Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money, emphasized that individual investors can outperform an index by selecting their own stocks. He mentioned that long-time viewers are familiar with his view that the most effective approach combines a low-cost index fund with a personally curated stock portfolio.
READ ALSO 10 Cheap Jim Cramer Stocks to Invest In and 10 Stocks Jim Cramer and Analysts Are Watching
“Ideally, you want a cheap, low-cost index fund that mirrors the market as a whole… Index funds have ultra-low fees, and with an S&P index fund, you’ve got a vehicle to let you participate in the strength of the market without having to spend the time picking individual stocks.”
Cramer explained that the primary reason people invest in mutual funds is to avoid the time and effort involved in managing a portfolio. He noted that index funds make this easy by providing broad exposure without the complexity of picking individual names. However, he expressed that retail investors do not have a particular need to have exposure to sector-based mutual funds and ETFs. He argued that if someone is willing to invest time in understanding sector trends, that effort would be better directed toward identifying and investing in individual companies rather than broader sector-based vehicles.
“Here’s the bottom line: At the end of the day, I think a cheap S&P 500 index fund is the least bad way to passively manage your money, better than the vast bulk of actively managed mutual funds. But an index fund owns everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And if you do have the time to do your homework, I believe you can beat the performance of an index fund by picking stocks yourself, maybe leaving the bad and the ugly out of it. Now, if you don’t have the time, though, stick with the index fund…”
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of over 90 stocks that Jim Cramer commented on during episodes of Mad Money aired between June 6 and June 11. We narrowed the list to 10 stocks that were most favored by analysts. We listed the stocks in ascending order of their average analyst price target upside as of June 18. We also mentioned the hedge fund sentiment around each stock, which was taken from Insider Monkey’s Q1 database of 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).
10 AI Stocks Jim Cramer and Analysts are Watching
10. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD)
Average Upside Potential: 2.53%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 97
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) is one of the 10 AI stocks that Jim Cramer and analysts are watching. On June 16, Piper Sandler raised its price target on AMD to $140 from $125 and kept an Overweight rating. The firm noted that AMD held its quarterly pre-quarter close call on Friday.
Piper expressed a positive view on recent product announcements, especially the Helios rack, which it believes is important for AMD Instinct growth. The firm expects a recovery in the GPU business in the fourth quarter of 2025, once most China-related charges have passed. It also observed that the client segment, the largest business unit, is beginning to experience some pull-ins.
On June 13, as per TipRanks, BofA maintained a Buy rating on AMD shares and a $130 price target. Following the Advancing AI Event in San Jose, where the company presented updates on its end-to-end AI infrastructure platform, BofA analyst Vivek Arya noted that “investor expectations might have been high.”
He stated that the event demonstrated AMD’s continued progress in its AI roadmap, expansion across customers and partners, and development in software. The company emphasized existing partnerships with Meta, Oracle, Microsoft, xAI, OpenAI, and Humain in Saudi Arabia. No new hyperscaler customer was formally announced. The analyst mentioned a possible engagement with Amazon’s AWS, which sponsored the event, though noted that AWS typically reserves announcements for its own forums.
Lastly, on June 9, admitting that he has “always liked” the company, Cramer said:
“So traders say if I can’t make money after Broadcom reporting a great quarter, the playbook says time to move into the lower quality, cheaper stocks that are less likely to disappoint or should never have been down to begin with. I understand the sentiment, but the problem is that these stocks have already rallied pretty hard, too…I saw some upgrades for AMD…. They’ve moved, especially AMD by the way, on speculation it might be involved with any China deal. Rare earth materials for us, AMD chips for them.
Now, this kind of rotation could be a good one. The stocks that are rallying are excellent. They may be just playing catch-up. It’s a heavily broadening out of the winners, right? Remember when it was just the Mag Seven? We’ve come a long distance, but what comes after this could be treacherous. I’ve seen the end of rallies, and they often take up the laggards last. After it happens, if we have good news, everything’s fine. However, if there’s any degradation in the numbers, it could get very ugly. Right now we’re fine… I’ve always liked AMD, as you know.”
Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) designs and supplies semiconductor products, including AI accelerators, GPUs, x86 microprocessors, and adaptive system-on-chip solutions. The company provides compute infrastructure for hyperscale environments and supports artificial intelligence workloads through its hardware and development platforms.
9. Kinder Morgan, Inc. (NYSE:KMI)
Average Upside Potential: 12.44%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 65
Kinder Morgan, Inc. (NYSE:KMI) is one of the 10 AI stocks that Jim Cramer and analysts are watching. On June 5, Scotiabank raised its price target on KMI shares to $27 from $26 and maintained a Sector Perform rating. The firm is updating its target valuation year to 2027 and has introduced estimates for 2028 for U.S. Midstream sector stocks. The analyst noted that units are still expected to trade within a range, with few catalysts anticipated in the near term.
On June 4, BofA raised its price target on KMI to $32 from $30 and reiterated a Buy rating. The analyst stated that the outlook for gas pipelines “continues to brighten” despite recent market volatility. Kinder Morgan and DT Midstream remain the firm’s top midstream picks.
The firm noted increased activity across the gas midstream space this year, citing policy changes under the Trump administration that have eased pipeline development, especially in Appalachia. Utilities are expected to require gas infrastructure through the 2030s and are showing greater willingness to invest. Additional factors include the lifting of the LNG permit pause and interest from countries aiming to narrow trade deficits.
Moreover, on June 6, when a caller asked Cramer about the company, he said, “Kinder Morgan’s good. Kinder Morgan’s good. You know… The company got it together. Anything in the pipeline is just working.”
Kinder Morgan (NYSE:KMI) operates energy infrastructure assets that support the transport, storage, processing, and handling of natural gas, petroleum products, and carbon dioxide. The company also owns and operates facilities related to liquefied natural gas, including gasification, liquefaction, and storage. During the company’s Q1 2025 earnings call, management reiterated their positive outlook on long-term natural gas demand, both in the U.S. and globally and noted that this view has gained broader acceptance among investors and analysts over the past year, especially with growing interest in natural gas as a fuel source for AI and data centers.
Furthermore, management confirmed that they are actively working to supply upcoming data centers. Chief Executive Officer Kimberly Allen Dang mentioned that roughly 70% of new backlog additions in the quarter were tied to power demand, which may be connected to data centers. She mentioned that most of the current activity linked to data centers has come through regulated utilities.
