Jim Cramer on Tesla, Inc. (TSLA): It’s More About the Ethos Than the Cars

We recently published a list of 14 Stocks That Jim Cramer Recently Talked About. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer recently talked about.

In his latest appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer continued to talk about the incoming Trump administration’s tariffs. Coupled with the Fed’s data-driven interest rates cycle, tariffs have created quite a stir on Wall Street as investors are wary of them contributing to inflationary pressures and making the central bank hesitate when it comes to reducing rates.

He believes that one of the key issues surrounding tariffs is the interconnection between the US and China. Cramer shared that “I know many business people have talked to President-elect Trump and they’ve said, ‘It’s not as simple as steel. Steel’s a hundred thousand people, I mean some of these companies have three hundred, four hundred thousand people themselves. I think the problem is we’re so intertwined and a lot of people felt, you know what, when President Trump, or when he was President Trump, you basically felt you were supposed to go from China to Mexico. Seemed like a good deal. And Mexico seemed like, favored.”

Since then, Cramer shared that the sentiment around Mexico has changed. According to him, the same people are now wondering “Why did we go to this country that apparently doesn’t like.” He also shed light on the relationship between China and Mexico and shared that “China and Mexico are strange bedfellows. China’s been flooding the country with autos! And, what we did was we moved all of our auto production down there! Also Germany, you go to Puebla, and it’s Volkswagen!” He added that this makes implementing tariffs tricky as “it’s just that the cars go back and forth, and back and forth, where, where do we put the tariff on? Where to we take it off?”

However, while the market might be worried about the broader impact of tariffs, businesses are also excited about growing merger and acquisition activity. Cramer outlined that “very quickly, people just say, you know what, look, tariffs are so convoluted that something has to happen. But the idea that they can talk to other companies and maybe combine, they want that so badly.”

Apart from his takes on stocks, some of Cramer’s most controversial views are of cryptocurrencies. While he doesn’t advocate completely shunning them, the tight-knit crypto community either panics when he’s bullish for Bitcoin due to the well-known inverse Cramer effect or wonders why he doesn’t advocate holding more crypto as part of a portfolio. In a recent episode of Mad Money, Cramer shared some of his latest thoughts about crypto:

“I’ve always endorsed keeping up to 10% of your portfolio in gold as a kind of insurance against the world’s lunacy. But for years now, I’ve also been saying Bitcoin’s a fine alternative to gold for that 10% position. Why not? I think the federal budget deficit is at impossible levels. I don’t want to be wedded to a currency backed by the full faith and credit of a country that owes $36 trillion.”

Cramer reiterated that there’s more to investing than simply “just owning cryptocurrencies.” In fact, he believes that buying stocks can potentially lead to an investor making more money than buying cryptocurrencies. “Bitcoin’s part of the most obviously diversified portfolio in recent history,” believes Cramer. “Buying and holding stocks can be just as lucrative as buying Bitcoin six days after Biden dropped out of the race. Or maybe, just maybe, it can make you even more money.” Another Mad Money episode saw him stress that he has held Bitcoin for years as Cramer shared:

“I want to discuss Bitcoin, really. I do—not to the detriment of stocks but in addition to stocks. I come to praise Bitcoin, not buy it. First, let’s dispel the idea that I’ve never believed in Bitcoin. Now, if you search YouTube, you can see that I first bought Bitcoin on September 15, 2020, when it was at just over $10,000.”

Our Methodology

To make our list of stocks that Jim Cramer is talking about, we listed down stocks he commented on during at latest episode of CNBC’s Squawk on the Street and tweeted about.

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).

Cramer on Tesla, Inc. (TSLA): It's More About the Ethos Than the Cars

25 Most In Demand Cars Heading into 2024

Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q3 2024: 99

Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) is the world’s biggest pure-play electric vehicle manufacturer. Since the November election, the firm’s shares have gained 84% on the back of CEO Elon Musk’s close ties with the incoming administration. The share price growth has removed all losses since Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s autonomy day which spooked investors due to a lack of specifics related to the firm’s robotaxi plans. Cramer’s comments surrounding Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) covered Musk and his relationship with the President-elect. Musk’s firm has seen turmoil in 2024 on the back of a weak EV market which depressed the share price before the election. Here’s what Cramer shared:

“I think that this story during this period is actually much, not as much Trump and Musk as I think as many people think, and much more that this is now a tech company and it happens to coincide with this period. You know Dave look a lot of people just say that its great that they’re going to be together. But it’s not as if Tesla’s going to suddenly be favored. As a matter of fact there’s a story today that we know of on crash, crashes where Tesla’s would be the losers.

“There’s a conflict about, there’s a decision that Trump may make about scrapping car crash. . . .I’m just saying it’s not the news flow, is not what people are buying. No I’m saying the actual news flow about Tesla.

“I’m just saying that you can’t get this valuation from cars is what I’m saying.. . .”The Full Self Driving right now, if you talk to Waymo, these guys have nothing.

“You need to have a Federal highway system, you need to have Trump say you know what, you can be Full Self Driving on the highway system. .  . .I’m just saying that it’s more about Tesla the ethos than it’s Tesla the car.”

Overall, TSLA ranks 4th on our list of stocks that Jim Cramer recently talked about. While we acknowledge the potential of TSLA as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some 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 TSLA 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.