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 selling activity and criticized those making the trades. The flagship S&P 500 index had closed 1.1% lower on December 17th, while the NASDAQ 100 and NASDAQ Composite had closed 1.9% and 1.8% lower. Cramer commented that the sellers, after driving down the market, had taken a break. The markets had struggled on the back of several factors, such as a jump in unemployment and fears of an AI bubble. Along with commenting on the behavior of sellers, Cramer also discussed their ability to beat benchmark indexes due to the strength in the Magnificent 7 stocks:
“The sellers aren’t here. The sellers take a break. They’ve done what they have to do and they let things go up. They don’t offer stock because of what’s left. . .And a lot of these guys have trouble beating benchmarks, and they’ve been having trouble beating benchmarks because so much are Mag 7. And, so, they walk away. And I remember like, there used to be like what was known as markups and you’d come in and you’d buy stuff, illegal, and I saw this stuff happen, it was like ridiculous. But what I do know, is that you don’t even do it now, because any big fund that’s offering stock right now is just an idiot. Just let it go higher, by consensus, it will.”
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 December 22nd. We also provided hedge fund sentiment for each stock as of the third quarter of 2025, which was taken from Insider Monkey’s database of 978 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 427.7% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 264 percentage points (see more details here).
10. Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG)
Number of Hedge Fund Holdings: 28
Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG) made the news earlier this week after it was revealed that hedge fund Trian Fund Management and venture capital firm General Catalyst had agreed to buy the firm for a $7.4 billion price tag. The announcement came after the asset manager received an offer from the due in October, where they offered to acquire a stake in it for $46 per share. After the announcement, Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG)’s shares closed 3.1% higher. After the announcement, Evercore ISI lowered its share price target for the firm to $49 from $50 and kept an In Line rating. The financial firm remained skeptical about the multiple offered for Janus Henderson Group plc (NYSE:JHG) as it noted that the asset manager had experienced strong and consistent quarterly growth. Cramer discussed the deal as well and commented on the growth:
“Yeah it looks like that Nelson Peltz and the group are buying Janus. Now this is a, it’s 47, doesn’t look like a premium, but you go back to October when people first talking about, you got a nice premium. What matters here is this is democratization play, but people don’t want to be, from what I can tell, people don’t want to be public anymore. They want to make dramatic changes to be able to, for, get individuals to be able to be in lots of things that they’re not allowed in. But you will not know it right now if you are in Janus. Janus has had a whole bunch of quarters from being up, I remember all the quarters they weren’t being up. So this is a very significant move from the point of view of, I think it’s a trend. I think this is the first. I think people don’t want to be public. I think they can’t make the moves they want to make. A lot of companies have to change the way they do business. If they are going to advance. And I think that’s what Janus has to do. Nelson will be in there helping. Janus people are going to be continuing to run the company. I brig it out just because this is the kind of deal I expect to see more and more of. It’s one where you just say, you know, being public, you can’t get the job done because you’re going to miss too many quarters.
“When I look at this I just say, you can’t really get AI in there and try to change the whole makeup of a company publicly, cause you’ll miss quarter after quarter after quarter. Janus doesn’t miss quarters. So I think it’s a great move. . .the Janus people continue to be able to run it. I just want people to keep in mind that it doesn’t change what’s going on at Janus. It does say that they’re going to go toward democratization, being able to be in everything.”
9. Cintas Corporation (NASDAQ:CTAS)
Number of Hedge Fund Holdings: 61
Cintas Corporation (NASDAQ:CTAS) is a specialty business service firm that deals primarily in uniforms. The firm was at the center of media attention earlier this week after it announced its intent to acquire uniform company UniFirst for a $5.2 billion price tag. The offer was the third such attempt by Cintas Corporation (NASDAQ:CTAS). The previous two offers had come in January when it had launched a $5.3 billion hostile takeover attempt. Back then, Cintas Corporation (NASDAQ:CTAS) had revealed that it had first approached UniFirst for an acquisition offer in 2022 and then attempted to initiate discussions again in November 2024. The January bid had seen Cintas make a $275 per share offer for UniFirst. RBC Capital kept a $206 share price target and a Sector Perform rating for Cintas Corporation (NASDAQ:CTAS)’s shares on December 23rd. The firm pointed out that the uniform company can maintain double-digit earnings growth margins of up to 35%. Cramer briefly discussed the deal and commented that it was part of a growing trend in dealmaking under the Trump Administration:
“Look we have Cintas today, going back, taking another bite, at UniFirst. These are uniform companies getting together. This is what I expect. Is it going to be wild west? No I think it’s going to be really exciting.”
