On Thursday, Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Money, addressed the growing concerns surrounding the current tariff policies. He questioned the effectiveness of these tariffs as he asked:
“What’s the deal with these heavy-handed tariffs? Look, I’ve never been a dogmatic free trader. I believe in fair trade, a pretty fierce belief just so you know and we can only get that by lowering the boom on our trading partners who rip us off as a matter of policy.”
READ ALSO: Jim Cramer’s Take on These 10 Stocks and Jim Cramer’s Lightning Round: 8 Stocks in Focus.
Cramer explained that while he has always supported the idea of tariffs in principle, especially when they are part of a well-thought-out strategy, he expressed frustration over how the new trade regime is being executed. He said he was taken aback by how poorly the administration was rolling out these changes, which he felt lacked a clear and coherent plan. Cramer then pointed out what James Surowiecki, the author of The Wisdom of Crowds, said about how the White House is calculating tariffs.
“The White House simply took our trade deficit with each country and then divided it by that country’s exports to America. Then they cut that number in half to determine the tariff rate we’d be slapping on the country in question.”
Cramer noted that just hours later, an unnamed official from the White House confirmed this and described it as “the sum of all unfair trade practices, the sum of all cheating.” Cramer called it ill-advised. Later in the day, President Trump made a statement suggesting that he might be open to reducing tariffs if presented with “phenomenal” offers. However, Cramer raised an important question: “Who determines what those offers are, and what do they even mean?” He admitted that he had no clear answer to that question.
“Here’s the bottom line: I wish I could get behind this new tariff regime because I’ve never been a free trader ever. But the White House doesn’t seem to understand what it’s trying to do and the not-really-reciprocal tariffs we got yesterday could do tremendous damage to the US economy, of course including the stock market, without changing the bad behavior of our trading partners. To me, this has become a lose-lose, which is very tough to accept because I wanted tariffs to change things, not to wreck things.”
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 10 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money aired on April 3. We listed the stocks in ascending order of their hedge fund sentiment as of the fourth quarter of 2024, which was taken from Insider Monkey’s database of over 1,000 hedge funds.
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 Stocks on Jim Cramer’s Radar Recently
10. ABM Industries Incorporated (NYSE:ABM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 14
A caller asked Cramer’s thoughts on ABM Industries Incorporated (NYSE:ABM) and he commented:
“I like that stock… Do you know… that no one in the 20 years of this show has ever asked me about a stock that I just like plain and simple? You’ve got a good one. It’s a janitorial as you alluded to, lighting, parking, security. This is the kind of company that Trump cannot hurt. He can wake up and say, how do I destroy ABM? And he can’t. It’s Trump proof.”
ABM Industries (NYSE:ABM) provides a wide range of integrated services, including janitorial, engineering, parking, and vehicle maintenance. The company posted its first-quarter fiscal 2025 results on March 12. It generated $2.1 billion in revenue, which was a 2.2% increase compared to the same period last year. It was driven by a 1.6% rise in organic growth and additional revenue from acquisitions.
ABM Industries (NYSE:ABM) net income for the quarter was $43.6 million, or $0.69 per diluted share, slightly lower than the previous year’s net income of $44.7 million, or $0.70 per diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA for the period was reported to be $120.6 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 5.9%.
9. Ubiquiti Inc. (NYSE:UI)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 23
Noting its strong margins, a caller asked for Cramer’s current thoughts on Ubiquiti Inc. (NYSE:UI). Cramer replied:
“They do, but it’s [an] expensive stock and what we’re going to do is we’re not going to pay up for those stocks going forward. That’s the problem.”
Ubiquiti Inc. (NYSE:UI) creates networking technologies for service providers, businesses, and consumers. The company offers products like wireless infrastructure, video surveillance systems, and routing solutions. It also provides platforms for high-speed internet, security, and communication.
