We recently published a list of Jim Cramer Recently Talked About These 12 Companies. In this article, we are going to take a look at where NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer discussed recently.
Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money, warned investors on Friday that until there is more clarity regarding the tariff situation, they should brace for continued volatility. His comments followed a day where President Trump suggested that he might be open to flexibility regarding tariffs, leading to a modest rise in the markets.
“After an okay day where President Trump indicated that he might be willing to be flexible in the tariffs, a day where the Dow ultimately gained 32 points, the S&P advanced 0.08%, and then Nasdaq rose 0.52%. After a hideous opening, that made little sense. How do we handle this crazy environment? One way is to get out of the office as we did this week and talk to real business people.”
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Cramer went on to explain that although there are real bargains to be found in the market, investors are hesitant to take advantage of them due to a prevailing sense of fear driven by analysts, hedge funds, and journalists. He pointed out that this fear has been exacerbated by talk of a stagflation scenario.
While Cramer himself disagrees, he mentioned that this is a glass-is-half-full scenario, if not more. He expressed confidence that the tariff issue will eventually be resolved, and when it is, investors will likely be able to move forward without that overhang.
“You can see that stocks want to go higher. If we get just a little bit of a reason to be more positive about the looming April 2nd wave of tariffs, stocks can bounce. It doesn’t even have to be much.”
On Friday, during a midday press appearance from the Oval Office, President Trump used the word “flexibility” when discussing tariffs, stating, “The word flexibility is an important word. Sometimes it’s flexibility. So there’ll be flexibility, but basically it’s reciprocal.” Cramer admitted that this statement did not provide much new clarity, but noted that the market seemed to respond positively to the mention of flexibility. He personally shared that he likes the idea of flexibility as well.
“After all of the major averages were decidedly negative this morning, all then finished in positive territory proving once again that there is too much gloom.”
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 12 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money aired on March 21. We listed the stocks in ascending order of their hedge fund sentiment as of the fourth quarter of 2024, which was taken from Insider Monkey’s database of over 1,000 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 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 73
NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE) was mentioned during the episode, and here’s what Cramer had to say:
“This morning, investors were obsessing over the negative earnings updates that we got from the likes of Nike and FedEx… that the former was yet in another argument that the consumer’s rolling over while the guidance cut from the latter showed that well, commerce, in general, is slowing down.”
NIKE (NYSE:NKE) designs, produces, markets, and sells athletic footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories, and services, including products tailored for different sports. RiverPark Advisors stated the following regarding NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE): NKE shares were a top detractor in the quarter following better than expected fiscal second quarter results reported in December but worse than feared third quarter guidance. The company delivered $13.4 billion of revenue (roughly $1 billion better than expectations) and $1.9 billion of EBIT (roughly $500 million ahead of street consensus) and generated better than expected earnings of $1.03 (investors were looking for $0.78). Despite better operating metrics last quarter, the company dramatically lowered expectations for the fiscal third quarter including expectations for double-digit percentage declines in revenue. NKE’s new CEO, Elliot Hill, described several key issues negatively impacting the company’s growth trajectory including 1) a multi-year move away from a focus on sports, 2) a shift away from innovative demand creating marketing, 3) too much centralization, which has led to lack of execution capabilities in local markets, and 4) too much focus on Nike Digital, which negatively impacted the brands standing in the marketplace.
Nike is, by far, the leading athletic footwear, apparel, and equipment company in the world with over $50 billion in revenue, $6.7 billion in FY2024 annual free cash flow, and $10 billion of excess cash. We believe that over the long term, the global secular growth trend towards active wear will continue to aid Nike’s top-line growth driving gross and operating margin improvements and long-term mid-teens or higher annual EPS growth. In the short term, we believe that the company will work through the above headwinds and that revenue and earnings growth will reaccelerate in the next 12 months.”
Overall, NKE ranks 7th on our list of stocks that Jim Cramer discussed recently. While we acknowledge the potential of NKE 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 time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than NKE but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.