Lots of people are trying to game the incoming Donald Trump administration, repositioning their portfolios to profit from what seems like a pretty sure thing. After all, how many presidents have said that they grade themselves by the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average ? How many presidents even bother to follow the stock market? I have been close enough to them to tell you that except for Trump the market has meant nothing to any of them. It’s just an abstraction. I remember during Covid times that then-President Trump once called me to apologize. He said he was going to wipe out “Mad Money” because he was going to do a nightly Covid broadcast at the same time. We held in. Then when he pulled the plug on it, he congratulated me for winning the time slot. I mean this guy knows business. He’s always enjoyed bantering about companies even though he is a real estate executive through and through. But let’s be clear: Gaming this president is going to be hard. Figuring out which of my Charitable Trust stocks will benefit the most and which ones could get hurt is a constant work in progress. The Trust portfolio is what we use for the CNBC Investing Club. I want you to understand, though, that a Trump administration is like no other. You may be sitting there watching your portfolio and a tweet will come out — a vicious nasty tweet, maybe it will be on Trump’s own platform Truth Social this time — and it can rock your world. Back in April 2018, Trump ruled then-Twitter — now X and under the ownership of Trump efficiency czar Elon Musk . I was on vacation back then with my wife Lisa in the Bahamas. I was just soaking in some warmth and checked in with Jeff Marks , the director of portfolio analysis for my Trust. Jeff told me that Trump had just tweeted that Amazon was ripping off the Post Office with its recent contract, a contract that had been vetted and agreed to, honorably, by both sides. It was something we had looked at quite closely because Amazon was a longtime favorite and we wanted to be sure we were ironclad. The stock had been trending lower in the days before the tweetstorm — knocking shares from $77 each to $72. The tweets came on Saturday, March 31, and the stock dropped more than 5% to $68 and change that Monday. I told Jeff at the time that I had had it. Trump has nothing on Amazon, which did nothing wrong. No court would allow an arms’ length contract to be annulled because one side did better than then the other — and by the way, it wasn’t even clear that that was the case. I said buy some more Amazon. We did. Then I said buy some more. I was gesticulating wildly poolside, something Lisa thought highly inappropriate. I couldn’t believe Trump was eviscerating one of the best companies in the world, Amazon. It was sinking like a block of cement in the deep end. We bought more. We knew the story. Trump knew the bluster, and he ended up with the “Art of No Deal” because there was nothing he could do about the Amazon contract other than rant and rave — and all the while giving us better Amazon stock prices to buy all the way down. That’s how we got such a fine Amazon basis below $70 for a big slug of what it is now $212 per share, which closed at a record high Wednesday. Trump all along was just bluffing, and when there was no firestorm about it, he just moved on. We moved in. Amazon is currently our third biggest position in the portfolio, with about a 4.5% weighting and an overall cost basis of just over $97 on 750 shares. We had a button back then on my “Mad Money” soundboard. It was labeled “Trump stock” and a professional announcer, the deep-voice guy we used to use all of the time at the network, recorded it. I pushed the button whenever I was sure that a stock could somehow do well under the first Trump administration. There was no “Trump Stock,” “Trump Stock” button pressing for Amazon that day. But it was one of the best buys we have ever made. So, I say get ready for some pretty counterintuitive things — some out of left field, a bitter attack or two on a CEO — and consider buying, not selling the stock of a company Trump may hate at the time. He may have forgotten why he hated it a few days later. Remember, the man can change his mind on a dime. Another example: Yes, Trump did threaten Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder CEO of Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms , with life in prison in his book “Save America,” which was published in September. It’s because Trump thought Zuckerberg plotted against him. But then in a curious interview on a Barstool podcast on Oct. 15, Trump said he likes Zuckerberg much better than he used to. That could be because Zuckerberg’s company stayed out of politics this year — and, more importantly, because Zuckerberg said Trump’s reaction to the attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania was “badass.” You call the president-elect a “badass,” and you do it in a flattering way, and maybe he will pardon you, too, from life imprisonment. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long AMZN, META. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
A trader works at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) next to a U.S. flag, after Republican Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, in New York City, U.S., November 6, 2024.
Andrew Kelly | Reuters
Lots of people are trying to game the incoming Donald Trump administration, repositioning their portfolios to profit from what seems like a pretty sure thing. After all, how many presidents have said that they grade themselves by the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average? How many presidents even bother to follow the stock market? I have been close enough to them to tell you that except for Trump the market has meant nothing to any of them. It’s just an abstraction.
