2,000, an obvious milestone even if we dip back toward that level at the close, im going to focus not only one everyone is worried about, but on what got us to tease lofty heights. Namely, profits. Corporate profits growing at accelerating speeds, or else. On a day when the dow gained 76 points, s p claimed. 48 , still a record high, and the nasdaq jumped. 41 , i think we need a respite from the nonstop chatter about how the fed is behind the curve or how the fed is the chief reason why stocks arent going up. This is what the market would sound like if it werent for the fed. The truth is, the endless search for earnings and Revenue Growth is whats driving prices higher. Thats now a neverending pursuit that keeps powering the entire stock market to levels not even dreamed about a few short years ago. Seems to me that ever since the big bottom in the s p in 2010, at 1,150, in retro speck, the u. S. Debt downgrade, weve been besieged by lecturers who dont believe in the market strength and question this runup to 2000 on the s p which is the major benchmark that money is pegged to, not the much more narrow Dow Jones Industrial average. To the seemingly objective critics, the whole move is artifice and based on cheap money as if somehow your capital gauge should be asterisks as undeserving. Meanwhile, many of the market pundits only want to talk about political issues because it is easy to have an opinion about politic and unlike stock picking, you can never really be wrong. These issues sound like theyre relevant to the mark tee spite the fact they are not particularly relevant to you home gamer trying to scratch out a buck or two in addition to your shrinking paycheck which is what we try to do every day in cramerica. With this morn milestone being breached momentarily, it is important because it is a sign of how far weve come from the bad old days. I think it is vital to separate the facts of what really brought us up here from the fiction of what many believe got us to these levels that can therefore be pulled out like a bad rug. It is imperative because we may not be done going higher and you need to understand this this move isnt all phony. It wont be taken away in one fell swoop because the same thing thats vexing the fed and every other central bank around the world, thank you, europe, for last nights powerhouse move, is vexing the companies, too, and thats slow growth. The feds combating slow growth somewhat successfully with cheap money and lower interest rates. Companies are doing it with selfhelp and theyre doing it with ingenuity. The feds doing it out of desire maybe not to be heartless. Its got one part of its mandate that says dont be heartless. Wants more people to work in order to create more wealth. It is doing so aggressively because there isnt all that much inflation out there. I pumped a lot of gas dropping a kid off to college this weekend. The trip was a lot cheaper than it was when we visited the first time a year ago. Dont laugh. Oil and gas declines are huge and they are unheralded windfalls that have taken the air out of inflation sails and just made it noisy. Companies unlike the fed dont feel the need to put people to work. They feel the need to do more with less, axing highprice labor for lower wage workers and bringing in technology where they can to save money. Many companies however played out that game as much as they possibly can. Now because we still dont have consistent Growth Companies feel compelled to do more than what theyve done in the past. Very few companies can offer the pure growth after facebook on amazon or gilead have you ever seen a move like gilead . Its taken my breath away. That doesnt Mean Companies cant find ways to grow. Thats why weve entered this merger and acquisition phase of the bull market. This most recent s p growth spurt i think is occurring on the backs of the takeover game. Had this morning we heard about the gigantic acquisition by roche. Thats how they keep up with the joneses. The true market leaders at this moment. But exhibit a of how m and a activity drove the s p higher today is the remarkable tieup between tim hortons, the terrific canadian coffee and doughnut shop and burger king. The growth challenge junk food house. This is not just a pure tax savings play. Burger king which would move its headquarters to canada from florida wont actually be cutting its tax bill. At least this year. Canada has lower rates than we do but it is not the same huge tax haven like ireland. Burger king pays almost exactly the same tax rate in canada as it does in the u. S. Dont get sidetracked. This deal is largely motivated by the need for higher growth, pure and simple. Meaning the need for growth in the profit margin challenge fast casual sector. Higher growth which has become almost impossible to get unless you are pure, natural and yore gain bei organic. Which is hardly a description of either company. Bkw struggles to grow at just 1 . Tim hortons is putting up surprisingly strong 5 comparable sale numbers. But thats not the kind of growth long term the market hungers for. Its doughnuts. They arent exactly made. Quinoa and flaxseed. Put these two together and you have a chain with some International Sales growth potential. Thats why i think both stocks rallied today. Not only that, time and again we seen these stocks just keep rallying. Though i will say that the jump in tim horton stock after its latest good quarter now seems suspicious to me considering that we learned also in these stories that burger king contacted them not long ago. U. S. Attorney Southern District of new york . I give this one to you. Very global burger king can help grow the very parochial tim hort hortons international. Who doesnt want to be the next starbucks . You can put a hortons right next to or inside of a burger king. Best of all, it takes out a player in the alreadycrowded fast food group where there are just way too many players. Think about it. Many of the mergers and acquisitions weve seen in the last two years, whether they be in media, retail, rental cars, airlines or industrials are driven by the feed too have fewer competitors in a particular sector. We have way too many of everything and that makes too much price competition. Which is very bad for margins. Which often leads to intolerable downside surprise. Which brings me to the second part of the selfhelp message. Companies unlike the fed report to shareholders. One of the more remarkable developments of the last 1,000 s p points that i am indeed celebrating is that some shareholders have become very noisy and in a Shocking Development boards are listening. Burger king, for example, is basically run of, by and for some Hedge Fund Managers that demand regular performance. It cant stand still because its directors wont let it stand still. Doesnt matter how big or insulated you think you are from these activist shareholders, almost no one is immune as we know from the positive responses to both microsoft and apple to the products of value act and carl icahn respectively. As i pored through the cops that have been most aggressive in selfhelp or disappeared entirely to takeovers driving the s p higher with their terminal takeout promises, i am astonished how often the whole process starts. It all starts with a couple of quarters of underperformance. Or the need to feed the growth beast before the activists swoop in and create huge havoc. That does ultimately get the stock higher. I dont mean to cite the gang of companies that have shed the visions. It certainly is true that low rates have kept lots of stocks with big dividends from going down. Many food and drug stocks would be lower if they didnt offer stable yield. Thats where the real propups occur. As we trump s p 2,000 at least momentarily, we have much more than janet yellen and ben bernanke to thank for this fabulous bounty. We have ceos trying to keep their jobs by taking their stocks up themselves. Thats who we should be thank aring for much of this last move. If the fed were to stop its lar gue gl esse, with their use of cash and high stocks that make deals that rashalize sectors and cause ever higher profits than anyone would have expected, 1,000 s p points ago. Lee, california. Lee. Booyah from california. Nice to have you on the show, lee. Whats cooking . First time caller. Longtime listener. Really love your show. Thank you. Very kind. Thank you. My question is about ebay and potential spinoff of paypal. Do you think theres an end stockholder value there . I think a splitoff would make this so this company would be in the mid 60s. Right now it is stuck in the 50s. Actual core business isnt doing as well as i like. You separate the two, i think they both do better. Think it is a win for everybody. Jeff in massachusetts. Booyah, jim. How are you . Im doing real well. Cliffs national resources. I think the buyback is always good news. In the end are you dealing with iron ore and that is a very bad commodity. Youre being a Charitable Trust has a position of valet which is a very well run company and this cant get out of its own way either. I dont want to be in companies that are buying back stock where the fundamentals i think are not as good because of commodity price risk. Aden in wyoming. Aden. Mr. Cramer, booyah, sir. Pleasure to be on your show, as usual. I have a small question. What do you make of the market coming back 500 points this last couple of days and starbucks didnt quite respond. Stephanie lee and i puzzled over the same issue. What we think is going to happen is people will circle back to starbucks like they have done with many of the stocks saying why did we sell that stock . Oh, ukraine, russia, higher coffee prices. Thats a very small part of the actual bottom line for us. Starbucks, i want you to buy, buy, buy. Take advantage of it. We hit a milestone today. That tells me we have much much more than the fed to thank. Hey, why not . Isnt it time to recognize the ceos of companies that keep giving you these gains . It may not be over either. On mad money tonight, fast foods have been slow to cook up the gains lately but should you give up on the group . Or is it time to stack on some delicious names at a discount . Im popping if to popeyes louisiana kitchen. See if the stock can get sizlean again. All this week i go behind the yellow caution tape on wall street an scouring over the evidence. Dont miss the results of cramers stock investigation. Hey, plus, it is more than the luck of the irish for a dublinfaced pharma play. It is up 40 , even more this year. Ive got the story. Stick with cramer. Dont miss a second of mad money. Have a question . Tweet cramer. Madtweets. Send jim an email madmoney c nns nbc. Com or give us a call at 100 00743cnbc. Miss something . Head to madmoney dot cnbc. Com. You, my friend are a master of diversification. Who would have thought three cheese lasagna would go with chocolate cake and ceviche . The same guy who thought that small caps and bond funds would go with a merging markets. Its a masterpiece. Thanks. Clearly you are type e. You made it phil. Welcome home. Now whats our strategy with the fondue . Diversifying your portfolio . E trade gives you the tools and resources to get it right. Re you type e . What do you do with a highquality company in a sector thats having real difficulties . Thats the question with popeyes louisiana kitchen, plki. Restaurant chain formerly known at afc enterprises sports a name change. This incredibly well run restaurant change, 28 foreign countries, 98 of restaurants are franchise. Thats the model we like. Popeyes gets a pass. Company has a terrific ceo. One of my bankable 21 chief executives. Shes executed terrific turnaround here remodeling the stores in a more attractive format in order to boost traffic. We saw the new format when we spoke to her in person when we spoke to her in brooklyn. Lately things have gotten difficult for the whole restaurant space. Too many players, too much competition, not enough consolidation. Popeyes i think has been punished over the last couple months, stocks down 5 from late june highs. Popeyes reported last wednesday after the close. Even though they posted solid results, inline earnings, better than anticipated sales, management reeniterating full year guidance. Stock got hit. Some was because there are fewer than expected franchise openings. But a lot of the pullback i think has to do with general skepticism surrounding the entire restaurant. Should we buy popeyes on this dip . Lets take a closer look at ceo of popeyes louisiana kitchen to hear more about the quarter. Cheryl, welcome back to the show. Thank you, jim. He we had a dramatic game changer this morning. Tim hortons and burger king getting together. Some people said thats out of taxes. My sources say thats not. It is about trying to get more growth. When popeyes hears that, do you say, you know what . My stock needs to go higher. Ive got to consider something that would be transformative and really get the stock moving like hortons and burger king. You know, jim, we feel like we are doing exactly with a we need to do to get our stock moving, thats building out the footprint of popeyes in the u. S. And around the world. Ive said many times this chain has an opportunity to double if size in the u. S. , and then fully exploit the new footprint around the globe. Plenty of growth runway in this company and therefore if this stock. Well, if thats the case, you deliver what we typically want from a company, better than expected samestory, better than expected earnings. Yet the stock went down. Is that just saying there is a malaise in the industry . Honestly, when i saw the number, i thought stock would be higher. I thought youd say buying opportunity, jim. Thats what it is. Our plan hasnt changed. Our performance hasnt changed. Were a very consistent, reliable Growth Company and i think over time were giving credit for that. Stock was 13 in 2007. It is 40 today. We are making Great Strides and i think the market will rec fiz those over time. I want to understand the decision paying 43 million for your recipes. It was a Company Founded by your founder. Why did you have to pay that much and what do you get for all that money . Thats a really good question. A lot of people didnt know that we didnt own those recipes but the founder retained them when he sold off the company in the mid 90s. We wanted that incredible asset of our recipe back with the brand where it belongs. We were paying a 3 million royalty for it every year, so we bought out the formula rights forever in perpetuity. That has tremendous value to the brand for the long term, control over our recipes. Theyre aligned with our brand forever and theres no risk if the future of any issues there. So we believed it was a really good investment. Plus, were reinvesting that 3 million in royalties that was a nonworking dollar for us into hard working plans to grow popeyes. Why dont would have have been money that you might have been using to be able to also buy back more stock . While the stock is ill liquid, it clearly matters when you take stock out because it does move youre in one of those situations, when you buy stock, it does move the stock higher. Well, thats right. This year weve forecast that well buy 20 million to 30 million worth of our stock back. Weve been very consistent with that over time. Our first use of cash is to invest in organic growth of the business. We are also building 10 to 15 new Company Restaurants this year which produces for the company and the shareholder. So yes, stock buybacks are something we are committed to and have done consistently over time. I know youve got another new offering. A 5 bona fide in big box. You got to keep coming up with new things. Youve been remarkable in coming one new things, but will it eventually be a treadmill where you have to say, man, last year we had this great thing, how we going to outdo it. Is it going to get too hard at a certain point . Oh, no. Food is what we specialize in, jim. You know how good our food is and our Culinary Team is one in the best in the industry at coming up with new ideas. We actually generate 80 new ideas every single quarter just to get one all the way tested and ready for you in the marketplace. Were prolific and we plan to stay that way. We just had tenderloins in the restaurant with creamy garlic sauce. No one has anything like it. Now the 5 box which is a wonderful, good value meal for our core customer. Look, i am saying it is a buying opportunity. When a company does better than it is supposed to and the stock goes down, thats when you should buy it. Thats exactly what i think people should do here. Ceo of popeyes louisiana kitchen, thanks so much for being on the show. You dont get a discount that often in a quality restauranteur. When it does happen, it is your chance to buy. We said that with buffalo wild wings. Im saying the same things with popeyes louisiana kitchen. Coming up csi mad money. The victims, some of americas most recognizable restaurant chains. Their crime some of the markets worst performances this summer. But will a disappointing dinner make way for a comeback as sweet as dessert . Cramers stock Investigation Unit is on the scene. Where the reward was that what if tnew car smelledit card and the freedom of the open road . A card that gave you that im 16 and just got my first car feeling. Presenting the buypower card from capital one. Redeem earnings toward part or even all of a new chevrolet, buick, gmc or cadillac with no limits. So every time you use it, youre not just shopping for goods. Youre shopping for something great. Learn more at buypowercard. Com even in a roaring market when the s p 500 broke out above 2,000 to hit yet another new alltime high today, of course it ultimately backed down. There are some groups that are still having a real hard time here. Take the restaurants, an industry where even many of the highquality names arent doing much. Like popeyes whose ceo you just heard from and lower quality places simply are getting slaughtered unless do you a deal like this potential Burger King Tim horton, tax inversion tieup. Lets just say it is tough to be in the restaurant biz right now. Whats even more difficult is being a shareholder in a growth Restaurant Company thats been abandoned and left for dead by the same investors who have been pushing these stocks relentlessly higher. Right up until the numbers disappointed. And they all jumped ship. The truth is, lately weve seen a host of homicides in the restaurant space with oncehot names like red robin, numerals and company, pot belly, chewys, simply being murdered by disenchanted investors hitting the exits. Thats why tonight were breaking out the forensic kit an doing mad money krfcsi, crame stock investigation. For the five people who have never watched csi or one of its man