Jim Cramer Recently Talked About These 11 S&P 500 Stocks

2. Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 97

Cramer noted that Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST), an electricity retailer and power generation company, was the fourth-best performer in the S&P 500 in January. Highlighting that the company is a nuclear play, he said:

“When you look at Constellation and Vistra, look, these nuclear stocks have had explosive multi-year moves as the data center build-out has created this electricity shortage around the whole country and nuclear remains the preferred power source for any company that cares about climate change.”

Cramer highlighted the recent major data center announcements from Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, SoftBank, and OpenAI. Last month, the three companies revealed plans for Stargate, which is a $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative. Cramer noted that this news caused stocks like Vistra (NYSE:VST) to surge, as investors reacted positively to the prospects of AI-driven demand for energy. However, Cramer pointed out that the market now faces uncertainty due to DeepSeek, with Wall Street questioning whether these tech giants have overextended their spending on AI hardware. He added:

“Both Constellation and Vistra got obliterated in response, although they’ve now rebounded pretty substantially from the lows. And again, they still finished January up big. I’ve seen some analysis suggest that DeepSeek has been downplaying its real cost but until we get more clarity, I don’t wanna stick my neck out for nuclear stocks because these only work when the data center story is ironclad.

Now I do know that Scott Strazik from GE Vernova, which builds nuclear power plants, is getting more bullish about the near-term possibility of orders but even under the best of circumstances, these things take years to construct.”