefully peltz will win because he's one of the most reliable activists in the bays we spent half an hour talking to him this morning on "squawk on the street." i thought he had a compelling vision he's got a great track rrd of unlocking value whenever he gets on the board i think pelts and iger can make a terrific team if only iger would get on board with the idea clearly a lot of people agree with me because disney's stjumpd 3 1/2 bucks today and i bet it's got more room to run as long as peltz gets on that board next up is stitch fix. seems to be following the same play book. last frit online fashion advisory service announced that its ceo elizabeth spalding would be stepping down but katrina lake, the founding chairperson and original ceo, who's been on the show a bunch of times, taking the helm in an interim capacity just like disney this move seems to be all about performance, or more accurately underperformance because stitch fix became a real dog under spalding's tenure.

again, a great deal of that's because it's kind of a high-flying digital shopping play that was a huge covid winner that went totally out of style when the fed declared war on inflation let me put it this way when katrina lake announced she was stepping down april of last year the stock was in the 50s. now it's at $4 and that's after bouncing hard over the past couple weeks i have nothing against spalding. i liked her when she was on the show but under her leadership stitch fix profitability plummeted. when this thing initially came public in 2017 it was profitable by the 2020 fiscal year which ended last july they lost a buck 90 they spent a moch to expand from its core subscription offering where you pay a monthly fee and get sent a box of clothes and are more of a classic retail experience with personal product recommendations. that kind of expansion is expertsive unfortunately it came at the worst possible time because last year wall street no longer wanted to invest in unprofitable companies spending heavily to

invest in growth especially e-commerce growth. plus the launch of the retail business stitch fix seemed to focus on the numbers for their core subscription offering started slipping the subscriber count peaked a year ago worst of all stitch fix has gone from a pretty reliable operator to exact opposite. they've missed sales estimates for three quarters straight. a lot of this is timing. e-commerce got killed. but can katrina turn it around look, stitch fix is predicted to lose money for the foreseeable future it is hard to call the stock cheap even here, down 96% from its highs. but at this point the 478 million market capitalization is so low it's tempting it has more than 100 million in cash and cash equivalent, zero debt i think they can potentially sell the business to it a larger reeshlt, maybe a private equity firm but i wouldn't want to stick my neck out on stitch fix until they stabilize the core subscription business. the stock is too speculative i will tell you personally when i first met katrina she told me do you know how much money the company's making i thought it was losing money i was wrong.

it was an informal situation she was telling me about what the company is doing and you know what? what the heck was i thinking she's a great operator i think even having her back in an interim way could be terrific for shareholders finally last thursday night we learned that vince mcmahon the former ceo of world wrestling entertainment, who's owned a controlling stake in the business since the early '80s, would be returning to the company and possibly pursuing a sale of the business this one raises eyebrows because mcmahon technically retired last summer after some serious sexual misconduct allegations but he never really left he's the owner and shares most of the voting power. he brought in his daughter to run the show but two days ago wwe confirmed he's cup v coming back and mcmahon took the executive chairman spot with the ceo title going to nick kahn who had been serving as co-ceo alongside mcmahon's daughter we heard a lot of speculation about who might be willing to buy this one although my "squawk on the street" compadre david faber -- be i don't want to go near the thing and not because

the stock's up 24% since the news broke but i see it happening so we've got sfwaurkz, disney, stitch fix, wwe. hey, i'm calling it a trend. here's the bottom line if a difficult period for the market some companies are bringing back their old leaders to turn things around. but other than bob iger at disney i'm not sanguine yet about this strategy. let's take some phone calls. let's go to william in michigan. william. >> caller:ly, jim. thank you for taking my call >> of course >> caller: this stock is well off its highs. many consider the company to be the leader and best of breed in the industry given the current macroeconomic condition i would like your opinion on palo alto networks. >> i think palo alto networks is a buy. now, we're starting to see some serious downgrades in the group. we saw some outright downgrade to sentinel 1. this is going to be -- this is the cream of the crop.

and the best ceo in that business i say you buy palo alto networks now let's go to clay in kentucky xla. >> caller: jim i'm a member of the investment club and i always appreciate your insights. >> oh, fabulous. >> caller: coming into the new year i was thinking about adding to my position in humana but i understand that there may be some changes that could negatively impact the stock. what are your thoughts >> no, no, you buy humana. this stock is part of a rotation they actually preannounced unbelievably good numbers when they were in san francisco this week the trust owns it as you know. we mentioned it, i talked about it in our home stretch a little after 2:30, that i think humana represents the best buy. we'll see united health care tomorrow, i bet you it will be good and humana is now the one that's the cheapest. after a difficult period for the market some companies are bringing back old leaders to turn things around but other than bob iger i'm not too sanguine about this strategy

unless we include starbucks. much more "mad money" including my conversation with dr. eric topol. could the explosion of new covid cases in china be cause for concern? are we just whistling past the graveyard again? i'm going straight to the source for answers. then i'm not buying that cpi number we got this morning but why? i'll reveal exactly. i'm a little more rigorous than they are at the labor department and all your calls in tonight's edition of the "lightning round. so stay with cramer. another busy day? of course - you're a cio in 2022. but you're ready. because you've got the next generation in global secure networking from comcast business. with fully integrated security solutions all in one place. so you're covered. on-premise and in the cloud. you can run things the way you want - your team, ours or a mix of both. with the nation's largest ip converged network.

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♪ every search you make ♪ ♪ every click you take ♪ ♪ i'll be watching you ♪ - [narrator] the internet doesn't have to be so creepy, the duckduckgo app, lets you search and browse pria blocking most trackers all forf your search history is never tracked, so it can't be shared. and when you leave search, duckduckgo helps keep companies from watching you as you brows. join tens of millions of people making the easy switch by downloading the app today. duckduckgo, privacy simplified. at this point nearly three years after the pandemic reached our shores we're more or less back to normal sure, we haven't eradicated covid but thanks to effective vaccines, widespread test multiple treatments the virus is

much less lethal that said there's a lingering threat here. late last year china shifted from its draconian zero covid strategy to what i would say is a more laissez-faire anything goes strategy. there's already an explosion of new infections remember the chinese government insisted on using homegrown vaccines that are much less effective than the mrna vaccines from pfizer or moderna so it's spreading like crazy now we have to worry about new variants showing up especially because china hasn't been forthcoming with information about the virus. how worried should we be let's catch up with eric taupe the renowned cardiologist turned founder and director of the -- he's also a great friend of the show he's become our most trusted source on covid and other health issues welcome back to "mad money." >> thanks so much, jim, great to be with you again. >> so doc, i read your opinion piece. on january 8th in the "washington post." it's entitled "the coronavirus is speaking. it's saying it's not done with

us." i had others read this they all said the same thing to me jim, you're a worrywart, you're a chicken little guy and i remember, i was in milan in the last week of january in 2020 and i came home and i told everyone about this thing. no one believed me i feel this article could be a clarion call that once again we're whistling past maybe not the biggest graveyard like we had but something very important. >> yeah, the virus is relentless and even though we're tired, jim, it keeps finding new ways to hurt us so the latest version is a fusion of two different variants, the so-called xbb and then two mutations on top of that that was discovered, first detected in new york and it spread really fast throughout the northeast and led to a pretty substantial wave of seniors getting covid hospitalizations it's probably going to become dominant throughout the country in the weeks ahead so we have the first american-born major variant

here unfortunately it has a funky name, xbb.1.5. but it's not a good one. and it just shows us where the virus can go in such different ways that we would not have predicted to cause trouble >> all right well, i was in a medical building today we were all wearing masks. i will go home tonight and i will test. i've mentioned this to other people they laughed when are we going to realize that it's around and even if you've been fully vaccinated there's a good chance that you could get this thing >> right well, the vaccinations, unfortunately, ever since omicron a year ago don't do very well and certainly only short term to help block infections. so you're absolutely right the only way you're going to know when you've got exposed or when you're gathering, the tests do help. the rapid tests help to get a sense of what's going on but yeah, our vaccines, they are really holding up well against the severe covid,

hospitalizations and deaths. but as of a year ago the infection protection is really quite minimal. and so we have to keep that in mind the bivalent vaccine that was rolled out in september actually has done much better than we expected because it helps protect against this xbb.1.5 we're dealing with right now and that wasn't anticipated. that wasn't what the bivalent was directed to. so we've got to use all the stuff we have including the bivalent booster, the masks when we have high circulating virus, the testing as you've mentioned. we've got a lot of things in our armamentarium to work with >> we've got a country of 1.4 billion people that had an irrational policy about zero covid and then went equally irrational and said go see the world. a plane lands in milan, 50% of the people have covid. the variants of this petri dish of a country must concern you. and their ability to go anywhere

with minimal restrictions must have you very worried. >> well, whenever you don't contain the virus that's certainly the potential secwsec secwella and we've got an american variant now. so in china with the massive population and unmitt graited spread at this point they just weren't able to get the population vaccinated, particularly people of advanced age. as you mentioned at the top, the vaccines aren't working particularly well against these omicron variants as are the boosters that they have. so they're in a tough position they were draconian because they didn't have facilities to match up with if covid really spread but now they're really seeing it and it's taking its toll and it's going to continue for many weeks ahead. >> all right so one last thing. if you haven't gotten that booster from september and you're watching this show, how about you go tomorrow to the drugstore and get it >> i sure think that would be a

great idea especially if you're older 50-plus. certainly 65-plus. it gives you a lot more protection our immune system as we get older just doesn't do as well. and that booster, particularly the bivalent, is a big jump in your immune response to get neutralized antibodies against the variants that we're seeing now. not just the ones it was designed for >> i'm so glad you came on, doc. i think people are way too complacent if it weren't for you i think a lot of people would have gotten far more sick and we would have saved more lives had people listened to you from the beginning. dr. eric topol, founder and director of the scripps research translational institute and also a great friend of the show thank you, doc great to have you on >> thanks so much, jim thanks for staying with this too. >> absolutely. "mad money's" back after the break. >> announcer: coming up -- cramer wants to hear from you. your calls on the thunderous "lightning round." next

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hello, world. or is it goodbye? you know, it seems like hope and trust are in short supply. [clap] now, as businesses we can blame and shame. or... [whistles] we can make a change. [clap] we can make work, work for our communities. create more equal opportunities.

[clap] it's time for business to show its true worth. because it's not goodbye, world. it's hello, team earth. [clap] it is time it's time for the "lightning round" buy buy buy -- and then the "lightning round" is over. are you ready, skee-daddy? time for the "lightning round" on cramer's "mad money." start with galen in illinois galen! >> caller: hey, jim. how are you doing, sir >> i'm doing great how about you? >> caller: pretty good hanging out in lewistown, illinois >> that sounds like a great place to be. what's up? >> yes it's a good place. what's your opinion on riff

yen's stock? what direction do you think this is going in the short term up or down >> remember, we're against those companies that -- we're against the money losers and we can't change our money now we just don't know what's going to happen. we're staying away from the losers let's go to phil in california phil >> caller: hey there, jim. gratitude. kudos and appreciation for your work and the depth of your analyst is getting deeper and better >> i've got to work even harder. i tell you sometimes i get discouraged. so many new companies. >> caller: high yielding israeli shipping company called zim. z as in zebra -- >> a lot of people said jim, you're keeping me out of a good one. i'm going to reiterate, i don't trust it and i've been right so far let's go to david in south carolina david! >> caller: jim, thank you so much for taking my call. it's an honor to be here and a privilege to say boo-yah to the jimmy chill.

>> jimmy chill says boo-yah back what's up? >> caller: i just want to say i'm a founding club member and i really appreciate all your insight. so grateful for it >> thank you you got that -- you like the 2:00 home stretch? how about that thing, huh? that's coming together >> caller: i love it i love it. yeah >> that's going to work. >> caller: today's call's about a fertilizer company so with the war in ukraine and russia over the past year, a huge supply of fertilizer, wheat, et cetera has been lost to the world economy >> one third one third of it. >> caller: yeah. are we -- >> that's why i -- which one do you want to know about >> caller: gs industries i want to know if it's going to take off -- >> i like cf i like mosaic more but i like cf a lot. let's go to steve in minnesota steve! kaurm hi, jim. long-time viewer, first-time caller wanted to thank you for all your wisdom and expertise

my question has to could with the semiconductor industries, with the chips act recently passed and the manufacturers set for large capital investments, what do you think about a company named integris >> it has a lot of nuts and notes you need to make semis that's all right with me i'm good with it let's go to joe in new jersey. joe! >> caller: hello, mr. cramer >> joe, what'sup >> caller: thank you for taking my call. >> absolutely. >> caller: i see that the health care products and service provider henry schein. >> i like the company. it's plain vanilla, nothing exciting but that's okay we're not in this business for excitement we're in for consistency and henry schein's had a consistent view they deliver let's go to tom in texas

tom. >> caller: yes jim. i've been watching you since -- i've been watching you since the kudlow days. >> holy cow. saw larry today, looked really good what's going on? >> caller: you highlighted clearfield a little while ago. the chart's kind of weak so a fall back into the 80s yesterday didn't take me by surprise but against the broad -- the general background of the market the last two days was kind of surprised by the depth of the f fall >> i know this sounds like a copout, thom i think somebody knows something. i see these things when you see a stock go down, you've got to be very careful. we have to wait and see. we can't catch a falling knife there are so many stocks that are doing well, you have to stay away from the stocks that are plummeting let's go to isaac in ibdndiana isaac. >> caller: hey, how are you

doing, mr. cramer? >> mr. cramer's doing fine how about you? >> caller: all right do you think steel dynamics, stld, is worth a buy >> ilike steel dynamics but i love nucor nucor's been dead right. and that's the one you want to pull the trigger on even tomorrow and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the conclusion of the "lightning round"! >> announcer: the "lightning round" is sponsored by td ameritrade coming up, a key economic indicator is out why isn't cramer buying the number find out next. you ok, man? the internet is telling me a million different ways i should be trading. look! what's up my trade dogs? you should be listening to me. you want to be rich like me? you want to trust me on this one. [inaudible] wow! yeah!

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every now and then you get a big number that's simply not credible that's how i feel about today's cooler than expected cpi reading. to me these percentages either make no sense or are clearly out of date. don't get me wrong, i'm glad to see the consumer price index going down we need to win the fight against inflation. so it's encouraging to see the cpi down .1% month over month in december or up just 6.5% year over year. that's a big deceleration from a few months ago so what's the problem? simple i actually think this number's way too high and inflation's running much lower than it indicates. we know the labor department

gives you two sets of figures, the ones i mentioned and the quarter numbers that exclude food and energy, which rose 4.3% in december. but m you wh you look at the percentages some of them are very hard to swallow labor department says there was a 4.5% decline in energy prices month over no month but natural gas which happens to be the principal way people heat the homes in their country, was down 35%. that's a crash this is something that meaningfully lowers the cost of everyday life. gasoline was down. that headline energy decline should be a lot bigger i question that too based on real data from boots on the ground companies so to speak last night kb homes large national home builder reported and they're seeing dramatic declines in housing prices in some of the hottest regions and ones we're we're most worried about when it comes to inflation. competitors are cutting price business 60, 70 grand. the average price for a kb home

is 500,000 so that's significant. raleigh, north carolina huge enflux of people from the north yet those prices are being reduced by 30 grand. florida the destination of choice for people fleeing high taxes in other states but orlando's prices are coming down by 60 to 70 grand. there's even discounting in southern california's inland empire which had been once again like in 2007 incredibly hot. so if all the hottest housing markets are seeing big price cuts how the heck was the cost of shelter up .8% last month but the craziest item in the cpi report is apparel. up .5% come on, labor department. get digitized. right now we're looking at one of the largest apparel gluts i've ever seen and i come from a retail background with two parents who worked at department stores. you can walk down any of the discounters. tj maxx, burlington, ross stores and see all the most expensive clothes for a fraction of what you pay for them at the major chains why? because the major chains had to

dump this stuff to the discounters in order to make room for new merchandise and let's not forget the miss by macy's last friday where they had discounted -- had to discount apparel, above all think about this 200 million people shop at walmart and there are more than 120 million card holders at costco both places keep prices down below where you can get their merchandise anywhere else. in short, apparel, it's a disaster that the plus .5% increase is so off the mark is laughable. i can go on and on about how wrong these numbers are but what matters is the vast preponderance of the cpi components are way too high vs. what i'm hearing from individual companies that can give us cold hard cash numbers. those real numbers speak for themselves and they're about to be real loud as earnings season gets rolling. long story short, inflation's coming down and coming down hard i just wish jay powell had the real numbers i just gave him

because based on the reality i think it would be crazy for the fwed to hit us with anything more than a 25 basis point rate hike at the next meeting and if we get any progress in wage inflation after that there's honestly no reason for the fed to keep tightening at all. i like to say there's always a bull market somewhere and i promise to try to find it for you right here on "mad money." i'm jim cramer see you tomorrow who's ready to take the plunge? [ screams ] don't be a wimp. you better be selling a lot of them. $4.9 million in sales. -wow. -wow. i'll give you $5 million. -whoa! -whoa! it's a loan-shark deal. you're the walking, talking billboard of how to do it right. but wait, there's more. -oh, there's more. -boom! ♪♪ narrator: first in the tank is a convenient version of a popular cuisine. ♪♪ ♪♪