Action in banks stocks doesn't reflect the quality of the numbers, says Jim Cramer

Last Friday, first quarter earnings season kicked off with three major banks, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup. And then on Monday and Tuesday, we’re from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, back America. These results came during a rocky period for the overall market, which is one reason nearly all the big banks stocks sold off hard, but some of them got hit a lot harder than others. More importantly, when you actually go through the quarters of the action, the banks just doesn’t seem to reflect the quality of the numbers. JP Morgan got killed. Sidney got killed, back from Russia got killed. Meanwhile Wells Fargo, Goldman were flat and Morgan Stanley was up in a decent amount over this three day period. So tonight I want to walk you through what we heard from the big banks because these are some of the most important companies out there and they give us a tremendous amount of insight into the rest of the economy. They often are predecessors to what’s going to happen after. The insight only matters if you really know what happened rather just extrapolating from the tape which is what most people do. So we’re going to start with the four big money centers and then we’re going to go to the two major investment banks after the break. Yes, these are that important. Let’s start with JP Morgan. Generally, consider the best run, strongest bank in the country even as the stock was hit the hardest. If that wasn’t because it wasn’t it, you gotta understand this. It was not because the numbers were bad. JP Morgan delivered a top beat, bottom beat with 8% earnings growth. That’s terrific. Average loans up 3% when you back out their acquisition. First Republic loans are up 16% when you include the First Republic numbers and why not include them for them saying JP Morgan had extremely solid expense management to their credit metrics mostly look good in fact. This bank’s provision for credit losses came in and nearly a billion dollars lower than expected, down 32% versus the previous quarter. That sensation. Well then you probably asked him what the heck went wrong. Well, you could argue that JP Morgan’s core net interest income, this is this Nii thing forecast for 2024 was only raised by a tiny amount. Wall Street was hoping for a higher for longer rates would help them post bigger net interest margins which many banks are having didn’t help the Jamie Dimon. He was so cautious in his comments. But mainly, I think the stock could simply run too much. In the quarter it was up 15% year to date, 52% of the previous 12 months, right before the company reported hey, throwing the ugly market that day and you had a recipe for a sell off even though the numbers were just fine. Don’t miss a second of Mad Money follow at Jim Cramer on X. Have a question? Tweet Cramer hashtag mad mentions Send Jim an e-mail to [email protected] or give us a call at one 807 four Three CNBC. Miss something? Head to madmoney.cnbc.com.