We recently published a list of Jim Cramer Calls Market Decline ‘Man-Made’ and Breaks Down 15 Stocks. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer discusses.
On Monday, April 7th, Jim Cramer opened the Mad Money episode with a message of calm in the midst of chaos. After nine straight lower openings and another bruising session for stocks, Cramer made it clear that while the pain is real. He acknowledged the likelihood of a recession but rejected the notion that we were on the brink of another global financial collapse, saying:
“Do we have a problem that’s systemic meaning there’s actual weakness in our a rot in our institutions that can’t easily be undone? Now my partner David Faber and I discussed this very point this morning and we agreed that we needed to take the financial crisis scenario off the table because our institutions are strong, and we don’t believe that the whole economic system is in jeopardy. We don’t believe that major banks will fail, we definitely don’t like this situation for heaven’s sake. It’s likely we’re headed for a recession because of the president’s ill-advised plans, but we’ll pull out of it one way or another. It’s not going to be the global financial crisis number two.”
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Rather than being caused by inflation, interest rates, or even earnings weakness, Cramer insisted the market’s decline was driven by leadership decisions. He called the downturn “man-made,” emphasizing that it could be reversed just as easily as it began, if the administration changed course:
“Then we get back to the approximate cause of the decline: it’s all man-made! Wall Street’s terrified by the tariffs but we have an arbitrary material president who can declare victory, roll these tariffs back with the stroke of [inaudible] and then where would we be? We would have bought nothing. And at some point, the White House won’t be able to tolerate a crashing stock market.”
What concerned Cramer most was the deeper agenda behind the tariffs. In his view, the administration wasn’t just trying to rebalance trade but to reverse decades of globalization, forcing companies to return manufacturing to U.S. soil — even if that meant permanent economic disruption.
“The job isn’t just to coerce China; it’s to cause US manufacturers to come back here. Away from Vietnam, that’s why Vietnam had that huge tariff. Those are two agenda items that not just one that’s important it means there’s no possible negotiation because that would encourage companies not to come back here. Sure, the tariffs could raise some revenue or promote domestic manufacturing, but they can’t reverse history, and Trump wants to reverse history. It’s a tall order – an ill-advised one – he wants to do it quickly.”
Finally, Cramer laid out the daunting checklist of what would need to happen for the current strategy to succeed:
“There are many things that have to go right for Trump to successfully reorder the global economy in order to bring back domestic manufacturing and bring China to its knees. First the high tariffs can’t cause a spike in inflation or else the Fed won’t be able to bail us out with rate cuts. Second, he has to negotiate new trade deals very quickly for congressional members who are supposed to control the tariffs wake up. The lower the market goes the more likely the Republicans in Congress actually throw the president’s agenda under the bus. Third, he has to do it without causing a big spike in unemployment. I think if he does get all three, he isn’t going to press his bet with these tariffs, instead, he’ll find some reason to declare victory and roll them back. which is why the market didn’t collapse today.”
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 15 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money aired on April 7. We listed the stocks in the order that Cramer mentioned them. We also provided hedge fund sentiment for each stock 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).
Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 126
Cramer placed Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) in the bottom tier of the Magnificent Seven and questioned its valuation and fundamentals. He pointed to weakening auto demand, tariffs, and Elon Musk’s polarizing persona as key risks. Here are Cramer’s thoughts:
“Finally there’s Tesla, which has been cut in half from his highs. At a very high level the bull case here is that the president’s close relationship with Elon Musk should give the company major advantages as it moves into self-driving cars or humanoid robots. But man, Tesla’s core auto business has collapsed, and the tariffs will be terrible for them. Musk’s persona is a big negative for huge swath of customers or potential customers. Worse, Tesla is still the most expensive stock in the Magnificent 7 by a large margin, trading at 87 times this year’s earnings estimates. And I’m not even sure we can trust those estimates because their auto business is in such bad shape.”
ClearBridge Large Cap Growth Strategy stated the following regarding Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) in its Q1 2025 investor letter:
“Our active underweight to the Magnificent Seven added more than 100 basis points to relative returns for the quarter, with underweights to EV maker Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) and Google parent Alphabet being among the largest relative contributors. We added to both positions, taking advantage of what we view as short-term weakness as Alphabet missed high expectations for cloud revenue growth in its latest quarter, while Tesla worked through negative sentiment over CEO Elon Musk’s role in the Trump administration.”
Overall, TSLA ranks 5th on our list of stocks that Jim Cramer discusses. 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 time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. 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 this cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
