Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 10/26/26

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1:17Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Kramerica. Other people make friends. I'm just trying to make you a little bit of money. My job is not just to entertain, but to teach you. So call me at 1-800-743-CNBC. Tweet me at Jim Kramer. Close viewers of this show know that I think comparisons to the year 2000 are both odious and fatuous. This time around, the companies are real. They tend to make big money. We trusted them before this moment. We're going to trust them after. We know that the artificial intelligence story is real and could be bountiful for many companies one day. And today the Dow rose 146 points.

1:56Yes, we jumped 0.7 percent. And the Nasdaq scored 0.83 percent as money came back to the trade they believe in, the muddled AI trade. And why not? You don't offer buyouts to 60 ,000 people at Microsoft, which reports Wednesday, if AI didn't work. You couldn't cut hiring to a minimum and steadily trim employees each year like they're doing at Wells Fargo without AI. No wonder writers and artists feel threatened. And I say that they can never take away the great ones, like the dazzling one you will hear about later in the show. But the mediocre, that's like rock, paper, scissors. They are the paper.

2:29And it's the AI scissors that comes up at every turn. It's just that powerful. It seems to grow stronger every day, doesn't it? There will be self-driving cars everywhere. There will be bartenders who can serve eight drinks at a time. There will be robots who do everything you don't want to do and don't need to go home at the ends of their shifts. Maybe I'll never have to do another hospital corner again. Maybe the dishes will fit better than the dishwasher. If I spill the coffee grounds, I'll be cleaned up before my wife even wakes up and I don't have to do a thing. And that line of truckers on the side of the highway near the diesel gasoline stop, they're resting because they can only go so many hours a day.

3:05The limit for autonomous tractor trailer? Yeah. Now go back to 2000. There were 330 companies that came public in a fine period, and then they went belly up. Most of them were never replicated because they were never needed. Amazon made it, so did booking at that point known as Priceline and Acomon. But that's not really a good hit ratio, is it? What happened? Why did it end? Simple. We ran out of money.

3:32We didn't have enough money to fund all those IPOs and the secondary offerings that followed. Investors first ran out of most of their cash, then borrowed money, went on margin, and the stocks collapsed. They collapsed with them. Most never came back. It was the end of the greatest bull market of all time. Too much supply, not enough demand. That's what killed it. Today, Anthropics dropped its S1. The registration statement that contains its IPO perspectives. It was incredibly exciting. They got amazing growth. They have even turned profitable in the first half of the year on an adjustment basis.

4:04I know if Doreenia thought I want a piece of it, just like I want a piece of SpaceX, as CNBC Investing Club members know. Both these companies are changing the world and could make fortunes if everything goes right. They could be the next Amazon. If Anthropic raises the money it needs, perhaps as much as 75 or 100 billion dollars in a deal that would value the company at 1.5 to 2 trillion dollars, maybe they will be. There's only one problem. We have an Amazon already, and Amazon has raised nearly 100 billion dollars in the bomb market so far this year to keep up with the A.I. Joneses. All I can say is at least it wasn't equity.

4:37That's not the case with Meta, which announced today that it will be raising up to 95 billion dollars in stock market. $35 billion now, another$60 billion next year. Once Meta's new Class C shares start trading. Alphabet raised$85 billion in two-part offering announced in June. SpaceX raised$75 billion with its June IPO. And SK Hynix raised over$26 billion with its U.S. listing in July. Intel raised$20 billion in a secondary offering. Oracle sold$20 billion in stock this year. Those are just the most visible. There's been a gigantic flood. There's a fire hose of money coming into the stock market, and so much raised the bond market due.

5:10The amount of money needed to build the data center, fill it chiefly with expensive NVIDIA chips, and hook it up to your own power supply is outrageous. Jason Wong said last week, CEO of NVIDIA, that each gigawatt data center costs$50 billion to build. Elon Musk said on the SpaceX earnings call that he plans to add 10 gigawatts next year. You do the math on that one. I think both the debt and the equity markets are running out of money. I think they're sated. There are plenty of other companies like the neoclouds that may not be able to get enough money. As Musk said on X yesterday, quote, that means the 200 plus neoclouds are going to see guppy level death in consolidation.

5:48Some will make it through, but not many, end quote. That's what I fear is going to happen most. If the big dogs are raising all this money, what happens to a core where you have some publicly traded debt that now yields 15 percent? How about a Nibis or an IREN who trade? They trade like mad. You can see those stocks. And they actually had a pretty good day. What happens if OpenAI decides it has to push forward with its IPO because it can't wait until everyone is out of money? I think we are nearly out of money now. What happens when the Fed keeps raising rates and money becomes even more expensive?

6:17Doesn't that bring even more companies to the stock piggyback? That's what I'm afraid is going to happen. Now, it's not just a feel. According to Renaissance Capital, we have raised over$148 billion in IPO proceeds so far this year. Much of that comes from just two deals, SpaceX and SESQH. But that number doesn't include secondary offerings from the likes of Alphabet, Meta and Oracle, nor does it include the hundreds of billions of dollars in bond offerings we've seen. The last bear market, 2022, came after we reached$142 billion in IPO proceeds the previous year. I've always contended that the stock market, driven by supply and demand, goes higher when there's not much supply and there's stocks being taken out.

6:52And it goes lower when there's an endless amount of new supply. But no buybacks to speak of in a shoot of new deals right behind it. That's now. That's where we are. Can we sustain more deals? There's still a lot of enthusiasm for tech stocks on the rebounds we saw today. But a combination of too much enthusiasm, like we saw with the blow up of the heavily indebted situational awareness fund this summer, coupled with aggressive margin buying for a handful of semiconductor stocks, shows you what can happen when too much debt is taken down. I'm not calling a top. I'm not calling a top. I'm just saying that I don't like what I see.

7:24We need more stock coming out of the market via takeovers or buybacks or money coming in from the sidelines. But with that darn 10-year, almost a 5%, that could be better than stocks for a lot of people, for certain. So here's the bottom line. Politics can weaken the bull. Higher rates can choke it. But if you want to slay the darn thing, use the IPO lance and stab it again and again and again. It just gets weaker and weaker until it is weak enough to be slaughtered with the ease of a bad quarter like those potentially coming up this week. a rate hike, and then a run on the margin bank. Let's go to Harmon in California.

8:03Harmon. Hey, Jim. How are you? I'm good, Harmon. How are you doing? Yeah, thank you so much. I'm good, Jim. So a quick question regarding Moderna and Marani. We have earnings coming November 6th. I just wanted to figure out if it was a buy or sell. You know, there's such high hopes for Moderna. By the way, I like Moderna. I think it's a terrific company. But the stock shut up so much that I really have to feel that, you know, It's starting to come back down. The drug stocks were coming back down. J &J had some really good news, and the stock was barely up. So I want to see what happens. Let this stock come in.

8:35It had a parabolic move. We don't buy parabolic moves on mad money. Let's go to Vincat in Arkansas. Vincat. Hey, Jim. Thank you for taking the call. We're all thinking of you and your family regarding Cliff. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you. How can I help you? The stock I have today is down over 40 % from its size, despite some stellar 2030 targets. Are you buying this massive tech pullback in applied materials? Okay. Look, AMAN is an incredible company. What we're dealing with now is what I call multiple contraction, and that's because rates go up. People don't think that applied materials can maintain its momentum.

9:18I say the stock is at 739. It's now down to 387. If I had to buy 100 shares of applied materials, I'd buy 25 here at 387 and then wait until it completes that stupid head and shoulders pattern and then buy 25 more. And then after that, if it goes to the 200s, complete your buy with 50 more. And thank you. Thank you for your time, words. All right, supply is the thing that can slaughter the bull. The more IPOs we get, the more likely it is that one piece of bad news can destroy the market. On Mad Money Tonight, healthcare equipment maker Thermo Fisher just reported a beat and raised quarter. Yes!

9:54So can this company keep running? I'm going to talk to the CEO to find out. Then the new and improved BlackBerry BB just announced a major milestone in its turnaround. How's the company position now? Is it the same old BB or something new? And concerns about cybersecurity and AI have shaken investors, including this guy. I'm getting the latest from the CEO of CrowdStrike, a huge CBC investing club holding as these theoretical worries are beginning to be very real. So stay with Kramer.

10:29Don't miss a second of Mad Money. Follow at Jim Kramer on X. Have a question? Tweet Kramer. Hashtag Mad Mentions. Send Jim an email to madmoneyatcnbc.com or give us a call at 1-800-743-CNBC. Miss something? Head to madmoney.cnbc.com. With the Discovered Cashback Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5 % cash back at different categories each quarter on up to$1 ,500 in purchases. That's 5 % cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com slash five for details.

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11:55That's because CDW is building modern workplaces with Acer devices. Built-in security, uncompromising processing power, and fast connectivity help fuel collaboration so your team can innovate quickly. Wait, guys, that's a great idea. Acer and CDW make amazing happen. Learn more at cdw.com slash Acer.

12:24Lately, we've seen some fantastic runs from the group of stocks that we call the arm dealers to the life sciences industry. It's like Agilent Waters. and our next guest, Thermo Fisher Scientific, all mounting major rallies since the spring. Last week, Thermo Fisher delivered a beat and raise earnings report with accelerating organic growth, stronger demand from pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Shares are seriously rallying the results, so they've given us back some of those gains. But this is a great opportunity, I think. Does this stock have more room to run? Let's take a closer look at the quarter with Mark Kasper, the chairman and CEO of Thermo Fisher.

12:58Mr. Kasper, welcome back to Bad Money. Jim, thanks so much for having me today. All right. So, Mark, tell me, this was a true breakout. When you get accelerated growth to go to 6 percent, and that's well above expectations, that tells me that a lot of things that you've been working on came together, fruition, this quarter, correct? Yeah, Jim. So when I think about the third quarter, the colleagues around the world just did a fantastic job. You know, we executed well on the top line with 6 percent organic growth, as you said. You know, excellent earnings growth with 15 percent growth in our adjusted EPS.

13:34We were able to raise our outlook for the year on the top line, the bottom line in cash flow and really in a very strong position as we're finishing out the year. OK, so laboratory products, biopharma services grew 10 percent organically. Now, I figured one day this thing could go to six, seven percent. What's driving laboratory products and biopharma services? Is that contract research? Yeah, so when you think about our capabilities here, you've heard me in the past talk about being the trusted partner to pharmaceutical and biotech. And that's everything from supplying their laboratories for their research efforts through our Fisher Scientific Channel, through the development of medicines, through our contract development capabilities, all the way through designing a clinical study through the execution.

14:20So our CRO, our CDMO, and our lab supplies makes up that segment. Pharmaceutical and biotech customer base is very healthy. You're seeing strong growth in funding there, and we're benefiting very significantly. And we actually believe we're just getting started in terms of the outlook. I agree with you. I mean, I was looking at the number of IPOs we've had in biotech versus last year. They are extraordinary. I'm always fearful that they'll get the money and not do anything. It sounds like they're getting the money and having the good horse sense to start doing things. And you can't do them without Thermo Fisher Scientific.

14:55Yeah, I agree. So what you're seeing is our clinical research business has benefited because if you're an early stage biotech, you really need to get something into the clinic and hit the milestones. And we're seeing great demand. But it's becoming more broad based because what you're seeing our customers in biotech doing is investing again in the research part of the business to build those pipelines. and our Fisher Scientific Lab supplies business doing incredibly well. So it's a very exciting time, and it's in the nice part of the recovery for the sector. You know, I've been watching this FDA, and I know there were a lot of critical comments initially, but these days things have settled down, and I see them actually saying, you know what, we need some of these drugs.

15:34We've got to give them a try. We turn too many things down. We make things too difficult. Have you noticed that the FDA is really trying to get the research firms to do more, applied and really get things going? Yeah, the other thing that we're seeing is a real desire to learn about how can we do things more quickly, right? Because patients are out there waiting for medicines, and the FDA is saying we're not going to compromise safety, which is a great thing, but if there are better ways to develop a medicine, we want to understand it as a regulator, and where it's appropriate, they want to adapt to the technologies that exist today.

16:10Now, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS. I have always felt that there are people at companies who say, too hard. Let's stick with the easy ones. These are too hard. Are you seeing people saying, with this equipment, with AI, let's take on the tough ones? You may have recalled a couple years ago we talked about an acquisition of O-Link, which was a technology to understand early disease and proteomic research. We have a panel of tests that are used for, you know, neurology and understanding these diseases. And the demand for that has been incredibly strong. So our customers know that, you know, around the world, we've got to find a way to tackle Alzheimer's.

16:52And it is a hard disease, but nonetheless, it's so important. You're seeing a combination of AI and a better understanding of proteomics, we believe, is ultimately going to lead to breakthroughs in that area. Okay. Now, I know that COVID, there was a COVID hangover for I know that China had some issues. I detected optimism on your call about China. Yeah. So when you think about China, as you know, for many years, it was a great tailwind. For four or five years in the early part of this decade, as China really tightened up its market, it became a headwind for the company. And what you've seen is a very robust pharmaceutical and biotech industry, a very strong demand for semiconductor-related products, and our businesses return to strong growth.

17:38We grew double digits in China in the quarter. When I was in China again in August, there's great enthusiasm from the customer base to work with the multinational industry leaders because they understand that they're trying to cure disease and they want to work with the best partners to help them do that. Now, you mentioned something interesting. You talked about semiconductors. I know you're helping semiconductor companies develop and manufacture advanced chips. I did not know you were in that business. Who are you doing that with, if you're allowed to say? And what are the kinds of things you're coming up with?

18:09So our electron microscopes are a high-end analytical instrument that is found across the entire industry of semiconductor for advanced research. And you need the tools not only to develop the next generation of semiconductors, but also to improve the productivity in the ramp to production yield. And because of that, we've seen incredibly strong demand. It's affecting our revenue growth. We had great growth in our analytical instruments business in the quarter. But even more important is that the orders are far outstripping revenue. So it feels like it continues to have a lot of longevity to where we are in the cycle, which makes sense just given the demand that AI is driving for semiconductor technology.

18:50One last question, Mark. There was a period, it was obviously tough. You never give up, obviously. You've been just a stalwart. But what clicked here? What made it, I mean, because I got to tell you, I saw it with Dan Herr, with Agilent. I mean, it just seems like the whole industry just got some wind. Yeah, so when I think about at least how we've approached it, which is you invest through the cycle. So we came in a period where, you know, the market was tougher. We invested in new technologies on our earnings call. We had literally half of my remarks were really around new products that we launched because they're so incredible in terms of what they empower our customers to do.

19:29And now the funding is improving, which is what we expected it to happen in 2026. You're seeing each quarter getting stronger. We're benefiting from the strength of our products and the strength of our ability to serve the pharmaceutical and biotech industry and helping them be more productive. and bring the breakthroughs to patients more. Oh, that's great. I think multi-year run is ahead just the way it was a few years ago. That's Mark Casper, Chairman, President and CEO of Thermo Fisher. Mark, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks again, Jim. Absolutely. May have money to be back after the break.

20:00Coming up, Wall Street has been happy to pick BlackBerry's second act. So, should you? Kramer's digging in with the CEO next. Next.

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21:16That's because CDW is building modern workplaces with Acer devices. Built-in security, uncompromising processing power, and fast connectivity help fuel collaboration so your team can innovate quickly. Wait, guys, that's a great idea. Acer and CDW make amazing happen. Learn more at cdw.com slash Acer.

21:45Today I want to check in on one of the market's great turnaround stories, BlackBerry. The old smartphone maker has reinvented itself around software for cars, robots, industrial equipment, along with the secure communications business we've got to talk about. In late September, BlackBerry reported a big top and bottom line beat, raised its full-year outlook. And just last week, the company announced that its QNX software business had surpassed an astounding$1.2 billion in royalty backlog. Look, after years of struggling, the stock's up 143 percent so far this year, including a 9 percent gain since we last spoke with the company in July.

22:16So can this comeback story continue? Let's go straight to the source, to John Giamatteo. He's the CEO of BlackBerry. Find out more. Giamatteo, welcome back to Mad Money. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for having me again. Oh, thanks, John. So I bumped into someone today. He said, I watched you in the morning. He said you had BlackBerry on. I mean, BlackBerry, no one's used those in years. And I said, well, wait a second. Maybe you own one of the 275 million vehicles that has BlackBerry. So tell us a little about Q &X. And this is really the company in a lot of ways. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thanks again.

22:48And, yeah, while the products we sell today can't be held in the palm of your hand, they're pervasive around you. 275 million cars, robots, governments, medical instrumentation, supply chain. That's the new BlackBerry. And that's what's driving all of our growth. All right. So tell me about how you got the backlog to one point two billion up more than two hundred fifty million dollars in two quarters. Three drivers that are really pushing the growth on the QNX side of the business. One is the auto industry and their transition to the high performance compute architecture that brings the market in our direction with our QNX operating system as that next generation type of performance.

23:30Second is we're expanding our market capitalization, our market addressable market with AlloyCore. AlloyCore is really us bringing together the operating system with the middleware, significantly expands our addressable market. And that's a second driver of what's happening. And finally, the emerging growth in physical AI, physical AI and those applications. So between the auto, expanding our market and also driving it to physical AI, those are the things that are driving the road. So with Alicor, you're getting more revenue per vehicle. Is that the plan? Absolutely. More revenue per vehicle, supporting more domains inside the car and now stitching together and going up the stack with middleware, delivering a safe, secure, integrated solution to auto manufacturers around the world.

24:21Okay, so let's talk secure. Let's talk government trust and security. because of your communications business, you're reading all the things we are. How confident are you that what you do with security isn't going to be a problem and that no one's going to be able to get through what you have? Yeah, ours is really, I know you're going to have George on later and talk about everything. Yes, George, George, and Brownstrike. But ours is more secure communications. It's encryption technology for voice, data, and video communications with governments. some of the highest levels of certifications with NATO.

24:58We've deployed it in Germany. We've deployed it in Canada. We've deployed it across Asia. And we're working with the U.S. government now. So these technologies are very, very certified and hardcore in terms of the overall reliance of the encryption technology. All right, so you've got these businesses. I mean, you've got a company that's rolling back up$1.2 billion. You've got this great ally core. You've got, I think, the beginning of a terrific robot business, But you have the name BlackBerry. If you change it to Q &S or if you changed it to software defined vehicles, don't you think more people would say I'm interested in that stock?

25:35It's something we think about. It's a really good point. It's something we think about and consider all the time. Right now, BlackBerry, one of the beautiful things about BlackBerry, it's an iconic brand. You can get a lot of meetings, you get a lot of conversations that happen just by being BlackBerry. And then when you get in the door, you talk to them about what we're doing and how we can provide them solutions. So it's something we are monitoring right now. All of these technologies being together with the brand of BlackBerry is kind of the direction of the company. OK, I get that. I mean, I just spoke once with a conversation with Goldman Sachs with some company called SCM.

26:13And it was Smith Corona Martian, which was a typewriter company. But they had all these other things going for it. And they said, you know what? But it's a storied legacy brand. And it was a storied legacy brand with a very good business that got taken over for nothing because people felt it was a typewriter company. I would hate to see BlackBerry, a$5 billion company with so much momentum, be taken over by someone who realizes, you know what? I can get momentum by just buying this company. Yeah. Well, you know, we're happy about the momentum we've got going now with 20 percent growth. Our margins are expansion.

26:46Eighty seven percent gross margins with Q &X. last quarter, and we're generating more cash than we ever have. So if we build a strong foundation, we're confident that we're going to continue to grow for the future. Okay, talk to me, Robots, working with NVIDIA. NVIDIA is a great partner. We started the partnership in the automotive sector. As they've now delved into their Halo safety stack, which is all the technology that's going into the robot stack, they've standardized on QNX as the platform of choice for that. That has opened up so many doors, an incredible pipeline of opportunity. And these are things like AMRs, automated mobile robots, autonomous forklifts, skateboards that are driving pallets to the docking station.

27:32These are all the technologies that we're working with NVIDIA and other partners to power around the world. Well, I remember Jensen telling me, listen, if it's a dull job and a dirty job and a dangerous job, you need a robot, not a person. And it sounds like that your technology goes into those kinds of robots. Absolutely. You know, the intersection when you think about physical A.I., the intersection of A.I. in the digital world and the real physical world. That's where QNX is a real time determinism that makes sure that interaction with machines and humans is safe at all times. Look, this is terrific technology.

28:06You're obviously growing. You know, the stock went up way too far during that period of real kind of craziness. But now it's back to where people should want to own it. I think you've done a remarkable job and a terrific turn. I want to thank you. That's John Giamatteo, the CEO of BlackBerry. Still has the old symbol, BB. And yes, story name, but new company. Thank you. Thanks so much. Everybody's back here for the break. Coming up with AI security concerns seeming to rise daily, Kramer's checking in with CrowdStrike to see how the defense is stacking up. Next.

28:48Since this past spring, there's been a growing recognition that Frontier AI models presented new and, yes, unprecedented cybersecurity risks because they had the capability to discover software vulnerabilities that previously would be nearly impossible for a hacker to identify or exploit. But this month, we're seeing this mostly theoretical concern start to get real real. Just last week, the creators of an open-source programming language called PHP, I didn't even know about these guys, announced that security researchers had used AI tools to identify issues with their technology. Now there's a scramble to fix the issue by implementing patches before hackers can exploit vulnerable systems.

29:23And tech and security leaders are warning just the beginning. They're all downbeat. To help us get an understanding of the specific PHP vulnerability and the broader moment, which some industry insiders have dubbed Black October, We're happy to welcome George Kurtz, a level-headed person and founder and CEO of CrowdStrength. Mr. Kurtz, welcome back to Mad Money. Great to be here, Jim. Okay, see, George, I watched you last week. I had you back on, frankly, because this thing is just so frightening, and I don't want it to be frightening. But I have someone like Matthew Prince, who's been on the show many, many times in Cloudflare.

29:55He says, in the 10 hours before it was publicly announced, across the network, we saw thousands of attempts to exploit it. That jumped to tens of thousands in the 45 minutes post announcement, hundreds of thousands within two hours, millions now. I got that this morning. That is, George, that's not encouraging. Well, Jim, this is this is really a big one. And I think what you're seeing here isn't a result of what happened last week. It's a result of what happened six, eight months ago when we talked about mythos and we talked about AI and what it can do in terms of finding these vulnerabilities, in terms of weaponizing them.

30:35And this is now the culmination of all that work that both the good guys put into finding this and also in terms of weaponizing it, what the bad guys can actually do. And it all sort of landed this week in this month, which they're calling Black October. But it's a pretty bad case right now in terms of what's happening just because the speed and the level of attacker that's out there, they're trying to take advantage of a really bad situation. All right. Now, I've heard lots of people talk about the enterprise. I'm an individual. I have some money in a couple of banks. Banks, I think, are the most vulnerable because that's where the money is.

31:14I check my bank balance today. I check it every Monday. Should I check it every day? It's an interesting conversation, Jim. I actually hear more and more people saying, hey, they're printing out their bank statements. They're online, but they're printing them out just because they're so worried. But I think when you look at what's happening with the leading banks and we protect, I think, 16 of the top 20 banks in the world, they take security very seriously. They've got great teams. They're very thoughtful about it. And they're trying to all do the right thing. And they're the haves. They have the ability to address these vulnerabilities and patch them.

31:49The have-nots are the smaller companies that don't have the expertise. They don't have the money behind it. They can't find all of these vulnerable systems that are out there. Those are the systems that I would be worried about. But I'm very confident in the financial services industry. They're very vigilant. And I can tell you they're spending a heap of money on security and just trying to get a handle on this situation. Well, let's say you're not. I mean, and there's a ransomware demand. They shut down your business. You miss five days. Your quarter gets killed. You get taken over. Do people realize this is the sequence?

32:24It is the sequence. And Jim, what we're seeing is folks trying to do the right things. There are many companies, many people that use multi-factor authentication, MFA. And that means that when you log in, you have to enter in a different code or you have to click a button. And generally, that is thought to be sort of the best in terms of authentication and prevention. The challenge that you have as these attackers are so good that they can create these fake looking websites that will actually allow you to authenticate, but steal your session token. Essentially, that's like the card key to a hotel.

32:59Once you have access to it, nobody's asking for it again and you can go wherever you want. And they take that session token and they basically use it to log into whatever you have. It could be your mail system or what have you. And that's where we're seeing a lot of damage taking place. So, you know, for your viewers, they need to be very vigilant of what they're logging into. And again, if they're getting emails or they're getting something on their phone, they should just go to the website directly. Don't click on links. Just go there and log in directly just to make sure that you're not getting phished and having your token stolen.

33:30What are they going for? I mean, I've gotten a couple from my phone company. I'm not going to say what it is, but they were phony. OK. And I just knew it enough that they were phony. I've gotten so many from outfits that are that move goods. I'm going to say overnight, so to speak. They're all phony. Every time they're phony. This is so dangerous because if you don't think about it for a second, well, why wouldn't you click on a company that delivers a product overnight? Well, Jim, they've gotten so good now with with AI that they can create the website very easily and it looks real. They can create the email that looks real and they've lowered the cost of doing this.

34:06You take a lot of time to create a fake looking website. Like now you literally can point it at whatever your intended target is and just copy it and off you go. But I think, you know, what you're seeing now is, again, focused on companies and consumers. But if you look again, getting back to this week, if you look at all the vulnerabilities that came out, the sort of Black October, there's more than 10 critical vulnerabilities that sort of just landed. And it's this patch fatigue, which is really which has me worried, which means that the industry can find these vulnerabilities very quickly. They can generate patches for them very quickly.

34:41The problem is they just don't have enough time or operational resources to get them rolled out. And when you're running a system, you can't just patch everything all at once. And what is critical is that companies like CrowdStrike are focused on providing more time, providing an understanding of what really is vulnerable, what's exploitable, what's reachable via the internet to buy more time as a compensating control so that companies can get the right patches out when they need to without disrupting the organization. So this is just one of the big challenges we see. But OK, I want to be sure.

35:13I mean, the Falcon products that you just unveiled are products that I would feel like, wait a second, they've taken care of this. You're saying that all they've done is bought time? Well, no, you're buying time and you're taking care of it. But of course, the main thing, if you have a vulnerable piece of software, you want to upgrade it. Right. So you want to have a compensating control. You want to be able to prevent these attacks, which we do. We cover PHP vulnerabilities. But of course, you have to upgrade. You have to upgrade to the latest patch. That's just best practice. And by the way, when you're audited, you need to be on the latest patches.

35:48So that's just part of what IT teams do. But I think what's important to also remember here is there's a lot of systems that you can't upgrade or a lot of older technology. If you think about these home routers and firewalls and things that people log into, they're never going to be upgraded. And they're running these vulnerable versions of PHP. So there's going to be a long tail of attacks across both enterprise as well as SMB and consumers where the adversary is taking advantage of these PHP vulnerabilities. All right, George, we're going to have to keep up on this. This is much worse than I thought.

36:19I knew that you would be calm about it, but I don't feel calm after I talk with you. But maybe that's what's supposed to happen. There's too much complacency. And I think you explained it very well, and I hope you come back and talk about it. It's not what I know. It's your quiet period. So I can't ask you whether you got a million calls this weekend, but I'm going to presume that you did and not ask you how that went. So I want to thank George Kurtz again. I had to bring George on. It's not the time that he can talk about his business. But I want everyone to feel safe. But I think what I learned was that everyone has to be vigilant.

36:53George Kurtz is founder and CEO of CrowdStrike. George, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you. All right. Mad money's back in. Coming up, you've got questions, Kramer's got the answers. Get charged up for a fast-fire lightning round next.

37:28It is time!

37:38And then the lightning round is over. Are you ready? Skidags on the lightning round. Let's go to Andrew. Andrew. Hey, Chris. Hey, Chris. I want to check in with you and see if Celsius Holdings can be half the stock that Monster has been. No, no, you have to stick with Monster. Went over that this weekend with some really good investors. We know that Celsius is a second-rate monster. Sorry. Nice people. Let's go to Travis in Georgia. Travis. Booyah, Jim. How you doing tonight? Oh, good. How about you? Well, I'm hoping to be better after the news you share with me down here in the Atlanta area. Okay.

38:18So I wanted to know, hey, Jim, listen. I started buying Q &T. It was backed by IBM. I got in at$67 a share. And I have been averaging down ever since. Why don't we do this? Let's give it a little break. In your next level for your average down, you've got to make it meaningful. When you average down, you've got to make it meaningful because it's a pyramid style. You've got to wait until it goes around to 30, and it means more. Because this is a company without any earnings, and maybe it shouldn't even become public yet. It was too new and young to hit the market. Let's go to Mike in Wyoming. Mike.

38:56Booyah, Jim. We are. But I'm a Nebraska transplant, so I've got to say go pokes and go big red. I'm talking about USA Rare Earth. It's your symbol, U-S-A-R. You know what? It's USA Rare Dirt. I don't want you to touch that thing. That thing is just in it. The chart really does look like some of the Rockies right at the end. You know, your climb is like, oh, my God. Whenever you get to the top, it's nowhere. That's where you are, except for it's the other way around. Let's go to Kathy in Montana. Anna Cathy. Hi, Jim. Thank you for taking my call today. My pleasure. What's going on? I'm calling you about a regional bank which trades at a premium to its tiers on a P.E.

39:39basis. Yet it has a 4 % net interest margin, a low peg ratio, and a strong history of consistent insider buying. My stock is Glacier Bancorp. You know, it's in Kalispell, Montana. It's one of the hottest areas in the country. I like that. Now, the stock just had a very big move. It's a 49. That stock could retrace to 45 without a problem. But it does have good growth. It has a decent yield. And most importantly, it's in a growth area of the country, which is exactly what you need. I like it. Let's go to Tim in Rhode Island. Tim. Hi, Jim. Welcome from Rhode Island. Oh, well, thank you for having me.

40:18What's going on? Hey, just curious about Community Biosystems, IPRX. for it. Okay, I'm going to, all right, now listen to me. Listen to me. That is a situation that's a very good spec. And you know what? I don't mind you taking a position in that because that's one of those that you could look back and say, you know what? I was in my index funds, they didn't really do well, but man, did I clean up on a very good spec. The biotechs are being taken over like mad. You want to be in one. And that, ladies and gentlemen, the conclusion of the Lightning Round! The lightning round is sponsored by Charles Schwab.

40:57When we return, Kramer's paying tribute to a beloved member of the Mad Money family gone far too soon. Long before there was Claude, Grock or even Chachi B.T., there was Cliff Mason. You would put a memo together, say 4000 words about some stock or some sector and send it to Cliff. and he would Masonize it for the show. He'd distill any memo into 1 ,250 compelling words for each written segment that I would then read to you from the teleprompter, Oh, Bad Money, because he could write precisely in my voice, right down to the three - and four-word phrases that got to the heart of the matter, no matter what the matter was.

41:38Cliff Mason was my sister Nan's kid, Todd Mason's son, my nephew, a brilliant, irascible, lovable comet who brightened the sky before burning out, as if it spent too much time flying close to the sun. To say he was just remarkable is to demonstrate your limited vocabulary and your lack of education and imagination. Yeah, he was that critical. Good thing with me. Cliff came to us via Nan as a summer associate shortly after Mad Money began in 2005. He was about to go off to college. We used to do this morning call about what the show would be about that evening. After a while, I guess maybe I was such a dictator that no one would offer ideas on a call.

42:16Then one day, an unfamiliar voice piped up about an idea, a change in student loan policy and how it might benefit the stock of Sally May. I asked, who is this? He said, it's me, Uncle Jumbo. I guess you could say that was the day a comet was born. At the end of the summer, he came to me and asked whether he could stay on as a writer, but only on one condition. He would be the head writer and the only writer. No one else was needed. That's pure heresy and out-of-control arrogance. But Cliff was all about pure heresy with a deep vein of arrogance, except without knowing it. I went to Jeff Zucker, who was the head of NBC at the time, to ask if Cliff could give it a try.

42:50Jeff was baffled, asking Cliff whether he was still going to Harvard. Cliff said, why? A Harvard grad himself, Zucker said, it was hard. Maybe for you, Cliff said. That was enough, I guess. He started the next day. Cliff breathed through Harvard, never missed a day of work. Maybe that's when he started Masonizing. He'd take our raw stuff and memos and turn each around into segment scripts, adding the bottom line and a conclusion that only he could reach to tie everything together for viewers. Periodically, he would solve huge problems. In 2008, he told us injecting money into every bank would save all the banks.

43:24And he criticized Fed Chief Bernanke for being late in adopting that kind of plan, his plan. During the European debt crisis, Clift helped us maintain the this shall pass mantra on the show. In the winter of 2012, he admonished ECB President Mario Draghi for dragging his feet unnecessarily to solve the European banking crisis. He said it was time for Draghi and other foot dragger to go all Malcolm X and save the euro by any means necessary. We laughed when Draghi soon after said he would do whatever it takes. That ended the crisis. He thought COVID would be a short term event for the market and he needed to buy, buy, buy.

43:58He loved NVIDIA the dog and couldn't use it enough. Just couldn't use it enough. All these and more you heard in my voice. Was Cliff a ventriloquist? Hardly. We emailed dozens of times a day, sometimes scores of times, to get it right for you. An error would be unforgivable. He didn't trust the bots. In 21 years, he never made a mistake. Even as he could turn 4 ,000 words into 1 ,250 words of perfect copy. In what seemed like no time flat. Always on time. Cliff was the most eccentric, high-functioning person I ever met. He never adjusted to people. He was uncomfortable leaving his apartment, so he didn't, except to walk sheep and then noodle.

44:40He had a terrific girlfriend, Jenny, but he didn't venture out. When he first got his apartment, he would go to Gap and buy three weeks of clothes at a time, so he wouldn't have to deal with whoever else might be washing clothes. He could be contemptuous of anyone and everyone, except Mad Money Research Director Ben Stoto and supervising producer Heather Gaines, whom he loved. He worshipped Regina Gilgan, our executive producer, whom he regarded as his protector. He always chided me for not getting things that he thought of right the first time, for my lack of rigor. Although he liked my stock picking ability.

45:12Regina and my wife Lisa and my sister Nan, when invited to all sorts of parties and team building activities, he always said yes, but he almost never showed. He just stayed in his apartment hunting and pecking five days a week for the show, reading and playing video games between writing segments for it. I didn't see him for five years, and then only once or twice every three in all 21 years. What does it matter, you would always tell me. All he cared about was that he got the copy right and on time, and that it'd be perfectly Masonized. It always was. As irascible as he could be, there was one entity that was truly sacrosanct.

45:46You, the viewer. To him, Mad Money was alive, a living, breathing organism that must never be let down. And he never did let it down. He never let you down. Last Monday, Cliff delivered some perfect copy in 20-minute turnarounds. We were marveling. We were high-fiving. Top of game. He said we cheered. Tuesday at 1.30 p.m. ET, Cliff's mom, Nan, called me. Cliff was dead, she said, found in his sleep. There would be no more Masonizing. There would be no more Cliff. The comment had burned out. The enlarged heart of the lovable, brilliant, rigorous best friend and nephew, the head writer, the only writer, as he loved to say, had stopped beating.

46:31He was 41.

46:37It started off, I could write in his voice because he was my uncle. I'd known him forever. And I guess other people had a hard time with sort of the informality, but still rigorous. It's a tough mix for somebody who's coming out of a straight, hard news environment. It's good to work for someone who's that intelligent and who, you know, we can communicate in shorthand words standing in for whole paragraphs. Because in part because we've been doing this for so long. But also because we're sort of on the same wavelength. And we have the same very cynical sense of humor. And somewhat cynical, sincerely insincere worldview.

47:19you. Jim's voice is, you know, I just try to do him proud.

47:49upon information he considers reliable, but neither CNBC nor its affiliates and or subsidiaries warrant its completeness or accuracy, and it should not be relied upon as such. To view the full Mad Money Disclaimer, please visit cnbc.com forward slash madmoneydisclaimer. Real talent is defined by what people can do, not where they learn to do it. So by stopping at the education section of a resume, you might throw away the perfect hire. Skills First Hiring helps you see talent others miss, like more than 70 million stars, skilled through alternative routes. Let their story unfold and gain a competitive advantage because hiring managers who start with skills are 60 % more likely to find a successful hire.

48:26Hire skills first. Learn why at tearthepaperceiling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council.