We recently published a list of Did Jim Cramer Get These 23 Stocks Right?. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer discussed 12 months ago.
In a recent appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer commented on the markets ending another volatile week that ended after a massive $4 trillion selloff on the flagship S&P 500 since the post-election week at the start. He outlined that one of the reasons that the week was tumultuous was that the President was “creating pain” and then saying that he was sorry that there was pain. Cramer described Trump as gratuitous and added that the President’s comments had killed the stock market’s rally.
Cramer added that Trump “took stocks that had been going up and reversed them.” Cramer’s “still trying to figure out where the playbook gets us,” with the playbook being the President’s comments about the economy and the stock market. Following this, co-host Carl Quintanilla asked Cramer his thoughts on rumors that the President was trying to drive the bond market down but the strategy didn’t seem to be working. In response, Cramer shared:
“Well I mean we had that auction yesterday, that didn’t go well. People are kind of so on edge, but it’s not a flight to quality on edge. It’s more of a flight to cash. I mean you know this idea of a flight to quality does include that there’s part of the curve you wanna be on. Now when I was a hedge fund manager, there were these moments where you’d hear flight to quality and that meant that you really wanted to be in 30-day paper. We’re kind of back to that. Because that’s safe. 30-day’s very safe. It’s safe from the President. And, look, I, the President’s interesting. He’s intriguing. But I never really felt that we were in a moment where stocks should go down. When I was close to President Biden, when he would ride the train and I’d see him in Washington. . .I would have the page [inaudible] stock price, he would come over [inaudible] I don’t care about any of those. Well the President does. He wants them lower! He’s creating a sale. I mean I’ve never seen a sale mandated before. No one was thinking that he was going to bend when he did that gratuitous tweet.”
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He also shared his thoughts on the President’s latest round of tariffs on expensive alcoholic beverages:
“I mean the average person in this country, Republican or Democrat, is struggling to try to figure out what it means to put a big tariff on champagne other than the fact that well hey, there goes champagne. There’s no context. There’s no understanding. There’s no webpage you can go to that allows you to learn. You know you’re on your own, everyone’s on their own trying to figure out what a tariff means. And you know what does a tariff means? Well it means Pernod, Pernod Ricard, more expensive. You know, Campari. I mean people don’t know what these things mean. I’m in the liquor business and I don’t know what it means.”
Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 23 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money on March 25, 2024. We then calculated their performance from March 25th, 2024, market close to March 18th, 2025, market close. We have also included the hedge fund sentiment for the stocks, which we sourced from Insider Monkey’s Q4 2024 database of over 900 hedge funds. The stocks are listed in the order that Cramer mentioned them.
Please note that this article mentions Jim Cramer’s previous opinions and may not account for any changes to his opinions regarding the stocks that are mentioned. It is primarily an examination of how his previously provided opinions have panned out.
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).
Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 51
On the topic of hot IPOs, Jim Cramer gave his comprehensive input on Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) at the time:
“Astera Labs which makes connectivity hardware for data centers; exactly what you need for the fastest Cloud setup. And thanks to the AI connection this one came in hot! Astera Labs priced its IPO at $36 per share, way above the initial proposed range. Then the stock opened at 52 bucks last Wednesday. If you got into on this deal you instantly made a 46% gain and it didn’t stop there. The stock’s been gaining ground every day, climbing another $15 to $85 today, that’s a 21%. […] But I do hate to see it because it tells me that the stock’s probably already overheated. […] Long story short as stars clearly position your as a new way to play the AI theme, they even namedropped Nvidia in the prospectus, though it’s unclear what their exact relationship is. Astera Labs says that it’s one of the hardware companies that’s going to benefit as we rebuild data centers all across the world for the more advanced computing needs to be in the AR era. That’s true to be fair they’re probably right. But even if you take Astera’s claims in face value, I still take issue with valuation because this thing exploded right out of the gate it’s going too high.
When you dig deeper into the financials it’s hard to justify paying up too much for this one. The best thing I can say about Astera’s numbers is they’ve got good sales growth up 45% last year. But man, when you look at that rough share count this is now valued as a 13 billion dollar company; that’s well over a hundred times last year’s sales.
Bottom line, well, Astera Labs has a good story and it is good I think it’d be worth owning at some price but I think it’s way too expensive at this price.”
Astera Labs, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB) has fallen by 18.82% since Cramer commented on its IPO valuation.
On the 27th of August, Cramer was wary of Astera Labs Inc. (NASDAQ:ALAB)’s initial 72% surge and advised caution, as it seemed overpriced.
“The ninth-largest deal of the year is Astera Labs, which makes connectivity solutions for AI and cloud infrastructure—nice buzzwords there, but it sounds enticing. I didn’t like that it spiked 72% right out the gate—I told you so a few days later—just seemed way too expensive.”
Overall, ALAB ranks 10th on our list of stocks that Jim Cramer discussed 12 months ago. While we acknowledge the potential of ALAB as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that 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 ALAB but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
