We recently published a list of Jim Cramer Nailed These 11 Stock Picks. In this article, we are going to take a look at where AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer discusses.
On Thursday, April 3rd, the host of Mad Money opened the most recent show by addressing 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 Thoughts on Liberation Day, Tariffs, and 17 Stocks to Watch Right Now, and 10 Stocks on Jim Cramer’s Radar Recently
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 11 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during Mad Money episodes that aired 1 year ago between April 5 and April 12. We then calculated their performance for the past 12 months, until April 2nd, 2025, market close. We have also included the hedge fund sentiment for the stocks, which we sourced from Insider Monkey’s Q4 2024 database of over 900 hedge funds. The stocks are listed in the order that Cramer mentioned them.
Please note that this article mentions Jim Cramer’s previous opinions and may not account for any changes to his opinions regarding the stocks that are mentioned. It is primarily an examination of how his previously provided opinions have panned out.
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).
AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 95
AppLovin Corporation (NASDAQ:APP) is a mobile app and gaming adtech company that saw explosive growth over the past year. Cramer recognized its turnaround early and told investors the stock was just starting to get noticed.
“Man, that thing is a just a monster I’ve got to tell you though it is still not effectively valued and I know this sounds crazy because it is up so I don’t want you to buy here I don’t want you to buy I don’t want you buy. […] I don’t know what your basis is maybe you want to sell half to be able to lock in some things but this thing is doing so well after contained period where it wasn’t that people are just beginning to notice it you were early my friend.”
AppLovin is up a staggering 288% since that comment, making it one of Cramer’s biggest winners of the year.
However, Jim Cramer appeared more sceptical on the stock in more recent Mad Money episodes. Here’s what he said on the 28th of March:
“AppLovin is very controversial. Okay so let me just dispel one thing. When you have Craig Billings as the CEO of Wynn, as the head of the audit committee and also the lead director of AppLovin, then I’m going to believe the financials (inaudible). Is the stock expensive? It did have a great fourth quarter. Should someone else come in and take and take away their gross margins? I would like to go into that business and take them away. That company’s making, I say, over-earning is the biggest problem I have with AppLovin.”
Overall, APP ranks 1st on our list of stocks that Jim Cramer discusses. While we acknowledge the potential of APP 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. 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 APP but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the 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.
