We recently published a list of 14 Stocks That Jim Cramer Recently Talked About. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer recently talked about.
In his latest appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer continued to talk about the incoming Trump administration’s tariffs. Coupled with the Fed’s data-driven interest rates cycle, tariffs have created quite a stir on Wall Street as investors are wary of them contributing to inflationary pressures and making the central bank hesitate when it comes to reducing rates.
He believes that one of the key issues surrounding tariffs is the interconnection between the US and China. Cramer shared that “I know many business people have talked to President-elect Trump and they’ve said, ‘It’s not as simple as steel. Steel’s a hundred thousand people, I mean some of these companies have three hundred, four hundred thousand people themselves. I think the problem is we’re so intertwined and a lot of people felt, you know what, when President Trump, or when he was President Trump, you basically felt you were supposed to go from China to Mexico. Seemed like a good deal. And Mexico seemed like, favored.”
Since then, Cramer shared that the sentiment around Mexico has changed. According to him, the same people are now wondering “Why did we go to this country that apparently doesn’t like.” He also shed light on the relationship between China and Mexico and shared that “China and Mexico are strange bedfellows. China’s been flooding the country with autos! And, what we did was we moved all of our auto production down there! Also Germany, you go to Puebla, and it’s Volkswagen!” He added that this makes implementing tariffs tricky as “it’s just that the cars go back and forth, and back and forth, where, where do we put the tariff on? Where to we take it off?”
However, while the market might be worried about the broader impact of tariffs, businesses are also excited about growing merger and acquisition activity. Cramer outlined that “very quickly, people just say, you know what, look, tariffs are so convoluted that something has to happen. But the idea that they can talk to other companies and maybe combine, they want that so badly.”
Apart from his takes on stocks, some of Cramer’s most controversial views are of cryptocurrencies. While he doesn’t advocate completely shunning them, the tight-knit crypto community either panics when he’s bullish for Bitcoin due to the well-known inverse Cramer effect or wonders why he doesn’t advocate holding more crypto as part of a portfolio. In a recent episode of Mad Money, Cramer shared some of his latest thoughts about crypto:
“I’ve always endorsed keeping up to 10% of your portfolio in gold as a kind of insurance against the world’s lunacy. But for years now, I’ve also been saying Bitcoin’s a fine alternative to gold for that 10% position. Why not? I think the federal budget deficit is at impossible levels. I don’t want to be wedded to a currency backed by the full faith and credit of a country that owes $36 trillion.”
Cramer reiterated that there’s more to investing than simply “just owning cryptocurrencies.” In fact, he believes that buying stocks can potentially lead to an investor making more money than buying cryptocurrencies. “Bitcoin’s part of the most obviously diversified portfolio in recent history,” believes Cramer. “Buying and holding stocks can be just as lucrative as buying Bitcoin six days after Biden dropped out of the race. Or maybe, just maybe, it can make you even more money.” Another Mad Money episode saw him stress that he has held Bitcoin for years as Cramer shared:
“I want to discuss Bitcoin, really. I do—not to the detriment of stocks but in addition to stocks. I come to praise Bitcoin, not buy it. First, let’s dispel the idea that I’ve never believed in Bitcoin. Now, if you search YouTube, you can see that I first bought Bitcoin on September 15, 2020, when it was at just over $10,000.”
Our Methodology
To make our list of stocks that Jim Cramer is talking about, we listed down stocks he commented on during at latest episode of CNBC’s Squawk on the Street and tweeted about.
For these stocks, we also mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds invest in? 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 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points. (see more details here).
A research facility with medical professionals surrounded by diagnostic equipment.
Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q3 2024: 54
Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) is a specialty medical raw materials provider that caters to the needs of the gene testing industry. As its target market is susceptible to high rates, the shares have gained a modest 8% year-to-date, and these gains have come on the back of a 10.5% rise since mid-November. The rise occurred after UK regulators approved Vertex’s gene therapy for Sickle Cell disease which signaled to investors that the market for Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN)’s products could grow in the future. After jumping by 2.3% after trading opened, the firm’s shares lost most of these gains. Cramer commented on the firm’s removal from the NASDAQ 100 index:
“Illumina you could argue it’s China.”
Overall, ILMN ranks 9th on our list of stocks that Jim Cramer recently talked about. While we acknowledge the potential of ILMN as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some 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 ILMN 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.