We recently published an article titled Jim Cramer’s Game Plan: 15 Stocks in Focus. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG) stands against the other stocks.
Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Money, discussed the upcoming market and corporate activity to look forward to this week, which will be dominated by earnings reports from various companies and an important inflation report from the Labor Department.
Cramer noted that Friday marked the heavy market focus on the prospect of the White House imposing tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada, and China. As expected, the tariffs were announced, 25% from Mexico and Canada, and 10% from China, and the market, which had already been struggling, dropped further.
READ ALSO Jim Cramer Looked Closely At These 10 Stocks and Jim Cramer’s Thoughts on These 7 Stocks
Cramer noted that the Dow plunged by 337 points, the S&P 500 fell 0.5%, and the Nasdaq declined by 0.28%. Adding fuel to the fire, President Trump later commented that he was “not concerned about the market’s reaction.” Cramer, reflecting on this, wished he could share that same sense of ease. He added:
“Finally, on Friday, we get the Labor Department’s non-farm payroll and right now the Fed is concerned that the economy might be running too hot. If we get robust job growth with higher wages, then I doubt we’ll see any rate hikes in the first half of the year.”
He then posed the question: if investors are hoping for a rising stock market, what would they want to see? Cramer explained that a job report that’s just “so-so” would be ideal, strong enough to keep rate cuts on the table, but not so strong as to hinder quarterly earnings.
“Bottom line: When you get a week that’s packed with important earnings reports and the monthly employment report plus the tariff news, you’re usually better off sitting on your hands because there’s just too much data for any individual to process even for an AI-powered individual. By the way, oh, let’s just throw in this DeepSeek stuff, which has made tech too maddening to buy or sell and too, let’s say boring. So if in doubt, do nothing.”
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 15 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money on January 31. 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).
A chef plating up a wide variety of dishes for a restaurant chain.
Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 69
Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG) was mentioned by Cramer during the episode as he said:
“Now, we’ve been focused on a handful of great restaurant chains lately, especially the incredible rally of Brinker, which you know as Chili’s. The premier growth stock in the group though has always been Chipotle, but somehow it’s been lost in the shuffle here.
Now maybe this is a chance to get back in before the next big move higher. Buying Chipotle on weakness is generally the right call, like forever. Of course, it has a new CEO Scott Boatwright, but he is an old Chipotle hand, and the rest of the crew’s intact, including friend of the show Jack Hartung, former CFO, now president and chief strategy officer. It might be time to start a position.”
Chipotle (NYSE:CMG) runs a well-known restaurant chain that focuses on offering a range of Mexican-inspired meals. The company expects mid to high single-digit comparable restaurant sales growth for 2024, along with the opening of 285 to 315 new company-operated locations, over 80% of which will feature Chipotlanes. For 2025, it plans to open 315 to 345 new locations, with more than 80% again incorporating Chipotlanes.
Overall CMG ranks 9th on our list of the stocks featured in Jim Cramer’s Game Plan. While we acknowledge the potential of CMG as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than CMG 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 Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap.
Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey.