In this piece, we will look at the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed.
In a recent appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer discussed his takeaways from last week’s GTC conference. The event saw Wall Street’s top AI GPU firm unveil its plans for enabling a robot revolution among others. Commenting on his experience, Cramer speculated that he would have understood the AI wave much better had he had an education in engineering instead of in the liberal arts:
“It was a week of intimidation. Because I’m a liberal arts person. . . .it has its advantages, I mean we’ve read Shakespeare, studied the Bible. . .but I had to have everything explained to me in order to be able to be in the room. But once it was explained to me, it was very clear that the bulls are right about AI. The bulls are right about the money it’s going to take and the speed it’s going to take. This is about need for speed now. And it’s a war among Grok and ChatGPT.”
While the conference came with big announcements, its impact on the stock market was negligible. March has been a tough month for stocks, with technology companies particularly failing to recover from a selloff that wiped $4 trillion in market value from the flagship S&P index over its post-election high. Cramer explained why tech stocks haven’t performed well. According to him:
“One of the reasons why the tech stocks have gotten hit is almost everyone’s convinced that if you import anything, there’s going to be 20% tax or 25% tax. So therefore, all numbers have to come down. If you could get a reprieve on that, then the multiple expansion on just regular, garden variety tech would be extraordinary. You’d have to put your money on that. It could lead over to Mag 7, yes. I think our great friend Mike Wilson, with his weekly warmup of Mag 7, I think it was a significant piece. And a lot of it has to do with this notion that these stocks have been made cheap, by both, by bonds, I think they’ve been made cheap by tariffs. So you would revert to them, rather than the lower quality stocks that make up the rest of the S&P 500 equal weight. I think that this is important David, because you know we’ve been taken up by companies that neither you nor I think are great companies. But they’re just, companies. Nothing special.”
Our Methodology
To make our list of the stocks that Jim Cramer talked about, we listed down the stocks he mentioned during CNBC’s Squawk on the Street aired on March 24th.
For these stocks, we also mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. 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).
11. QXO, Inc. (NASDAQ:QXO)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 33
QXO, Inc. (NASDAQ:QXO) is a software company that has been in the news this year because of its acquisition of roofing company Beacon Roofing. The firm’s shares are up by 13.4% over the past month after it succeeded with the offer. Cramer had been optimistic about the deal’s success even before the outcome was clear. After it closed, he commented that lower valuations in the home-building industry spurred QXO to make the offer. Cramer also believes that the new entity will now have to compete with Home Depot. Here are his latest comments:
“Brad Jacobs, we’re starting to get these companies, that are taking advantage of low valuations, and saying, I’m gonna build a super competitor in different verticals. This is a super competitor in . . super competitor in roofing is Brad Jacobs. These verticals could end up being very powerful. Or maybe they end up being bought by Home Depot.”
10. The AZEK Company Inc. (NYSE:AZEK)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 36
The AZEK Company Inc. (NYSE:AZEK) is a Chicago-based company that makes and sells housing products such as decks, rails, trims, lockers, and showers. The firm’s shares jumped by a massive 19.9% in March after James Hardie announced that it would buy the firm for a massive $8.8 billion price tag. The deal came after QXO’s multi-billion dollar acquisition of roofing company Beacon. In his remarks, Cramer commented on this trend and linked the deals:
“Azek is a very competitive company, it’s run by Jesse Singh, who used to be at 3M. . . put together this company out of private equity. The stock did trade at this level beforehand. . . .we’re starting to get these companies, that are taking advantage of low valuations, and saying, I’m gonna build a super competitor in different verticals.”
“No, I’ll tell you what does matter is this is an example and I want to bring it out. Of a lower valued company that does quite well, but people are just like Azek, like what do I need that company for? And it just kind of sits there, making money quietly, and the next thing you know, bingo, it gets a bid. Because the stock’s down substantially from where it was!”