Jim Cramer Thinks Kroger (KR) Will ‘Still Do Well’ Without Albertsons

We recently published a list of Jim Cramer is Talking About These 10 Stocks. In this article, we are going to take a look at where The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR) stands against other stocks Jim Cramer is talking about.

Jim Cramer in a latest program on CNBC said that the market is narrowing again as he sees gains getting concentrated in big tech stocks again amid bond movements.

“If the bond market doesn’t start behaving and calming down, and long-term interest rates don’t stop going up, we are gonna start losing the groups that led us higher for months and go back to our bad old ways with just a couple of magnificent ones.”

Jim Cramer said that this trend was more or less expected as market assumptions following the 50bps rate cut by the Federal Reserve proved to be wrong down the road.

But then that darn double cut—we saw something that hasn’t happened since 1995. We saw loan rates go higher, not lower. It was a total buzzkill, and we’re beginning to feel it with earnings.

Cramer then talked about a latest earnings report from a notable homebuilder that showed soft results, indicating a weaker consumer. Cramer then summarized his thesis again on why he sees the overall market trajectory in what he called a “suboptimal situation.”

“If interest rates don’t stop rising quickly—they can go up slowly, but this quick rise means we’ll go right back to the same old story. Only a few big tech stocks were winning, while many more were losing. In other words, we’re on the verge of what I can describe as an extremely suboptimal situation if the bond market doesn’t settle down.”

READ ALSO: 7 Best Stocks to Buy For Long-Term and 8 Cheap Jim Cramer Stocks to Invest In

Our Methodology

For this article we watched several latest programs of Jim Cramer on CNBC and picked 10 stocks he’s talking about. With each company we have mentioned its hedge fund sentiment. 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).

Jim Cramer Thinks Kroger (KR) Will ‘Still Do Well’ Without Albertsons

A customer buying an item at a checkout counter in a grocery store.

The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 46

A questioner recently asked Jim Cramer whether Kroger Co (NYSE:KR) was undervalued. Cramer replied “you are right.”

“With Albertson, I think it’s better because they’ve got to go up against Costco, Walmart, and Amazon. Without it, they still do well, but frankly, look, this administration—I think they’ll hold this deal up from now until, I don’t know, this thing’s tapped out.”

In the most recently reported quarter, Kroger Co (NYSE:KR) saw sales of $33.91 billion, a modest 0.2% rise from the $33.85 billion posted in the same quarter last year. The figure also surpassed analyst expectations by $207 million.

Kroger Co (NYSE:KR) said there was a 17% surge in delivery sales, driven by the company’s Customer Fulfillment Centers, with its online grocery customer base growing 14%. Kroger’s digital sales strategy, once unexpected in the grocery sector, has gained traction.

Overall, KR ranks 6th on our list of stocks Jim Cramer is talking about. While we acknowledge the potential of KR our conviction lies in the belief that under the radar 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 KR 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.