sadly is probably the next one to go. >> or not sadly for shareholders. >> yeah, bring it on. >> steve? >> yuuber. good headlines today. >> see you tomorrowfor more "fast money." "mad money" right 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 a special west coast edition of "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 explain. so call me, 1-800-743-cnbc. tweet jimcramer. everybody on wall street loves to be a contrarian. which is why so many commentators keep trying to

minimize the impact of a half-point rate cut. not me. no matter what common sense dictates there are always people who think they know better than common sense, and they don't. there are so few advantages to age, i can tell you. i can no longer jump up and down at a benioff hospital benefit like the one we went to last night to name just one age-related indignity. but by just showing up i knew better than the posers who told us that a 50 basis-point cut was bad news because it was somehow a sign of panic. funny thing, while these critics were polluting your minds as so many tanneries polluted the old do juanis canal to the point it was flammable the stock market exploded today dow gaining 522 points s&p surging 1.7%. nasdaq pole vaulting 2.5%. i've got to tell you, it was a thing of beauty. ♪ hallelujah ♪ the bears initially had their

way with the markets once again distorting a view immediately. immediately after the announcement 2:00 p.m. yesterday they fooled enough people to start blowing out of stocks in a frenzy, especially tech. as if somehow those are the stocks that always get hit on a rate cut? that's just not even true. there are also people who panicked and then there were people who thought that the fed panicked. they're easily swayed by the market's action. and commentator after commentator came on air, our air, everywhere else, and just echoed this negative narrative. who wants to go against the tide and question why sellers are streaming for the exits? they're going to steamroll you. you don't want to be in the way of that. that's really how it happens. that's how the afternoon aftermath of a rate hike, not a cut but a cut. snowballs into an avalanche where people are instantly brainwashed into thinking a 50 basis point easing is somehow bad news. that's what we saw yesterday after 2:00. that analysis was always absurd,

just pure foolishness which is why the market came roaring back today when it had a little breathing room. first, a rate cut is never bad for stocks as long as it's telegraphed. a large rate cut as long as it's communicated to the media in plenty of time in a considered way is acceptable. this time they spent about a week laying the groundwork for a double rate cut before the actual meeting, sharing some thoughts one of the most reputable reporters at the "wall street journal." they made it clear they're doing this because rates are too high versus the declining rate of inflation, not because they're worried about some sudden softening economy and big job losses. we don't have those. see, there was nothing really negative lurking. it's just it was the rate thing for the fed to do. now, that gave money managers some time to reposition before the fed meeting. some did and obviously some didn't. what was the rational reaction when you read we're likely to get a half-point cut and not a quarter-point one? let's go over it. first when you get rate cuts that's official confirmation you are no longer fighting the fed

when you own or buy stocks. the late great marty swai, the best pure keeper of events and the reaction to them in the stock market, always had one really simple piece of don't fight the fed when they're raising rates and turning the liquidity spigot off you've got to be more negative. you just have to be. but when they're cutting rates and pumping more money into the system, look, when it comes to the stock market we're under the reverse biggie smalls dictum. more money, fewer problems. second, when you get a double rate cut, meaning a 50 basis-point monster, that's going to make tens of billions of dollars come into the stock market from the sidelines. the sidelines have been so lucrative for so long that people in money funds have been coveting their dollars. sure there are plenty of folks sitting in cds or treasuries who can't easily cash out but if you're in an easily accessible money fund you can see rates are going lower now, right? which is all the more incentive to put your cash and say i don't know, how about a dividend stock way high yield? got to do it fast because pretty soon the high yielders will rally to the point where they're

just mid yielders. no matter how smart they sound the people who come on television to argue that the fed's actions don't matter because, say, the national debt is too big, here's what those people are being. unhelpful. these people are polemicists. they have nothing to do with helping you make money. it's not important to them. you're not important to them. they're speaking to the billionaire class. they crowded out you a long time ago. remember, we do have all sorts of audiences. the losers are obvious and must be avoided. from the most the journal reported there could be a 50 basis point cut the swatch of what can go higher expanded drama dramatically. 25 points would have been truly beneficial for home builders if they would just build a lot more homes. that's something they're reluctant to do because rates are still too high. but 50 basis points means more mortgages for certain and more affordable homes. it goes beyond the home builders

now. it includes the stocks with powerful trebds that nevertheless have been beaten up. we were at the salesforce extravaganza yesterday. that was all about ai. and ceo marc benioff has a genius plan to help you the individual benefit from au not the enterprises. yet the stock got hit hard. today what happened, people got to their senses. it rallied 13 points. we talked to lisa suh, the ceo of amd here, and she has more business than she can handle. her stock soared more than eight points. jensen huang, ceo of nvidia talked about how hard it is to ration his chips because they can't make them fast enough to meet demand. yet you couldn't give the stock away yesterday. today it roared up 4 1/2 points. although at one point it was up 6. taiwan semiconductor up more than that. they are linked at the hip. apple's iphone 16 was pronounced still-born by some outfit, i don't remember their name, even though it's not officially on sale until the end of the week. that was the best opportunity of all with the stock gaining an astounding $8.

more on apple later. of course you have to let go of your recession resistant stocks. i told you procter won't work anymore, colgate. reject utilities. they'll be poor performers. they had their run. it was real nice. they were terrific bond market equivalents as long as their higher yields lasted. but now wall street no longer has an appetite for stocks that don't take any rix and don't go up a lot then. that was your game plan. i gave it to you several times. it's the backdrop that's worked over the course of my entire career. if you have any doubt about the playbook go back and read the part about a rate cut in confessions of a street addict, my autobiography, when i realized how powerful a rate cut could be. it made me look foolish. it's a fun read, though. the fed's power is immense and with a 50 basis-point cut they rolled out the big guns. if you want to fight that, if you want to listen to people babble about the national debt, that's fine. the business isn't for everyone. but if you're trying to make

money you've got to accept the fact the fed pulled out the bazooka and you can't afford to stand in front of it, you want to be behind it. bottom line, there will be more rate cuts and there will be more rate cuts and even more rate cuts and there will be even more talk about how our country's in trouble. the fed can't do anything and nothing matters and everything must be wrong. but as long as the fed keeps staging its cuts perfectly like they did with this one, then your job is to know when you're snowed and bring a down parka when you're snowed with some noise-canceling airpods. the new ones are supposed to be great. tune out the naysayers and you'll be just fine. because the fed is now your friend. that's all that really matters. hey, i think we should take calls. let's go to rich in new jersey. rich! >> caller: hey, jim, it's rich from belmar, inning nj at the jersey shore hanging out at the bar. how are you? >> i want you to go to dolce vitae and tell nick i said hi and have the meatball. >> absolutely. i was there last week with the veal chop. the best in the city.

>> that is a great veal chop. i wear a bib when i have the veal chop. do you have the white clam sauce? >> absolutely. >> i just want to be sure. now we can go to work. what's up? >> caller: so i've been buying this company's stock for the past three years. it's a diversified company, got a great ceo, been profitable over the past three months -- three quarters. but it's been frustrating. it's a hated stock. shorted. hate the because it's competition. great ceo with anthony noto. what do you think of sofi? >> okay. now the rates are coming down you're going to see it's more of a technology stock but it's going to go higher. and i'm so glad you know how to eat when you're down at the jersey shore. i'm out at long island and the food, forget about it! i like jersey. now, as long as the fed keeps staging its cuts perfectly like they did with this one, then your job is just to tune out the naysayers and you'll be just

fine. on "mad" tonight i'm giving you a data driven set of winners in this tape. don't miss some names. you want to take a pen and paper out. plus exactly two months after i amassive tech outage i'm talking to crowdstrike's ceo from the company's conference to get a sense of where the stock could head and a new ally he might have? and more growth on the table from darden restaurants. i'm eyeing the best performing stock on the s&p 500. so stay with cramer! >> announcer: don't miss a second of "mad money." follow @jimcramer on x. have a question? tweet cramer. hashtag madmentions. send jim an e-mail to madmoney@cnbc.com. 8074cn. us a call at 1-0-3-bc miss something? head to madmoney.cnbc.com.

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finally the market's behaving like you expect when the fed is your friend. and as i told you at the top of the show, believe me, there are few things more friendly than a 50 basis-point rate cut. i told you over and over again that there are discrete phases in the business cycle when the fizz is your enemy when it's raising rates you want to stick with recessionproof stocks, stocks in companies that can produce consistent earnings even in a slopedown. then once the fed's done tightening and we start seeing signs of impending rate cuts you need to load up on the cyclicals the companies that can see massive earnings growth when the economy accelerates. but what works best once the rate cuts already started? yesterday the cnbc pro team ran an analysis of which stocks in the s&p 500 tend to perform best over the three months after the fed starts easing. i like this piece. going back to 1994 they identified ten stocks with the highest median performance after the first rate cut and in this

really surprising list get this, western digital, ram research, united health group, apple, kroger, text run, franklin resources, amgen and target. surprising amount of tech in there too. surprising amount of health care. let's go through them one by one because i think it's important to learn from history, whether or not that history ends up being repeated or not. first western dig is up over 20% on average in the three months following the first rate cut. this maker of hard drives and solid state drives basically storage for your phone or pc has historically been sadly a giant value trap. just a trap. we're seeing an uptick in demand for storage as part of the ai data center theme. but if you want to bet on that why don't you go with the down and out micron? its much better operators pulled back dramatically. a lot of people have written it off. second lamb research is a capital equipment maker. right now being suppressed by a lack of chinese orders not to mention intel slowing its european manufacturing plans in order to preserve its balance sheet. wise. if not for those issues i think it would be a great buy right

now but given that the industry's got problems i say let it come in even more but lam is the best in the group. third united health. unusual rate cut winner. in theory it should be more of slydown stock. but empirically it's done well when fed starts cutting rates. unh, i wouldn't recommend buying it right here unless you think the fed's desperately cutting rates because the economy's falling apart then you buy unh i don't see that happening. fourth is expeditors international. it's a poor man's fedex and will trade off, fedex tonight is tum nlk after hours trading after reporting kind of a bad miss and cutting its full-year forecast. bummer. right now ocean freight rates are high. yemen keeps disrupting shipping in the red sea. but if we ever get some stability in the middle east, that goes away, maybe i can make a case for expeditors. hard to recommend, though. fifth, cramer fave apple. i always say own it don't trade it and i'm extra adamant about that position after what we heard from t-mobile's mike seaver yesterday. contrary to what the bears have

been telling you he says sales of the new iphone are going just great. i want you to listen to what he told me last night. >> this is another year of great phone introductions -- >> you're telling me the first week's been good for you? >> the first week was better than last year. not only good but better than last year. and people are buying pros. they're buying maxs. so they're buying up the food chain. and they're buying at a greater rate than last year. now, what's interesting is we may actually see this is better than last year to a slightly greater extent because i have a feeling this cycle will be lengthened a little. >> i love truth. truth's good. now i'll have more on apple later. this is our number one name despite endless sources trying to shake you out of this one. this is still a technological marvel for heaven's sake. 6 there's kroger. i've been amazed at their ability to run a tight ship even while fighting with the ftc to get the albertsons merger done. they report aid good quarter but with the albertsons deal languishing that puts a lid on

the stock. seventh best performer when the fed starts easing, textron. they've got business jets, cessna. i think it could work now the fed's cutting rates. but keep in mind textron will get clobbered if the economy's in worse shape than we think. number'll is franklin templeton, an asset management story but one of its subsidiaries being investigated by both the s.e.c. and the justice department. suboptimal. last month its long-time chief investment officer who managed some of the largest bond funds in america took a leave of absence after getting hit with a wells notice from the s.e.c. in the end it's rarely a good idea to own stock in a company that's under investigation. especially when the justice department's involved too. i don't think you can touch this one. i think this is what the kids mean when they say that the vibe is off. something that doesn't really feel right. to me vibe off means i've got it on the ringer. 9 there's amgen which could be good this time but i hesitate to recommend a drug stock right before a presidential election. democrats are tough on drug prices and neither candidate loves this industry.

at this point just go for a big dividend, a little more enticing as rates come down. finally there's target. this one makes a ton of sense to me. of course target wins when the fed starts easing. on top of that it's got a terrific turnaround story. company just reported its first positive same-store sales growth since 2022 driven by higher traffic. not higher prices. thank you, brian cornel. i think target's doing a lot of things right, controlling costs, growing margins, stopping theft and cutting prices to bring back customers. on top of that they're taking share of the digital side. when it comes to retail i think there's room for target along with amazon, walmart and costco with all my other favorites. plus 3% yield. here's the bottom line. now that the fed started cutting rates with a bang you need to think about what kind of stocks will work best in what i consider to be a new regime. our friends at cnbc pro got you started with the ten stocks that have done best during the first three months after a rate cut going back to '84, but when you go through their current circumstances the only ones i can fully endorse are apple,

target and textron in that order. i feel in a call mood. let's talk to lane in new york. lane. >> caller: hey, the doctor of cramology, jimmy baby, what's going on? >> not much. what's shaking with you, partner? >> caller: let me throw something at you. i was talking to one of my buddies. i'm a mailman. >> okay. >> caller: i have the ups stock. so by what i hear, that is an up and down stock. so they just landed a huge contract by the usps to deliver all the mail. is that a good low stock or should i, he even though with that happening, should i go to fedex? >> here's the problem. fedex reported numbers that are weaker today. we've got to see how ups acts off that. ups has been holding well. it's got a 5% yield. i think that's what's really going for it. pay 5% while you wait for a turnaround. but we don't have a turnaround in sight. let's see what fedex has to say.

we'll know more then. let's go to richard in michigan. richard! >> richard! >> caller: that's nice, yeah. richard from michigan. hope you have a great time in san francisco, mr. cramer. >> i love it here. frankly it's like -- it's sensational. i just love it. what's going on? >> caller: i've been there before. love it. i'm a charter member in the investing club. >> thank you. >> caller: i'm at an age where i'm trying to reduce volatility and add some diversification in my portfolio. i have a stock that i've never been in the industry before, has a p/e of 10 -- forward p/e of 10.6. with the half-point reduction in fed funds and mortgage rates trending lower, what's your feeling about a trade-up stock like toll brothers? >> okay, look, i like toll and everybody knows i like toll. interviewed doug yearly not that long go, a week ago.

lennar reported tonight and people don't like lennar. toll will probably be down. we'll look at how low it goes. i do like toll more than lennar. now that the fed's started this cutting cycle i think apple, target and textron, txt, are the toks that will benefit the most. i can't believe i just said something good about textron. it's been a decade. but i have to endorse it. much more "mad money" ahead from san francisco. darden restaurants popped over 8% today after earnings. i'm digging apart a new collaboration to see what's cooking there. their steak place has great bloody marys. and -- unsolicited but still good advice. t-mobile's top brass varevealed the sales he's been seeing for the new iphone 16 models. we've got to take an even closer look at what people do to try to get you out of apple's stock. i don't think they like you. but first don't miss my exclusive with the ceo of crowdstrike who's now buddying with microsoft. anything can happen. so stay with cramer.

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without further ado i have my special guest which i will announce here, which i know many of you will -- would think would be impossible two months ago. but it's a great pleasure to introduce satya nadella from microsoft, who is joining us. >> you just did see something amazing. that satya nadella from microsoft speaking at a

crowdstrike fal.con conference with george curts. he's crowdstrike's ceo. these two execs have at times been pretty much at odds, but it doesn't seem like that now. in fact, i thought this was kind of a wowsa moment. the stock's been on a roll since that terrible outage july 19th across the stock. it's rallied 38% from its low of 200 and change in early august to $277 today. you know i said the bottom was 230. that's still down more than 100 from where it was pre-wowsa. i'm a big believer in this one. but don't take it from me. let's speak to the man himself george curts the co-founder and ceo of crowdstrike to get a better read on the situation. mr. curts welcome back to "mad money." >> great to be with you jim. >> george-i think you're one of the people you address whud introduced mr. nadella. i'm one who's incredulous, didn't think this could happen. how did you two get to the point where you actually appeared at your conference? >> well, jim, you have to step back. july 19th happens and really what happened is two companies came together and put customers

and security first. and security is bigger than any two companies in the industry but i think it really reinforced what customers want, and that is collaboration at the highest levels to make sure that customers are protected, customers are resilient. and we worked very closely in the early hours and weeks post that incident. and it really demonstrated the collaboration that needs to take place in security. i think what you've seen is two companies coming together to make the industry more resilient and better for customers. and satya and microsoft were gracious enough to talk at our conference. and i've got to tell you, it was a hit by all our customers. >> i just want to drill down a little bit on this because i happen to have done a lot of work on this and some of it at the suggestion of you about some of the shortcomings that microsoft has. i even had someone on from microsoft to say look, jim, maybe you aren't seeing the full picture. but george, you have been a critic and you have pointed me to even congressional testimony that would indicate that perhaps microsoft has not done the best

job when it comes to cybersecurity. >> well, as i said, jim, in this particular case we've come together because it was for the betterment of customers. and if you think about their ecosystem, it's an open ecosystem that needs companies like crowdstrike and others to be able to keep companies secure and resilient. and i think that's what you've seen, is a new page turned and the collaboration i think is good for customers. we're still going to compete in the marketplace. but ultimately we're working towards making better products for customers to help protect them. >> that makes a ton of sense to me and it's great to see you guys work together because nobody wants what happened in july to happen again. now, i did see some numbers from your conference that were pretty definitive. 98% gross retention. things that happened after that day, usually start with tough conversations but then go to we love crowdstrike.

you continue to make it so people who you would have thought might have gone elsewhere are actually doing more business with you than before the incident. >> that's right, jim. if you look at this conference, we've got 6,000 crowdstrike protectors. those are our customers. we call them protectors. we've got over 2,300 organizations represented. we've got over 100 partners. and we all came together and there was a lot of excitement. and the meetings took place. the electricity, the learning. and it was a very common theme. we thanked customers and they thanked us. they thanked us for all the times we were there for them, that we helped save them and helped stop the breach. i had many customers come up to us and say the transparchsy, the accountability, what you did in the early hours, the team we put in place across the globe to make sure customers were up and running was unparalleled. and customers remember that. they remember that in a time of partnership and in tough times and in good times. and i think that's going to serve us really well. >> i know you're a person not

necessarily -- you don't use a lot of sleep. and we know that even from your off -- well, actually, on-road activities. but i do want to say when you say that you literally met and touched thousands of customers, you really did touch thousands of customers personally, didn't you? >> i did. it was nonstop. like many folks were working around the clock and we touched customers on zoom, we met with large isac organizations, these are these industry sector groups. and literally hit thousands of customers. i'm heading back on the road in person to meet a whole bunch coming up in the next couple of weeks. it really is about meeting the customer, explaining what happened. obviously making sure it doesn't happen again. talking through the changes that we've made and really focusing on moving forward. and that's what customers have told us. they want to move forward. they love our technology. in fact, i had several customers, several tell me they will only work in an organization that has crowdstrike technology. that gives you an idea of the loyalty that we've been able to

generate with customers over the past ten years. >> you've told me that the bad guys are very clever. they seem to be targeting actual companies that do cybersecurity. i'm pulling up with opta, a really fine firm that i've known since basically they started, tomorrow. i think they do a good job. they were hit. fortinet's a company i've had on so many times. they've been hit. is this the new thing, to go after the sheriffs? >> the security industry's always been under attack. it's been under attack for the last 30 years. that's not going to change. i think when you look at the landscape, it really underscores how determined these adversaries are. and one of the areas, and you and i have talked about this for a long time, is identity-based attacks of social engineering pieces. you've got a lot of technology in place but you see users trying to be helpful but just giving out their credentials and having these sort of breaches, which is one of the reasons why our identity protection solution has done so well in the market because it can identify these

identity-based attacks and prevent those sort of attacks from taking place and prevent lateral movement and data theft. again, just one piece of the falcon platform and one of the really strong emerging businesses i continue to talk about. >> let's talk about identity-based. there are a bunch of companies that tell me they're best at identity-based. i find it hard to figure out who's the best, and i kind of default and say maybe what i just want is a soup to nuts. i just want one company that handles both. is that a better r.o.i., so to speak, or do you say to people, listen, maybe you should use somebody else for identity and use this and we'll handle other aspects? what is the selling proposition? >> well, the selling proposition for crowdstrike really is consolidation on our platform in the areas that we focus on. and i think what's important is realize is not one security company can do it all. it's a very complex area, and there's lots of technologies to secure, and the technology curve continues to get complex over time dramatically.

so from my standpoint we focus on really what we're good at, end point protection, data ingestion, and then the falcon platform has really allowed us to solve many more use cases beyond just end point protection. things like next generation sim, cloud security identity. those are the areas, we want to be the best in those areas and then we want to partner with others that take care of their own domain. and i think that's what's important. customers want best of platform and they want to put the best of platform together and have security outcomes of stopping breaches lower in cost and driving complexity out of the organizations. >> i don't want to necessarily call what you and satya did a detente, but is it possible that there are holes in microsoft's cybersecurity work that you can fill and perhaps they see some things that george cukurtz coul learn about crowdstrike making so you offer together the best product for customers? >> well, ultimately it's an ecosystem, we have to work together. we're protecting a big part of our base is protecting windows

and they're providing the ecosystem. really it's in everyone's best interests to continue to work together, and we spent some time, i actually went to redmond. there was a full one-day workshop with not only myself but other security companies around the globe, and we talked to microsoft about what we need as security companies to build safer and more resilient and better technology. and they've committed to keeping the ecosystem and the kernel open as well as being able to provide an abstraction layer that allows all the security companies to be able to operate and do what we do. so it's very encouragiencouragi. and as i said it's turning a new page. we're still going to compete in the marketplace, which is fine. but the collaboration i think really makes it good for our joint customers. >> all right. one last thing. when i think about how you have a $10 billion a.r.r., very big, very bold target, i think it's maybe because you're resilient by design and your customers know that crowdstrike is

resilient by design. how do you feel about that as being maybe the hallmark of what you offer? >> that's right. res yilient by design is stoppi breaches and making sure we can drive cost and complexity out of the organizations and do it in a way that enables them to be resilient in their own business. and one of the things i talked about in my keynote at in event was resilient by design. right? having that as the foundational element within what we do at crowdstrike but also enabling our customers to make it foundational to their own business. and make it adaptable. you have to adapt and understand the industries they're in and you have to create software and protections to protect them specifically in their industries and allow them to operate in a resilient fashion. and the last piece is continuous. and that's continuously learning not only about the attacks but continuously learning and strengthening the collective system to provide resiliency across the entire ecosystem and for all of our customers. >> well, george, i think one day

we'll look back, probably in just a couple years, and you'll replace a lot of the use cases you read in business school about what you do in a crisis. because i think when you do in a crisis is you get out there and meet everyone that is humanly possible. don't hide. don't get down into the bunker. too many go into the bunker. george kurtz is not a bunker guy. george, co-founder, president and ceo of crowdstrike, thanks for coming on "mad money." >> thank you, jim. >> absolutely. "mad money's" back after the break. >> announcer: coming up, your table is ready. cramer orders up an overview of darden restaurants. next. (office chatter) is it me...or is work not working? at least, not the way it could work. your people are buried in busy work. and you might be thinking... can ai make it all work?

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you know what was the best performing stock in the s&p 500 today? darden restaurants.

the parent company of olive garden, longhorn steakhouse, and capital grill. ruth chris steakhouse, yardhouse and a couple other restaurant chains. the stock jumped 8% after the company reported this orning. you know what's really crazy about it? the earnings weren't even that good. i winced when i saw the numbers cross the wire this morning. darden's same store sales were down 1.1% wall street was looking for a smaller .3% decline. olive garden which is nearly half the company saw same-store sales down 2.9%. that's a whole percentage point worse than expected. eddie v's. they had same-store sales down 6%. their smaller concepts were down 1.8% also much worse than expected. only longhorn steakhouse surprised to the up side. but even that was only up by 60 basis points. darden's overall sales came in a little weaker than expected too up 1% mainly because they added 42 new restaurants. the company did put up some solid marnlins but their earnings per share still came in 8 cents softer than anticipated offer a $1.83 basis. this was a true top and bottom

line miss. wall street's initial gut reaction was similar to mine, darden sold off. from 159 to 153 in premarket trading. but then the stock quickly came roaring back, ultimately finishing the day up $13. how the heck did that happen? first even though the quarter itself was not so hot darden stood behind its full year forecast for the 2025 fiscal year. that was pretty robust assuming they can hit those numbers. management believes they can make up for this miss in the remaining nine months of the fiscal year. that's very bullish. second on the conference call darden handled things incredibly well. management didn't shy away from the facts the results were disappointing. they also sounded confident they know what they need to do in order to hit their targets. third, with every quarter darden gives a forward-looking outlook for its commodity cost and that outlook looks slightly better than three months ago. darden projecting less inflation for beef, dairy, oil, produce,

which happened to be their three biggest expenses. beef alone makes up a quarter of their commodity spending and darden's only expected to spend low single digit beef inflation. that's down from mid single digit last quarter. the only quarter that's getting worse is seafood but even there they're expecting zero seafood inflation the next six months. basically the future looks better for darden for the same reason the fed cut rates yesterday. we've done really well against inflation. we've whipped it into shape. fourth darden has some new delivery partnerships with uber eats. this is what got most of the headlines. darden's been wanting to get into delivery, especially with third party services. they were worried about disrupting experience for both customers and employees. but after what seems like a very thoughtful negotiation process with uber eats they decided to take the plunge. which is clearly a good idea. especially because as you and i may know the lines at the restaurants are just way too long. this new partnership with uber eats will ramp slowly at first. darden plans to roll it out first at only a few o.g. locations this quarter, assuming the pilot program works they'll

do a phased rollout to all olive garden locations that currently offer curbside takeout. that should happen by next may. that's a nice innovation for what happened with covid if there's anything good that happened with covid. it's going tyke a few quarters but it's definitely positive. it reminds me of when domino's pizza finally decided to stop going it alone and partnered with uber a little more than a year ago. since then it's up thanks took sell raitting revenue growth although who can say what's thanks uber. even though the quarter itself was bad what we called the cadence was good meaning things got better from month to month to month. june was fine, then july was real bad but then things rebounded in august and management added the same-store sales have been even boater in september. meaning the current quarter's going real well. i can't say darden's rally today was all about its cadence commentary or even mostly about it because the conference call only started at:30 a.m. and the stock was already up substantially at that point. but i do think that cadence is the most important part of the story because it cuts against the idea of a weaker consumer.

what if the consumer's actually holding up okay and july was just a weirdly bad month? amazon pretty good company on -- well, i think so. and knows a lot about consumer behavior. noted they had some softer sales results in july. they blamed the first assassination attempt on former president trump and the olympics distracted people from shopping. if that's true for amazon, hey, might it be true for darden? maybe all the hand wringing about a tapped out consumer turned out to be a tad excessive. obviously there are real pockets of inweakness out there especially among low income customers but there's a strong possibility these worries got exaggerated somewhere along the way over the past couple months lake jay powell told us yesterday the economy and labor market are solid. no wonder we got a healthy retail sales number earlier this week up .1% month over month when wall street was looking for a .2% decline. the retail portion of earnings season last month went generally better than expected at the margins. gasoline prices have come down about 28% from their april highs. that helps a lot too. all this is before the fed cut

rate by 50 basis points yesterday. with the strong likelihood frankly of several more rate cuts to come. lower rates will eventually breathe new life into the consumer. which brings me to the bottom line. if the worries about the consumer are truly overblown, then there are many stocks that are worth owning here. stocks like darden restaurant. today darden reported a weak quarter but still led the market higher. some of the company specifics like the uber eats deal, some of it's more general like a better commodity inflation environment or the cadence of the quarter that lines up with what we heard from amazon july was bad but things bounced right back in august. i think we can take our cue from dard tenself here. and that's great for a whole host of retailers and restaurants with stocks that stagnated over the past year as the fed kept things tight and confidence ebbed and ebbed and then ebbed some more. "mad money" is back after the break. >> announcer: coming up, lightning doesn't just strike twice in cramerica.

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it is time! it's time for the "lightning round" on cramer's "mad money." say the name of the stock i say buy buy buy, sell sell sell. my staff prepares the graphics on the fly. play until you hear this sound. and then the "lightning round" is over. are you ready, skee-daddy? time for the "lightning round" on cramer's "mad money." start with suzanne in

pennsylvania. >> caller: greetings from p.a., jim. my husband and i are club members. we love your show. >> oh, thank you so much. thank you. >> caller: you're so welcome. calling because we own viking and on september 9th they announced the launch of the secondary public offering. can you explain this and if it means i should buy, sell or hold viking? >> look, you want to buy viking. we're not going to care about the day to day of what stock is being offered, what matters, this is a really fine company and it will do well for multiple years because they have many ships coming in. buy viking. let's go to rick in indiana. rick. >> caller: boo-yah, jim. first-time caller, long-time listener. club member. >> excellent. thank you very much. >> caller: my question is on gen-tech. >> gen tex is too closely related to autos and autos have been hurt so bad and i don't see a quick turn.

we'll need several fed rate cuts before they turn. i'm sorry. let's go to will in north carolina. will. >> caller: boo-yah, jim! >> boo-yah, will. >> caller: jacksonville-based cadre holdings. >> you know, it's a good simple story. i like safety. i like survivability. there's always room for it. i think it's a good story. let's go to robert in massachusetts. robert. >> caller: boo-yah, jim. long-time listener, first-time caller. question is on celh. >> something's wrong with celsius. this stock was at 99 and now it's at 34 and we have not heard word from john fieldly other than everything's great. that's no longer tolerable for me. i want to know what's wrong. not what is great. and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the conclusion of the "lightning round"! >> announcer: the "lightning round" is sponsored by charles schwab. coming up, get to the golden

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it seems that every time apple comes out with a new phone it plays out the same way. and this time was no different. we got some stories over the weekend that iphone 16 presales were weak before this one was ever available we were told it just didn't have the pizzazz, it was another bust, a no growth phone that would force apple to admit it's become a no-growth company. i was suspicious. i was out there right here next to apple's headquarters when the weekend bomb dropped. still, there's never anything -- there's no way to refute these

negative stories in the moment because apple's notorious for not revealing how sales are going until it's certain. who can blame them? i mean, their job is to make unbelievably good products, right? not temporarily protect their stock from the ever-circling jackals who always seem to want to bring it down. when i came in that morning i saw apple's stock was off three points. it was the middle of the night. so i was going to go to x, formerly twitter and write who someone who has a story about how apple's only sold a select few phones. but i didn't have any ammo to stop it. so my "squawk on the street" colleague david faber asked me about the report i defaulted. i said this is the perfect use case for what i tell the cnbc investing club that they should own apple not trade it. i said this kind of story, it just keeps happening. and it's an anticipated stampede out of the stock will occur. simply because it can't be prevented. but if people could just wait, hey, maybe wait to hear mike seifert, the ceo of t-mobile, because he's got better insight

into iphone sales than anybody, and we'd get that later in the week. i explained that even though i didn't think the negative story was made up, i don't, and it wasn't malicious, there's always someone with a small piece of the preorder puzzle that can't resist blabbing about how they have the real story. they just had to make their splash even if it misled people, even if it misled you. sure enough when i sat down with mike after the analyst day yesterday and asked him point blank whether iphone 16 presales were weak laughed. he said it was the opposite. he said they were strong, maybe even stronger nan last -- no, definitely stronger than last year was the way he put it. and it was a terrific back to school holiday for him. i mean, incredible. i told him about the story of the new phone being dead on arrival. and he was incredulous that anyone could draw that conclusion. be again, t-mobile would know. they subsidize these phones heavily in order to take share from at&t and verizon. if anything he was surprised at how well they were selling. i shook my head. how about all these people who dumped apple on monday morning? $213, down almost nine points from where it was trading before the weekend hit job.

but there are no do-overs in this business. those people are out of the stock. and here it is back up to $229. they lost out on 15 points because they gave up on apple because of some silly story over the weekend. the answer frankly them's the breaks in the game, unless you believe in apple, unless you trust the company to put out a product you'd want you shouldn't even own the stock in the first place. but if you believe in it enough to own it, then just do that. don't try to trade in and out on every data point including the wrong ones. one last thing. seivert made one other point. he suggested this might be a very elongated successful iphone launch because some will wait for the ai features that still aren't out yet before they buy. he said it's going to be a big one. who do you trust? some part supplier, some survey taker, some pontificator? or perhaps the man who may control the single most iphone orders in america. simple. when in doubt, go with the

reputable. skip the anecdotal. and when it comes to apple, it's almost never right to put too much weight on the minor data points. i like to say there's always a bull market somewhere. i promise to find it for you right here on "mad money." i'm jim cramer. see you tomorrow from san francisco. mark rowan has sent the stock market to new heights. >> it is where excess return comes from and for us, we are very focused. >> the $700 billion firm is a champion of the private markets, but rowan says they're just getting desired and america's retirees are poised to be the beneficiaries. >> there's a massive white space for retirement service