Many companies are being hurt by social distancing safety rules due to the coronavirus and investors may want to reevaluate whether to own their stocks, CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Tuesday.
“Social distancing is going to be the answer why you have to sell certain stocks,” he said.
For companies that need to invest heavily to help ensure it’s safe for employees to come back to work, “you got this really bad chain of events that’s going to occur for a substantial part” of the S&P 500, Cramer said.
“Assembly line productivity is going to be hurt so badly by honest social distancing,” he added.
Cramer also questioned on “Squawk on the Street” what’s going to happen to the cruise industry. “The idea of Carnival is you get together. You do things together. It’s fun,” he added. “Togetherness kills. I mean, that’s what we think now.”
Cruise stocks such as Carnival have cratered during the coronavirus-driven economic halt.
In a securities filing published Tuesday, Norwegian Cruise Line said it has “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a “going concern,” warning it may need to seek bankruptcy protection if it cannot line up enough financing.
“There is no issue at Facebook about social distancing,” Cramer said.
The “Mad Money” host used Facebook as well as Microsoft and Apple as examples of companies that have weathered the pandemic because social distancing won’t kill their businesses.
“There’s a lot of upside in some companies, and a lot of downside in others,” he said.
While the broader-market S&P 500 has dropped 10% year to date, the tech-heavy Nasdaq has cut its 2020 losses to about 1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost about 15% this year. All three stock measures are up more than 30% from their coronavirus lows on March 23.
