We recently published a list of 10 Stocks on Jim Cramer’s Radar Recently. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE:FCX) stands against other stocks that are on Jim Cramer’s radar.
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).
Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE:FCX)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 88
A caller asked if they should hold Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE:FCX) and Cramer replied:
“Yeah, I want you to hold it. I mean, it was really a shame what happened to FCX. FCX has been going up because we needed it for data centers and the Chinese were ordering some. Suddenly we’ve decided the Chinese aren’t going to order any and the stock has given up so much of its gain… I think that this is a very good level to buy some. But if you want to really hedge it, why not buy Barrick? Because Barrick, symbol GOLD, has gold and copper. That might be the best way to go.”
Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE:FCX) focuses on extracting mineral resources in North America, South America, and Indonesia. The company primarily deals with copper, gold, molybdenum, silver, and other metals. Interestingly enough, only last week, Cramer commented:
“Alright, I think copper’s going higher and one of the reasons why I like it, by the way… China’s coming back. They’re the biggest user of copper. But also something that Jensen Huang told me, from Nvidia, he said, listen, copper is just the right thing to have in the data center. I was hoping it’ll be replaced by glass… Two-thirds of the copper is used by China and China’s making a comeback here. At least parts are trying to make it a comeback.”
Overall, FCX ranks 1st on our list of stocks that are on Jim Cramer’s radar. While we acknowledge the potential of FCX as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that 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 FCX but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
