Cramer’s week ahead: Fed meeting, labor report, Big Tech earnings

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday looked to next week’s happenings on Wall Street, laying out how to prepare for a slew of high-profile earnings, as well as a Federal Reserve meeting and a labor report.

Cramer warned that the volume of reports next week coupled with comments from the Fed will make it a tough time for any solid investing decisions.

“You should expect that next week will overwhelm even the best of the professionals, so don’t even think of doing anything yourself, unless you’ve already made up your mind beforehand and don’t care about your short-term performance,” he said.

On Monday, Cramer said he will be watching as steelmakers Nucor and Cleveland-Cliffs report earnings. He said he thinks the companies have scarcity value and enough business to keep their pricing up.

Cramer called Tuesday a “classic example of the corporate traffic jam.” The day features earnings reports from Pfizer, General Motors, Microsoft, Alphabet, Starbucks and AMD. He said he awaits Microsoft’s comments on sales of its artificial intelligence product, Co-pilot. Alphabet, he added, needs to show encouraging data from its cloud division.

The Federal Reserve meets on Wednesday and Cramer will be looking for clues the organization is willing to cut rates if inflation stays under control. Wednesday will also bring earnings from Mastercard and Boeing. Cramer said the aircraft manufacturer is “back in purgatory” due to its ongoing 737 debacle, and he wants to know how much purgatory costs. He predicted Mastercard will have better results than its peer Visa, but conceded it’s a “wait and see” situation.

Thursday is another big earnings day, with morning reports from Honeywell and Merck and then Apple, Amazon and Meta after close. Cramer said he wants to know how advertising revenue is panning out from Meta and Amazon. With Apple, he’ll be waiting to hear iPhone guidance for the next quarter and any information about the company’s business in China.

On Friday, Cramer said he will be paying attention to earnings from oil giants Chevron and Exxon as well as employment data. He said if the unemployment rate doesn’t hit 4%, investors shouldn’t expect a March rate cut from the Fed.