In this piece, we will look at the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed.
In a recent appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer discussed potential actions by the Federal Reserve in response to President Trump’s tariffs. Trump has denied having any plans to fire Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, and Cramer commented on the historical context of the current tariffs and Powell:
“Anyone who knows Powell knows that he’s a deep historian of the marketplace. And he’s obviously looking at Smoot-Hawley, the tariff in 1930 and that’s, you could argue, a 33% tariff. And arguing a second that this is higher, and that he knows history, and he knows that Smoot-Hawley was what was one of the things that caused the Great Depression. So, unless you’re ahistorical, you can’t disagree with him.”
The CNBC TV host also discussed how people who were alive during the Smoot-Hawley era are no longer with us so it’s impossible to put it in a real-life framework. According to him:
“Well I mean, we do have Grapes of Wrath, David. Now I think that truth lies in novels. It’s very hard to get the real truth unless you go to novels. . . alright, when you’re a journalist covering homicide, like I was, my editor . . .I try to do this, he goes, Jim that’s for, only fiction can tell the truth about homicide. You just tell the facts. What I’m saying is that if I look at the fiction of what happened in the Great Depression, I have a better feeling than when actually look at the statistics.”
Cramer also stressed that the recent stock market selloff meant that the Magnificent 7, as a term, continued to be irrelevant. “We don’t use that anymore that’s gone,” he said. “Yeah that’s gone. Yeah I don’t know it’s not like the Mag 7. . .no we’re done with that, Mag 7, whole thing. Now it’s the Wild Bunch. . . we’re switching, it’s no more, I mean honestly, Wild Bunch was actually a better movie,” Cramer said.
As for AI, Cramer believes that “[t]his is a winner take all, loser takes none, just like Google was, this is a 200 billion dollar business. Whoever gets the mind share… right now I have every one of these. I’ve got Grok, I’ve got Gemini, I’m not going to go, believe me, one year from now, I’m only gonna have one. And right now it’s Grok.”
On diplomacy, he shared that the “one thing we haven’t done yet is gunboat diplomacy. I’m waiting for that.” So what is Jim Cramer’s gunboat diplomacy? Well, according to him:
“You put something in the straits of. . of every strait, yeah. . the Straits of Hormuz and then of course the Strait of Taiwan. . gunboat diplomacy, the pursuit of foreign policy objectives through conspicuous displays of military especially naval power.”
Our Methodology
To make our list of the stocks that Jim Cramer talked about, we listed down the stocks he mentioned during CNBC’s Squawk on the Street aired on April 17th.
For these stocks, we also mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. 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).
7. Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 162
Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that provides customer relationship management products and services. Its shares have lost 26% year-to-date, and in his previous remarks, Cramer has commented that while he doesn’t like seeing Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM)’s stock lose a hundred dollars from its high, he believes that the firm’s AgentForce AI contracts aren’t sufficient to make a large income statement impact. Here are his latest thoughts:
“[On Citi cutting MSFT price target] I know. Azure low end of the guide is bad. I know that CoPilot, you got that one man wrecking crew of Benioff [CRM CEO] coming out, trashing that all the time. Meanwhile, I had someone on my conference call yesterday, for the club, saying that they’re in the house of pain because of Salesforce. That’s been, it’s been a long time since you were in the house of pain with Salesforce.”
6. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 166
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is still the most valuable company in the world. However, multiple headwinds in 2025, such as delays with AI-powered software rollouts and President Trump’s tariffs on China have hit the shares hard. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s stock has lost 18% year-to-date and slipped by 23% in the days after the tariffs came into effect. In his previous comments, Cramer has defended Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and even commented that he’s viewed as a “lapdog” for the company. Here are his latest comments:
“I just think that if you’re one of these, you’re gonna write a check, if the Justice Department allows you, to Apple and say, listen I want to be the only provider.”
“Okay here’s what I’ve said about Apple. They’re spending 500 billion which gives them absolutely nothing other than the right to be able to build here in the United States which is the same thing that NVIDIA did. I will tell you this. I think that the stay [tariff pause] is going to turn out to be chimerical. I think it’s going to be chimerical. Because they’re so. . .mercurial and arbitrary there I think, and nothing means anything. They can say, well I just think they’re giving them a stay. You know, Lutnick comes out. If you remember the, the cadence, they get the stay on Friday, then Lutnick comes on Sunday talk shows and basically says well that means nothing. You know so I come back and I say, well what certainty do I have?”
5. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE:TSM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 186
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE:TSM) is the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer. Its dominant position in the market is due to the firm’s leading-edge manufacturing process technologies and the ability to handle sizable orders. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE:TSM)’s shares are down by 24% year-to-date as they have fluctuated in response to investor attitudes towards global trade tensions and AI chip demand. Cramer, however, was left impressed by the firm’s latest earnings call:
“I do know that if you watched Taiwan Semi last week, NVIDIA’s still very much in the driver’s seat. By the way, the Taiwan Semi call was so spectacular that I came away thinking that Microsoft, instead of being, a downgrade Microsoft there by Jackson Ader over a. . . But I felt that when I finished the Taiwan Semi, and of course its subrose that Taiwan to NVIDIA. Not Intel by the way, that was all just false nonsense.”
“. . .Because when you listen to Taiwan Semi, it’s like, nothing ever happened that’s negative. It’s so positive.”
“Okay so Taiwan Semi’s saying that demand for AI chips is accelerating. And that everybody has to have them. And there isn’t anyone who doesn’t want them.”
“[On leaving full year guide unchanged] But it’s the mix. It’s the mix. Cause cellphones are bad, and AI, it’s absolutely true. But when you talk about high-performance computing, which is NVIDIA, that was off the charts great. And so was Arizona. I think you gotta hand it to the people in Arizona. They have been able to build in a way that you don’t think America could do.”
4. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 223
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is the world’s leading AI GPU designer. Worries about AI chip demand and sluggishness in the data center industry have weighed heavily on its shares as they have lost 28.5% year-to-date. In his previous remarks about NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA), Cramer praised the firm’s US chip manufacturing plans in partnership with TSMC and dubbed recent share price movements as being unrelated to the fundamentals. Here are his latest thoughts about NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA):
“[On Huang’s Beijing trip] Yeah I mean look I know that and I had some talk . .becuase of my club where I’ve said I don’t know if you can still own it but don’t trade it. And not because this isn’t my favorite company and my favorite executive. But because of the erratic nature of the dual Lutnick and Navarro tandem about what we should be doing with semiconductors. I found that it was odd that he could just go and talk. Because we don’t really have that kind of relationship with the Chinese. This was kind of a Nixon to China trip. I don’t know what will come of it. I do know that if you watched Taiwan Semi last week, NVIDIA’s still very much in the driver’s seat.”
3. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 262
Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META), like other big tech stocks, has struggled this year. The stock has lost 16.5% year-to-date, and it has been on a downward spiral since mid-February as the shares have lost 32% since then. Economic concerns have weighed on Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)’s shares as investors worry that a potential recession could lead to lower advertising spend harming its revenue. Here’s what Cramer said:
“Meta who knows, that guy’s on trial. Whatever, how long’s that going to go on. He gets hurt by the, Mark Zuckerberg gets hurt by this De Minimis that the advertising for Temu and Shein cut back.”
2. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 317
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has seen its fortunes somewhat change this year. It once again became the world’s most valuable company earlier this month after the US-China trade war gutted Apple’s share price. Recently, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has made headlines with reports that it is slowing down data center spending – a decision that goes against the surge in AI-related industry spending. Here’s what Cramer said on the matter:
“Microsoft better get its act together. They are falling behind in the arms race. That’s how I felt.”
“Okay so Taiwan Semi’s saying that demand for AI chips is accelerating. And that everybody has to have them. And there isn’t anyone who doesn’t want them. But there is one outfit that doesn’t want them. Which is Microsoft. I came away thinking . . .they’re not willing to spend. They’re not willing to spend.”
“[On MSFT spending $80 billion] That ain’t enough partner. I am saying that they made this commitment to Ohio and then they pulled back. They did the Three Mile lunacy and idiocy and who knows what they’re going to do there. And all I can tell you is that if I were Elon Musk, I would say, hey, let me have all of Microsoft. . .”
“Well Azure’s going to be dropping. People are talking about Azure dropping a percent and going to 30%. That’s not good. You’re hoping for it go the other way, 34%. And what I feel is this, I think that, and this is backed up by people who I actually do reporting on rather than just actually get a blue card from somebody, that CoreWeave, if you look at what CoreWeave’s doing, a lot of it is with OpenAI. And if I were Microsoft I would be switching my CapEx over to OpenAI so I could for once in the third, they’ve missed three quarters. You move your CapEx over to OpenAI, your CapEx therefore goes down. People think you’re a visionary and they start buying Microsoft.”
“[On Citi cutting MSFT price target] I know. Azure low end of the guide is bad. I know that CoPilot, you got that one man wrecking crew of Benioff coming out, trashing that all the time. Meanwhile, I had someone on my conference call yesterday, for the club, saying that they’re in the house of pain because of Salesforce. That’s been, it’s been a long time since you were in the house of pain with Salesforce.”
1. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 339
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is the world’s leading eCommerce retailer. Like other big tech stocks, its shares have also struggled in 2025 due to the fact that economic concerns and AI slowdown have weighed on both of its businesses. In his previous remarks about Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Cramer has wondered whether its ability to sell consumer staples at affordable prices might help it navigate higher prices from tariffs on China. Here are his latest thoughts about Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN):
“Amazon’s still spending even though they constantly talk about their own Trainium [AI chips].”
“And that goes to Amazon too, but Amazon then has its own stuff to sell, but what’s Amazon’s tariff going to indicate? It’s very, it’s very confusing to think here what’s going on with De Minimis.”
AMZN is a stock Jim Cramer recently discussed. While we acknowledge the potential of AMZN 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 AMZN but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires
Disclosure. None. Insider Monkey focuses on uncovering the best investment ideas of hedge funds and investors. Please subscribe to our daily free newsletter to get the latest investment ideas from hedge funds’ investor letters by entering your email address below.
