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.”
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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).
11. The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 81
Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) is one of the most prestigious investment banks and financial services firms in the world, known for its strong trading, asset management, and M&A operations. When asked about the stock last year, Cramer backed the company with confidence, brushing off concerns around CEO David Solomon and suggesting that the firm’s performance was more than holding up at the time.
“I would sell a quarter of it now. Why would I not be more aggressive on the sell side? I think the numbers are going to come through great. I’m more worried about a market pullback than I am about a pullback at Goldman Sachs, which I think is going to have a terrific quarter, and it’s just been smoking hot. And that David Solomon, that he’s not doing his job, oh that stuff was nonsense. They are doing fabulously.”
Goldman Sachs shares are up 30% since then, validating Cramer’s bullish view.
However, since The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) experienced a significant pullback in recent weeks, Jim Cramer has been a lot more reserved about the stock’s potential moving forward. Here are his comments from the 13th of March:
“The plummeting stock market means fewer IPOs, which is another big source of business for Goldman. So that’s why the stock’s come down 22% in the past few weeks… I think much of the risk may already been baked, not all of it, baked into the stock price. When Goldman peaked last month, it was trading at 14.5 times this year’s earning estimates. Now it’s trading at roughly 11.5 times this year’s estimate although the estimate’s probably come down.
Why stick with Goldman in the face of this newfound uncertainty? That’s an excellent question. Here’s my answer because I think it’s too soon to give up on merger mania… Meanwhile, some of the softer economic data has caused long-term interest rates to come down and that should be a boon to Goldman’s debt underwriting while also encouraging more mergers because many of these deals are paid for with borrowed money. Finally, I think Goldman’s best-in-class sales and trading operation… could be in a position to make a killing and miss all this volatility that we’ve seen over the past few weeks…
Look, if I’m right about that and I’m pretty confident about the thesis because these Goldman professionals are the best at what they do, then that strength could offset some of the softer performance from the traditional investment banking side. So for all these reasons, I’m still comfortable with Goldman Sachs, but I do think the stock could go lower because the market’s awful. Alright, but I like to buy low. I like to sell high.”
