We recently published a list of Jim Cramer Discusses These 12 Stocks & Shares Big Buying Signal. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST) stands against other best stocks that Jim Cramer discusses.
In a recent appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer commented on President Trump’s latest set of tariffs. This time around, Trump targeted champagne in a bid to get European countries to reduce their restrictions on American whiskey brands such as Jack Daniel’s. Cramer started out by explaining the effect of the tariffs on the consumer and the general trend in the alcoholic beverage market:
“It depends on what do you really want to do if you’re the President and these, and expensive wine. And expensive champagne. Or make them expensive. Well I mean you basically want them to say will you stop it with the Jack Daniel’s? I mean, come on. Come on. If you try to make Jack Daniel’s expensive, everything you sell us is just gonna be too expensive and we’re all gonna be drinking Kim Crawford. . .But I do think that this is a very, very high tariff and I think it would cause a lot of attention in France.”
Cramer’s show, which aired on Thursday, came after Monday’s massive stock market bloodbath which saw the flagship S&P index shed $4 trillion in value from its post-election peak. The move, coupled with market worries about a recessionary impact from tariffs, led several analysts to cut their targets for the index. Commenting on the cuts, Cramer outlined:
“Yeah and I thought that was a great. . .look we kind of thought the President was transactional. Now we’ve realized the President is in transit. Now I am less concerned about the President than I was before because when I look at the different, I’ve been trying to get them to clarify what they’re doing. But other than autos, you know look we’re gonna have us a period where we’re gonna go from two-and-a-half percent autos to 25% and that’s gonna hurt Japan, it’s gonna hurt Germany. It’s gonna hurt Korea. And that’s the real tariff. And when we do that, that’s the day that the market’s gonna go down big enough to buy. Because then they’re kind of done. Remember, well here’s the problem Carl, nobody buys anything that we make so it’s really hard. . .President’s not explained that well. At all. That there’s like, they don’t buy any of our stuff. So what are they gonna do? Like put, even higher tariff on Kentucky Gentleman?”
Cramer’s recent programs have also focused on the impact of the President’s tariffs on the car industry. He has urged caution when considering buying American car stocks, and this time around, he discussed the impact of higher car prices due to the tariffs on the broader economy:
“Used car market unfortunately very much involved in the CPI. It’s gonna be a convoluted sense of world trade. And I think that what people recognize is that there has been a big disadvantage, we’ve been at a big disadvantage in our country. But the President has explained it so poorly, that you actually think that well wow, what’s he doing to us. But it’s been a big joke for a very long time. But no one’s taking any action because everyone wants cheap goods for the American people. He’s reversing it. He’s reversing it.”
The underlying theme of his latest appearances has been that while the President is right in pushing for tariffs, he could take a softer approach. According to Cramer, Trump’s “gonna make it so the goods aren’t cheap. But our trading partners have to pay the price. With the idea that maybe if they start buying some of the stuff or put more plants here . . .then maybe the tariffs will come down.”
Our Methodology
To make our list of the stocks that Jim Cramer talked about, we listed down all the stocks he mentioned during CNBC’s Squawk on the Street aired on March 13th.
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).
Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 96
Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST) is a discount retailer that is one of the few in its industry that Cramer is optimistic about. The past year, which has seen consumers struggle with inflation, has allowed the firm to leverage its scale to attract price-weary customers to its stores. Cramer’s previous comments about Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST) have shared that the firm can also use its scale to keep prices low if inflation continues to rise in today’s tariff era. He has also praised Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST)’s management and touted the stock’s potential as a buy. Here are his latest comments:
“All those companies have been downbeat. At one point another they’re talking about smaller sizes. Talking about [the] other word that was used on the Costco quarter which I found disturbing frankly was ‘choiceful.’ I mean cause choiceful means, you know what, I’m gonna take a look and if, uh, Scott Paper Towels are thirty cents more than Kirkland Signature, I’m gonna buy the Kirkland Signature. You know I think that one of the things you’re never gonna hear anyone say is, you know what, consumers have become very profligate. Consumers are really looking at prices.”
“[On how at one point the sentiment was that consumers would pay anything for a cruise] Well there was and the travel was at any price. But I will say we gotta get a little back to the idea that when you question someone you can make that question done in a way that makes you feel that things have gotten tougher.”
Overall, COST ranks 6th on our list of best stocks that Jim Cramer discusses. While we acknowledge the potential of COST 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. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than COST but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
