Here is Why Jim Cramer is Warming Up To HCA Healthcare (HCA) Stock

We recently published a list of Jim Cramer Recently Put These 10 Stocks Under Spotlight. In this article, we are going to take a look at where HCA Healthcare, Inc. (NYSE:HCA) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer discussed recently.

On Monday, Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money, shared his thoughts on how the government’s approach to tariffs could play a crucial role in sustaining the stock market rally. Cramer expressed satisfaction with the current direction of policy.

“There’s what happened two weeks ago, two Thursdays ago, more accurately when the stock market official went into correction mode. Until the market broke down like that, I think the president was perfectly willing to hammer anybody just to get his way.”

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“I don’t think he (President Donald Trump) wants to punish good American companies that make things here.”

Cramer explained that he no longer thinks the president wants to harm American companies that manufacture goods domestically. He suggested that the shift in attitude is a relatively new development, and it may signal a more nuanced approach going forward. He noted that with the market’s recovery, it is possible that the conversation around protectionist tariffs will surface once again, but the context might have changed.

Cramer speculated that when the market entered correction mode, President Trump may have been influenced by the pleas from various observers about the damaging effects on stocks of good American companies.

“Here’s the bottom line: At the end of the day, America’s the only country on earth that’s played fair on trade. Everybody else breaks the rules to protect their domestic businesses. That’s hollowed out our industrial heartland. And that dynamic can only change if our government takes a more carrot-and-stick approach. Assuming Trump doesn’t go overboard, that might just be what we’ve got and it means stocks can finally stage a real rally again.”

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 March 24. 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).

Jim Cramer on HCA Healthcare (HCA): "Punished Enough - It’s Time to Buy!"

HCA Healthcare, Inc. (NYSE:HCA)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 81

A caller asked Cramer’s thoughts on HCA Healthcare, Inc. (NYSE:HCA) and he replied:

“Okay, HCA I think has been punished enough. It’s time to buy and I do think that your, your depiction of what happens every day is absolutely right and I feel it’s just, it’s not manipulation, but it’s a pain in, a pain in the butt.”

HCA Healthcare (NYSE:HCA) owns and operates hospitals and healthcare facilities across the United States, offering a wide range of medical, surgical, outpatient, and behavioral health services, including specialized care like cardiac, diagnostic, and rehabilitation treatments, as well as addiction and psychiatric services.

Diamond Hill Capital stated the following regarding HCA Healthcare, Inc. (NYSE:HCA) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:

“Among our bottom individual contributors in Q4 were HCA Healthcare, Inc. (NYSE:HCA) and Freeport-McMoRan. Health care facilities operator HCA Healthcare was negatively impacted in a couple of its markets by recent hurricanes. Further, shares have been pressured since the US election amid growing negative sentiment toward hospitals as investors anticipate potential reductions to safety-net programs such as Medicaid.”

Overall, HCA ranks 6th on our list of stocks that Jim Cramer discussed recently. While we acknowledge the potential of HCA 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. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than HCA but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.