Cramer: ‘I’m more nervous than I was before’ about coronavirus economic risks after Fed rate cut – CNBC

Thanks! Share it with your friends!

Close

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said the Federal Reserve‘s emergency interest rate cut on Tuesday morning makes him more concerned about the economic risks from the coronavirus.

“It’s great that the Federal Reserve recognizes that there’s going to be weakness, but it makes me feel, wow, the weakness must be much more than I thought,” Cramer said on “Squawk on the Street.”

“I’m now nervous. I’m more nervous than I was before.”

The move helps Wall Street but does little to persuade consumers worried about catching the coronavirus to leave their homes and spend their money, Cramer said.

Stock trading around the Fed’s surprise rate cut of 0.5% saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average swing from down over 350 points to up over 350 points. The Dow then flop-flopped between losses and gains.

The Dow accelerated to the downside, off as much as around 600 points, after Fed Chair Jerome Powell‘s late-morning news conference explaining the reasoning behind the rate cuts.

The rate cut puts the fed funds target between 1%-1.25%. The Fed reduced rates in three 0.25% moves last year.

Hopes for a Fed cut rate sparked a powerful rally Monday. The Dow soared nearly 1,300 points, or 5%, in its biggest percentage gain since March 2009, reclaiming a big chunk of last week’s largest weekly decline since the financial crisis.

The Fed’s emergency cut — the first since December 2008 — comes two weeks before the central bank’s regularly scheduled March monetary policy meeting and after an early Tuesday conference call among G-7 central bankers and finance leaders, which yielded a pledge “to use all appropriate policy tools to achieve strong, sustainable growth and safeguard against downside risks” from the coronavirus outbreak.

Despite the spread of the outbreak, Cramer has in recent days argued that an emphasis on rate cuts is misguided. 

Cramer said rate cuts do not address the core challenges brought by the coronavirus. The outbreak is a “biological crisis,” he said. 

“If you got something that allowed you to get out of the hospital, if we had a vaccine, anything, then you won’t need this rate cut,” Cramer said. “The more important thing is that we need people to be able to stay at work.”

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/03/cramer-is-more-nervous-about-coronavirus-risks-after-fed-rate-cut.html

Comments

Write a comment