In this article, we will take a detailed look at the 10 Stocks Analysts are Talking About Amid Trump’s Tariff War.
Markets saw some glimmer of hope as President Donald Trump indicated that he does not plan to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and showed openness to engage in talks with China. However, China has said in a statement that the US should dial back all unilateral duties if it’s serious in negotiations.
Andrew Slimmon, Morgan Stanley Investment Management senior portfolio manager, explained in a recent program on CNBC what made Trump blink:
“I think…April 9th was an important day because on that day Trump came out and said I didn’t like what I saw in the bond market, I didn’t like Jamie Diamon saying there’s a recession coming and he said “So I’m putting a 90-day pause on.” So in my opinion, what he really said is tariffs are important to me but a recession’s worse and so there’s the priority which he basically gave you the indication there is a Trump put out there. I don’t think it’s down 10 15 but it was when the market was almost down 20 right, credit spread started to quake.”
READ ALSO: 7 Best Stocks to Buy For Long-Term and 8 Cheap Jim Cramer Stocks to Invest In
For this article, we picked 10 stocks Wall Street is talking about these days. With each stock, we have mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
10. Palantir Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:PLTR)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 41
Jim Cramer in a latest program said he likes Palantir Technologies Inc (NASDAQ:PLTR).
“Defense is working again. I don’t know. It shouldn’t be given the pullback from Ukraine, right? But I sense maybe we’re embarking on a real buildup as tensions heat up with China. I like the permanently favored Palantir, arguably the number one meme stock of all time, with the CEO who whips people into a frenzy.””
Baron Asset Fund stated the following regarding Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Two software stocks that the Fund did not own, Palantir Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:PLTR) and AppLovin Corporation, each gained more than 100% and accounted for 52% of the Benchmark’s gain during the quarter. At year end 2024, Palantir was valued at approximately 200 times its expected 2024 earnings, while AppLovin was valued at 80 times. The market cap of each exceeded $100 billion, and the two stocks represented nearly 8% of the Index. Neither company met our criteria for investment. The total impact on relative performance from Palantir and AppLovin was about 7 times higher than we have seen historically for two securities that are unique to the Benchmark, showing just how unparalleled the event was and something that we believe is unlikely to be repeated.”
9. PepsiCo Inc (NASDAQ:PEP)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 58
Jim Cramer in a recent program on CNBC discussed a latest research report on PepsiCo Inc (NASDAQ:PEP), which talked about the impact of rising snack prices on the company:
“There’s a piece of research today that is emblematic of what makes this market so hard. So out of nowhere, Bank of America, which has been a staunch supporter of PepsiCo, downgrades it. Basically says snacks are too expensive. They’re losing share in beverages. David, when I read this, I said, “This is the kind of thing that I’m most concerned about. These food companies have raised price, raised price, raised price, and then in the interim it got too expensive.” And they talk about the convenience store and working-class people who can’t afford to get to buy things. Because there is just so much you can do in terms of cost cutting. So I—I found that Ramon Laguarta if he read this, he would say, “I got to get this thing.” But the only way you can get more is to cut twice.”
8. Crowdstrike Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:CRWD)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 74
Jim Cramer in a latest program on CNBC said he likes Crowdstrike Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:CRWD) and thinks the company will have a strong second half of the year.
“CrowdStrike is a horse. One year after it had a computer glitch, not a hack, that shut down millions of computers across the globe, it’s coming back incredibly strong. CEO George Kurtz hates to lose, and his worldwide apology tour to grieve customers saved a lot of business and may even bring about more business than he had. You can bet that the second half of the year is going to be very strong for this stock.”
TimesSquare Capital Management U.S. Focus Growth Strategy stated the following regarding CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Among the wide variety of Information Technology companies, we prefer critical system providers, specialized component designers, systems that improve productivity or efficiency for their clients, and others that are growing their shares of corporate IT budgets. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) provides cybersecurity solutions. Its unified platform offers cloud-delivered protection of endpoints, cloud workloads, identity, and data. The company delivered solid fiscal third quarter results that exceeded the high end of guidance and boosted its share price by 22%. Notably, there was resilient gross revenue retention that highlights CrowdStrike’s best in class product offering. New business win rates remained consistent and trending upwards. Following its mid-July outage, many customers have upgraded to the Falcon Flex program, which enables them to adopt a broader product offering.”
7. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 81
Jim Cramer in a latest program on CNBC recommended investors to buy Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ). Here is how Cramer made the bull case for the stock:
“One thing is they do have the most domestic manufacturing, so if you do believe there’ll be a hit, they’re not going to get the hit proportionally. J&J is still one of the great premier developers of fantastic drugs. It’s got a—it sells at 14 times earnings. I believe that its talc problems are now behind it because they’re going to take them one by one. They’ve only lost one case. What a great opportunity to buy a great, great American company.”
6. UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE:UNH)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 112
Ahead of UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE:UNH) earnings report, Jim Cramer talked about the company and said it can do “whatever it wants” under the current US administration. Cramer called the decline in the stock a buying opportunity.
“United Health reports this week and it was down today. That’s a bit of a rarity in itself, and to me, that makes for a terrific buying opportunity. I think the largest health insurer can do whatever it wants under this administration. Not making a judgment, just telling you as it is.”
UNH shares plunged after the company reported results that missed Wall Street estimates and decreased its guidance at the midpoint amid higher care activity. However, the bulls believe it’s a buying opportunity. The long-term drivers for the stock and balance sheet of the company remain strong. Due to the recent pullback, the stock’s forward P/E ratio is now the sector average of roughly 16. Another key measure is the FWD P/CF, which is nearly 25% lower than the sector average.
Parnassus Growth Equity Fund stated the following regarding UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“We sold two Health Care positions during the quarter, pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca and insurerUnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH). UnitedHealth’s business model is becoming higher-risk, which coupled with slowing Medicare Advantage growth and regulatory uncertainty led to us exiting the position.
After the UnitedHealth stock price recovered to its historical multiple in early November, we felt it was an opportune time to sell based on our concerns about slowing Medicare Advantage growth and the company’s growing business complexity and risk.”
5. Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 121
Josh Brown, CEO at Ritholtz Wealth Management, said in a latest program on CNBC that he’s buying Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX) shares because the company has shown resilience in the current bear market.
“It’s been a remarkable name in the tape this year. It’s only 8% below a 52-week high. The median communication stock is 17% below the 52-week high. RSI is still 58. So in a market where almost everything’s got a relative strength right now of like 40s, 50s—nothing special—this stock stands apart from almost everything else. There’s a piece in the Journal that I think everyone should read about the discussion taking place at Netflix’s annual business review meeting. They’re talking about literally doubling revenue by the year 2030, which is only 5 years away, and they’re talking about joining the $1 trillion market cap club. Market cap right now is about 400 billion. I think that this is the most defensible technology company, almost to the point where it’s a—it’s a consumer defensive stock.”
Harding Loevner Global Developed Markets Equity Strategy stated the following regarding Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“During the quarter, we benefited from strong stocks within the Communication Services and Consumer Discretionary sectors. Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) was our top relative contributor; the company provided a favorable outlook for subscriber growth in 2025 and made progress in two key areas, live TV and advertising. The streaming service broadcast its first sporting events, including two National Football League games on Christmas, and said that the ad-supported plan it launched two years ago amassed 70 million subscribers, more than investors expected.”
4. Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 158
Gil Luria, D.A. Davidson Managing Director, was recently asked on CNBC what Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) can do to mitigate the impact of tariffs. Here is what the analyst said:
“They’re going to have to accelerate the move to countries that are friendlier in terms of the new tariff regime in the new world that we’re going to live in. That starts with countries like India and Vietnam, but it continues to Mexico and other countries that Apple is going to have to move much of its production over the next few years. It started the process of diversifying, but that’s a multi-year process. So that’s why we’re hearing of urgent flights of planes full of iPhones out of India, because Apple has to move away. If we are going to decouple from China, which is still the likelihood, Apple has to move away from producing in China. It has to produce as little as possible there, maybe just for domestic consumption, in order to navigate the longer term. In the short term, it has some levers pushing expenses to suppliers, eating a little margins, passing some price increases to consumers. It’s going to be a rough year for Apple.”
Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) is desperately in need of new catalysts. The company’s revenue in China fell 8% in fiscal year 2024, following a 2% decline the previous year. The Chinese market accounts for about 15% of Apple’s total revenue, so this downtrend cannot be ignored.
Investors had hopes from the Wearables, Home, and Accessories segment, but so far, its performance has been weak. Vision Pro faces tough competition from Meta’s $500 Quest and the more affordable Quest 3S, making it hard to justify its $3,500 price tag. The failure of Apple’s HomePod, unable to compete with Amazon’s and Google’s lower-priced offerings, further highlights the challenges in this market.
Apple’s iPhone 16 has not shown promising growth prospects yet, and investors are still in a wait-and-see mode on the AI platform.
Columbia Seligman Global Technology Fund stated the following regarding Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“The fund maintained a position in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) throughout the quarter through the release of the company’s new iPhone 16 in September. Company leaders were excited about the release of the new model, as this is the first model that will feature enhanced AI capabilities through the Apple Intelligence features. Sales for the first few weeks in October and November trailed behind year over year sales from the iPhone 15, as availability of Apple Intelligence was not compatible with all iPhone models. Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI that has allowed the integration of ChatGPT into the Apple ecosystem, separate from the core Apple Intelligence features. This partnership highlights continued progress from Apple to introduce AI capabilities into its products and we expect the iPhone 17 to have even more expansive AI capabilities, increasing potential demand for the new model that is on track to be released in 2025.”
3. Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 160
Josh Brown, CEO at Ritholtz Wealth Management, explained in a latest program on CNBC why he sold his entire position in Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG). The analyst believes Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) will be “fine” but the company is losing its position of strength:
“It’s never had to compete the way that it does now and younger generations are jumping literally right into ChatGPT when they want to know something. They’re not looking for blue links and sponsored links and ads—they look, they just want the answer. And so like Google’s going to have to come up with an answer to that. And I think that’s reflected in the multiple that the stock now sells at. I think other people understand that this is not a unique insight to me. I think it’s gonna be a defensive year and I think, you know, when you look at who is most reliant on advertising revenue amongst large cap tech, it’s really Meta and it’s and it’s Alphabet. And arguably the Meta moat around Instagram is stronger than the Google moat around Google Search. So I think it’s just that simple.”
Alphabet impressed Wall Street with its latest quarterly results and threw water on search business-related concerns. Google posted 12% top-line growth. Google Search & Other grew just under 10% year over year. The company holds $85 billion in net cash and marketable securities, plus an additional $50 million in long-term investments. That means about 4% of its market cap is backed by net cash.
Despite key threats, Google is in a strong position to win in the AI search onslaught. Why? Its Gemini model has an edge over competitors because of the huge ecosystem Alphabet already has. For the end user, it’s easier to switch from traditional search to Gemini instead of moving to a completely new app like ChatGPT or Perplexity. So far, AI competition hasn’t dented the company’s search revenue.
The market has been ignoring Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s key secondary businesses and the stock remains undervalued despite concerns around AI search and regulatory onslaught.
Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s secondary ventures in AI, autonomous driving, and other areas are making solid progress, especially in the Waymo robotaxi segment. Waymo has shown notable progress. Waymo vehicles now average about 30.6 autonomous rides per day—substantially higher than Uber’s average of 4.18 rides per driver daily, based on Uber’s 31 million daily trips and 7.4 million drivers last quarter. This performance underscores Waymo’s competitive edge in autonomous ride volume compared to traditional ride-hailing.
Wedgewood Partners stated the following regarding Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in its Q1 2025 investor letter:
“Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) also detracted from performance during the quarter, despite of +13% growth in its core search business and over +20% growth in segment income for Google Services. The Company’s search results are beginning to beneit from the addition of “GenAI” (generative arti icial intelligence) responses being added, which monetize at a nearly similar rate as traditional search results do. Alphabet’s Google subsidiary serves billions of users per day, so it is no mean feat to be able to offer GenAI to users free of charge. Google has long been at the forefront of AI hardware and software R&D, irst rolling out its Tensor Processing Units (TPU) to run machine-learning operations across massive datasets almost a decade ago. The Company should be able to continue to drive growth thanks to these large long-term investments in AI and other technical software and infrastructure.”
2. NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 193
Dan Niles, Niles Investment Management founder, said in a latest program on CNBC that NVIDIA’s Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) $5.5 billion inventory write-down following US export restrictions on the company shows that the company is facing demand issues.
“The first thing that crossed my mind was okay so you’re trying to sell a Ferrari whose top speed is 90 mph not 200. Well, you have to write that down to zero. You can’t find any other takers for this when supposedly the bull case is demand is far outstripping supply and you can sell—you know, supply is the limiting issue. So that’s the first thing that struck me is why are they taking a $5.5 billion write-down? But again, we’ve had a lot of data points on the other side such as Microsoft, you know, walking away from data center leases, power contracts, etc. And the innovations by DeepSeek which cuts cost to produce tokens by over 90% that are now being used in US models like Meta and you go “Okay, you know, I’ve been saying for a while there’s an AI digestion phase coming this year and there’s probably some signs that it—that it’s actually here, that they can’t resell these chips anywhere else in the world, despite supposedly demand being so amazing.”
The market will keep punishing Nvidia for not coming up to its gigantic (and sometimes unrealistic) growth expectations. About 50% of the company’s revenue comes from large cloud providers, which are rethinking their plans amid the DeepSeek launch and looking for low-cost chips. Nvidia’s Q1 guidance shows a 9.4% QoQ revenue growth, down from the previous 12% QoQ growth. Its adjusted margin is expected to be down substantially as well to 71%. The market does not like it when Nvidia fails to post a strong quarterly beat. The stock will remain under pressure in the coming quarters when the company will report unimpressive growth.
Nvidia is facing challenges at several levels. Competition is one of them. Major competitors like Apple, Qualcomm, and AMD are vying for TSMC’s 3nm capacity, which could limit Nvidia’s access to these chips. Why? Because Nvidia also uses TSMC’s 3nm process nodes. Nvidia is also facing direct competition from other giants that are deciding to make their own chips. Amazon, with its Trainium2 AI chips, offer alternatives. Trainium2 chips could provide cost savings and superior computational power, which could shift AI workloads away from Nvidia’s offerings. Apple is reportedly working with Broadcom to develop an AI server processor. Intel is also trying hard to get back into the game with Jaguar Shores GPU, set to be produced on its 18A or 14A node.
Alger Spectra Fund stated the following regarding NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) in its Q1 2025 investor letter:
“NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is a leading supplier of graphics processing units (GPUs) for a variety of end markets, such as gaming, PCs, data centers, virtual reality, and high-performance computing. The company is leading in most secular growth categories in computing, and especially artificial intelligence and super-computing parallel processing techniques for solving complex computational problems. In our view, Nvidia’s computational power is a critical enabler of AI and therefore essential to AI adoption. During the quarter, shares detracted from performance due to several factors. In January 2025, investor concerns grew regarding the emergence of advanced AI models from China, reportedly developed at lower costs and with reduced computing requirements, raising doubts about Nvidia’s market dominance. Additionally, U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of new tariffs targeting industries increased worries about higher operational costs. Despite these headwinds, Nvidia reported robust fiscal fourth-quarter results, highlighted by significant revenue growth driven by its data center segment. On the earnings call, CEO Jensen Huang emphasized the increasing computational requirements of future AI models, noting, “The more computation, the more the model thinks, the smarter the answer,” and adding that future reasoning models could demand substantially more compute resources. We believe Nvidia’s leadership in scaling AI infrastructure—including advancements in inference and reasoning during inference—continues to drive adoption among enterprises and startups, ensuring sustained demand for its high performance chips and software solutions. As older-generation chips are repurposed and new clusters deployed, we see Nvidia as well-positioned to capitalize on rising computational needs across AI applications.”
1. Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 279
Jim Cramer in a latest program on CNBC talked about Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) and said the company has been out of the limelight. Cramer thinks the company “wrecked” the data center story by putting a pause on its data center projects in Ohio. He also mentioned a latest analyst note pointing to slowing Azure growth:
“But Morgan Stanley comes out with a piece… talking about how Azure is going to probably not make the number. Azure has been the swing point. We thought that Azure might—that know that’s their big cloud business. We thought it might accelerate. That was the key to betting why you want to be in the stock was acceleration, because the stock’s just been abysmal.”
Alger Spectra Fund stated the following regarding Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) in its Q1 2025 investor letter:
“Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is a beneficiary of corporate America’s transformative digitization. The company operates through three segments: Productivity and Business Processes (Office365, LinkedIn, and Dynamics), Intelligent Cloud (Server Products and Cloud Services, Azure, and Enterprise Services), and More Personal Computing (Windows, Devices, Gaming, and Search). During the quarter, shares detracted from performance as Azure revenue growth missed analyst estimates, marking the third consecutive quarter of modest disappointment in this segment. However, AI-related sales growth exceeded expectations, accounting for 13% of Azure’s quarterly growth. Management also maintained their fiscal third quarter earnings guidance while highlighting improved operating profitability and lower tax rates. Despite the disappointing quarter, we remain confident in Microsoft’s ability to sustain its leadership position in AI.”
While we acknowledge the potential of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that under the radar AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than MSFT but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
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