We recently published a list of Was Jim Cramer Right About These 12 Stocks?. In this article, we are going to take a look at where ON Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ:ON) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer discussed 6 months ago during his show on July 29, 2024, and examine whether he was right or wrong about those stocks.
Back then, Cramer was talking about the “great broadening” which he described as the event where every stock was rallying except for the large cap stocks. He said:
“This market is not experiencing a small cap rally, it’s experiencing a rally in everything else but the tech titans.”
He also pointed out that many small-cap stocks were being bought indiscriminately through index funds like the Russell 2000, the S&P Small Cap 600, and the S&P Mid Cap 400.
“The big institutions don’t have time to examine all these different small-cap stocks, they just buy the index itself as an entity because it’s still historically cheap, even after this rally.”
That’s the essence of the broadening—some real treasures and some real trash getting scooped up together. He then explained:
“The treasure being companies that do better when interest rates go down like when the Fed starts cutting.”
Unlike the cash-rich tech giants that don’t need lower interest rates, small caps benefit tremendously from falling rates. That’s why investors were selling their big-tech winners from earlier in the year and cycling into cheaper small-cap stocks.
Jim Cramer was particularly enthusiastic about this narrative back then and said that investors should “celebrate the market’s good breadth”.
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 12 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money on July 29, 2024. We then calculated their performance from July 29th, 2024, market close to February 4th, 2025, market close. We have also included the hedge fund sentiment for the stocks, which we sourced from Insider Monkey’s Q3 2024 database of over 900 hedge funds. The stocks are listed in the order that Cramer mentioned them.
Note: This article covers Jim Cramer’s commentary from July 29, 2024, and does not account for any changes in his opinions regarding the stocks mentioned. Therefore, the commentary should not be mistaken for his latest opinions on any of the stocks that are mentioned.
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).
On Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ:ON)
Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 45
ON Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ:ON) had a history of disappointing earnings, and expectations were low. But this time, the company beat estimates, delivering a solid quarter and an 11% stock rally. Cramer mentioned in his old episode about how the trend was changing:
“ON Semiconductor reported and we’ve gotten used to it missing the numbers. It’s kind of like a old shoe missing numbers at this point but not this time.”
He then quoted the company’s CEO Hassane El-Khoury who pointed to stabilizing demand in core markets, adding that China was recovering in both industrial and auto.
Cramer’s verdict? The rotation out of Nvidia (NVDA) and into the rest of the chip space was in full effect. He saw ON Semi (NASDAQ:ON) as a major beneficiary, saying:
“You’ll see a wholesale redistribution from the once loved Nvidia to everything else.”
However, the stock has been taking a beating since then, being down by 35%. Jim has been more cautious on the semiconductor stocks recently, saying:
“The semiconductor cohort is all over the place. The ones selling into the AI team are still doing pretty well, but anything cyclical like Texas Instruments or ON Semi has, it had a real tough go.”
Overall, ON ranks 8th on our list of stocks that Jim Cramer discussed 6 months ago. While we acknowledge the potential of ON 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 ON 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.