We recently compiled a list of the Jim Cramer Latest Stocks: 23 Stocks He Just Talked About. 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 recently talked about.
With the Federal Reserve’s December meeting over, Wall Street has now shifted into a new paradigm. While the central bank did cut interest rates by 25 basis points in a widely anticipated move, the bank also signaled that 2025 might be accompanied by fewer interest rate cuts than many might have anticipated. In fact, not only are markets convinced that the Fed will cut less in 2025, but some even believe that the interest rates might be hiked especially since the central bank’s median 2025 inflation outlook is 2.5% which is higher compared to the earlier 2.1%.
While the Fed’s announcements and the press conference sent the flagship S&P index by 3.2%, Jim Cramer explained how the stock market as a whole isn’t doing that well. On the episode of Squawk On The Street the day of the interest cut, he stated “Look at the material stocks, look at anything related to industrial export. Look at the housing stocks. David, there are cohorts that are indeed rolling over. It isn’t like everything is just super strong and everything is quantum computing and Rocket Lab!”
Cramer added that while some believe that sections of the economy such as retail are strong, there might be a need to look deeper. “Look there’s this growing consensus not represented necessarily in these Fed fund futures but that just says why are they doing this? And I come back and say why are they doing this,” said Cramer, adding “So I think that the talking heads, and boy are there ever a lot of talking heads, have decided that look that if you look at what we’re seeing in some retailers, things are strong. By the way in retail, it’s not strong either if you count colds.”
Going against the trend, he stressed the need to look into the data to find the right stocks. According to him, “I don’t know where these people get that things are strong, they look at the aggregate numbers, I look at the individual companies, I am trying to find companies that are strong.” Cramer was also perplexed by the Atlanta Fed’s Q4 3.2% GDP growth estimates. He shared that he’s “trying to find why. I’m trying to find where that is. You know David that travel’s very strong yeah. Leisure’s very strong. Dining out’s very strong. These are strong and by the way, they’re very obvious, they look obvious to the Atlanta Fed. I don’t know what kind of weighting they have but wow.”
The American economy wasn’t the only economy on Cramer’s mind. While he might be having a hard time believing the GDP estimates, there isn’t a doubt in his mind that the US is the best place to invest. Cramer shared that he’s “trying to find countries, maybe Argentina making a comeback, but it’s very difficult to find a country that I would invest in,” but it’s very difficult to “find a country that isn’t upset in turmoil or something.”
Speaking of other countries, Cramer believes that China “is behind so much of what’s going wrong. But they are never, other than [BY] Peter Navarro, called out.” On how the “media and other coverage says that China is in a depression,” Cramer has “to believe it because I don’t believe a single number they send. We used to be able to look at their electric power. . . . .how about when they used to do employment of youth.”
One economic sector that he’s worried about is the automobile industry. Cramer doesn’t “understand why the problems with autos are not so visible among the cognoscenti,” something he believes is very important since autos “is a huge industry. Employs a lot of people. And the layoffs and the ramifications of what could happen here and other mergers.” China is “getting away with murder, they really are, they’re getting away with wiping out industries all over the world,” Cramer said, adding that “there’s only one guy who actually stands up them, and even he was saying that he has a good relationship with Xi. And that is President-elect Trump.”
However, on an optimistic note, Cramer believes that the “Mag 7 seems almost immune even to China. Which they never really got into.”
Our Methodology
To make our list of the latest stocks on Jim Cramer’s mind, we made a list of the stocks he talked about during a fresh episode of CNBC’s Squawk In The Morning.
For these stocks, we also mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds invest in? 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 In Q3 2024: 69
Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG) is a well-known fast food company that sells Mexican cuisine. The firm has spent 2024 executing a growth strategy that aims to add at least 8% a year to its store count. In 2025, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG) expects to open anywhere between 315 to 345 restaurants and focus on digital sales for margin-friendly revenue. It has also focused on price increases in 2024 and raised prices by roughly 2% to battle food inflation. The price hike has hurt Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. (NYSE:CMG) as its Q3 comparable sales grew by 6% and missed estimates by 6.3% Cramer gushed about the firm’s former CEO Brian Niccol who left his role in August:
“Of course, they had that giant split. But if you take a look at about when Niccol came in, uh and we should look at that, a ten year chart on Chipotle, you’ll see that Chipotle was in this bad shape.
“Chipotle was almost in as bad shape as Starbucks. And Brian turned that around very very quickly. Remember he came from, . . .Yum!, and I remember asking him, I said something like the Yum! burrito has like a 147 ingredients and yours has 80. And he says, well, what does it matter? I’m at Chipotle now. And his campaigns at Yum! were brilliant. He moves over to Chipotle, first thing he does is tackle the health and safety issues.”
Overall CMG ranks 11th on our list of the stocks Jim Cramer recently talked about. 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: 8 Best Wide Moat Stocks to Buy Now and 30 Most Important AI Stocks According to BlackRock.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
