Jim Cramer opened Monday’s Mad Money episode with the observation that CEOs gathered at the NFL’s Super Bowl game weren’t just there for football. They were there to talk business, politics, and the economy. According to Cramer, their conversations revealed what’s truly shaping corporate America’s mindset right now, with the biggest one having to do with the current U.S. President:
“Nobody can figure out Donald Trump. These CEOs are baffled… They like that he’s attacking the federal bureaucracy, but they don’t understand why Elon Musk is wasting time on the small stuff.”
He also noticed that they appear more relaxed, confident and bullish under the new regime, compared to the previous one under Biden.
“There’s been a shocking amount of new business going on… CEOs no longer feel like the government is out to get them. Even Democratic donors can’t believe how disrespected they were by the Biden White House.”
He also pointed out that all CEOs think Wall Street valuations are stretched, although Cramer is still bullish.
“They almost all think the stock market’s too high, but their own stocks are too low. When I tell them the market’s actually undervalued and I like their stocks, they nod. But they think I’m a dreamer.”
Finally, of course, the big theme was around Trump’s tariffs and their impact on the markets.
“They all hate Trump’s tariff plans. These CEOs think they’re disorganized, don’t make sense, won’t raise money, and are terrible for business. They’re free traders at heart and totally baffled by Trump’s agenda.”
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 15 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money aired on February 18. We listed the stocks in the order that Cramer mentioned them. We also provided hedge fund sentiment for each stock as of the third quarter of 2024, which was taken from Insider Monkey’s database of 900 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 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
15. NVIDIA Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 224
While talking about the conversations with the CEOs at the Super Bowl game, Cramer emphasized how all of them are still talking about Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA).
“They all want to know about Nvidia. They’re shocked at how Jensen Huang became king overnight, but I always tell them: He didn’t come out of nowhere. He’s been grinding for years, and now it’s paying off. They were shocked at how the media portrayed the Chinese as being well ahead of Nvidia, even though Meta, Amazon, Tesla, and Alphabet keep ordering billions and billions of dollars worth of Nvidia technology.”
Cramer also believes that big players in the market already know about the company’s Chinese competitor Deep Seek and they still regard Nvidia as one of the best American stocks.
“Do you think these Titans didn’t know about Deep Seek and they were buying Nvidia anyway? Give me a break. That was the only conclusion. […] They’re in awe of Jensen. They regard him as the classic American success story and they’re cheering for him. They always say, ‘Bought the stock.’ They see Nvidia as untouchable. The AI boom has made them indispensable, and despite all the noise about competition, the big players keep buying.”
