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 the latest jobs report, which saw the economy add 22,000 jobs in August, which was quite low when compared to expectations of 75,000. Cramer asserted that the economy was not in a recession despite the major warning flash:
“No look this is an economy, I want to take something off the table right now, this is not a recessionary economy, please don’t say that, we have really low, really low unemployment. But where the jobs are, I think when you look at the juxtaposition of say, billions being spent, maybe hundreds of billions on data centers. . .it doesn’t show up in any of these numbers. You don’t see any manufacturing, you don’t see any of the construction jobs. And then what you do see is that we realize, we forget about DOGE because we now think about him [Musk] as a pay package guy again. Not as what he was doing, but, we finally are starting to really see those federal layoffs. They’re so much more difficult to compute for people like us from the private sector.”
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 September 5th.
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).
10. Martin Marietta Materials, Inc. (NYSE:MLM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 64
Martin Marietta Materials, Inc. (NYSE:MLM)’s shares have gained 22% year-to-date due to several factors, such as strong earnings reports, analyst coverage, and dividend raises. The shares have performed well despite the fact that the home building industry is continuing to struggle due to high interest rates. Cramer has started to discuss Martin Marietta Materials, Inc. (NYSE:MLM) frequently over the past couple of days. His previous comments have outlined that the firm is playing a key role in the US data center buildout, and he continued with this theme:
“Look I was with a, Howard Nye the other day. He is the CEO of the largest rocket company, aggregate company, uh Martin Marietta Materials. And they’re doing a huge amount of business, they’re putting a, they’re laying it down data centers. And then he starts, I said well how about infrastructure, and he goes, [inaudible] money’s still coming. I’m thinking, get the darn money out, we don’t want to have manufacturing to be in decline in this country. That’s something that nobody wants, Democrats or Republicans, and it’s not working the way I thought it would have.”
9. Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 77
Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW) is a cybersecurity company whose shares have gained 9.2% year-to-date. It is a stock in one of Cramer’s favorite sectors, i.e., cybersecurity. Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW)’s shares are on their road to recovery after they dipped by a major 17% in July after the firm announced a major acquisition of a cybersecurity company. Despite the hefty dip in Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW)’s shares, Cramer has defended the acquisition as he believes that it will help the firm expand its business. This time, he commented on the role cybersecurity companies can play to ensure agentic AI bots aren’t hacked:
“And now we know white collar, obviously white collar, I was listening to Nikesh Arora last night, from Palo Alto Networks. You know, there’s just every single week there’s a new better AI program that makes it so you don’t wanna hire. . .you just don’t wanna hire.
“[On how agentics could be hacked] Nikesh Arora’s I think the guy who’s thought, look, more about this, . . .and they recognize that these things are just kind of bots that you can program the way you want em. And that there’s whole countries that want to, crash the bots, our bots.”
8. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 66
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD)’s shares have gained 22% year-to-date as investors have sought refuge in a software stock segment, which is not impacted by AI. Cybersecurity stocks like CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) have performed well due to strong demand for their services in an era where computing demand rises due to AI use. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD)’s shares fell by 5.8% in June after the firm’s latest earnings report saw it post in-line revenue and miss analyst guidance estimates. However, Cramer’s a believer in cybersecurity, and he shared one reason why:
“[On how agentics could be hacked] Nikesh Arora’s I think the guy who’s thought, look, more about this, George Kurtz from Crowdstrike too, and they recognize that these things are just kind of bots that you can program the way you want em. And that there’s whole countries that want to, crash the bots, our bots.”
7. The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 93
Home improvement retailer The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD)’s shares have gained 7.5% year-to-date as they have struggled in a housing market constrained by high interest rates. However, the shares did gain 1.8% last week on hopes of a rate cut. Cramer explained the movement in The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD)’s shares in detail:
“Having traded bonds for a living for a while, what you have to understand is this that, these are very small increments, and you don’t, when you’re focused on the ten year, don’t suddenly focus on the thirty year. That confuses people at home. Rates are going lower. Okay. Now this time, one year ago, one year ago, they cut, and then the long end went up. This time, I think they cut, and the long end goes down [and that would include mortgage rates]. And that’s why the housing stocks have had, just a [inaudible] yesterday, that indicated that you’re going to see gigantic explosion of housing starts. . . yesterday Home Depot was the star of the show. And that made sense to me. Because they told you this time it’s for real. And I think that this time Home Depot which has been nothing for a long time. . .go higher. Yeah see there it is [points to the graph], that’s what you buy. That’s what you buy right here right now because we got the tariffs already in. . .”
6. Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 156
Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ:AVGO) stunned the stock market and the AI sector when it revealed that it had landed a $10 billion deal for custom AI chips. The announcement, paired with a strong earnings report, sent the stock 13.7% higher. Cramer discussed the potential of OpenAI moving away from NVIDIA to Broadcom:
“[On stock higher on reports that the $10 billion mystery customer is OpenAI] Yeah look I, I don’t want to be contrarian about too many things. . .but I would say the reason I even knew about OpenAI was that Jensen Huang, CEO NVIDIA, told me that really that they were the first company to really understand what Jensen had. And their partnership dates back the longest of any one of these hyperscalers. So I know I read this stuff and it says okay well this is a threat, an existential threat to NVIDIA and NVIDIA stock is down and then I read Ben Reitzes, who’s been the most right about this, particularly with Hock, with the CEO of Broadcom, he says no time to debate about, there’s so much business, there is a huge amount of business.
“Hock Tan, I’ve known him for a long time. He’s not given to any superlatives and no hyperbole. The numbers that he is talking about indicate that we are in a gold rush that you thought was. . .this is an incredible man who has put together an amazing company, and the tentacles are bigger than this. It’s not just also VMWare, it’s really hitting strong from networking. But there’s just an incredible demand, we’re right at the cusp of reasoning. And you need high performance computers to reason. And when I say reason it means that, that’s the beginning of not prompting. Right now it’s a prompt economy, you know like tell me how many times, how many hammers did Home Depot sell last week versus Lowe’s? No, that’s just going to be, how many hammers should I sell? And using the numbers that you have. And the numbers will be much better than anything we can calculate.”
5. NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 235
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA)’s shares have continually struggled since the firm’s second-quarter earnings report. They have lost 5.5% since then and were lower last week following Broadcom’s earnings. Broadcom, which designs custom chips, revealed that it had signed a new customer for a $10 billion deal. Investors wondered whether the deal meant that NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) could lose out on customers. Cramer commented on speculation about OpenAI being the mystery $10 billion customer:
“Yeah look I, I don’t want to be contrarian about too many things. . .but I would say the reason I even knew about OpenAI was that Jensen Huang, CEO NVIDIA, told me that really that they were the first company to really understand what Jensen had. And their partnership dates back the longest of any one of these hyperscalers. So I know I read this stuff and it says okay well this is a threat, an existential threat to NVIDIA and NVIDIA stock is down and then I read Ben Reitzes, who’s been the most right about this, particularly with Hock, with the CEO of Broadcom, he says no time to debate about, there’s so much business, there is a huge amount of business.”
4. Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 121
Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM)’s shares have lost more than 23% year-to-date as the firm struggles in the software stock winter in today’s AI-driven market. Investors are worried that since AI enables businesses to easily program software, their reliance on SaaS firms like Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is lessening. The shares fell by 4.9% after the firm’s latest earnings report left investors unsatisfied with revenue forecasts. Cramer recalled the drop:
“And my question would be like, are we, if you go back over with what happened with the decline of Salesforce the other day, you know a lot of that is the recognition that we’re gonna have a lot of non real workers. We’re going to have these bogus workers. And they’re taking real workers’ jobs. And that is happening much faster than we realize. Meaning that you have agentics, and the agentics are here, and if you’re going to have agentics, you need more and more power.”
Cramer discussed Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) in detail after the earnings. Here is a portion of his comments:
“To me, there are four main components that I look for when a company reports: Did it beat sales and earnings projections for the quarter? And did it then raise sales and earnings projections for the future quarter? Salesforce handily beat the projections made about this just-reported quarter. So far, so good. But their cash flow came in a little weaker than Wall Street expected. While their guidance for the current quarter was solid, there were individual lines in that guidance that were again softer than what the analysts anticipated.
I figured Wall Street would maybe look past those negatives, given the huge number Salesforce is putting up overall. But that’s not what happened. Instead, we were inundated with stories about how Salesforce gave weak performance… Salesforce’s stock closed at $244… Keep in mind, most companies are not using AI in any way yet that’s visibly making any money, but Salesforce is serving up customers who are thrilled about Agentforce and how well it’s worked for them. I think we’ll hear a bunch of them when we go out to Dreamforce… next month. I bet it’ll be impactful. Those points did not matter one bit, though, to the sellers…”
3. International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 63
International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) has shaped up to be a top Cramer enterprise computing stock. Its shares have gained 15% year-to-date despite having lost 9.9% since the firm’s latest earnings report, which saw it disappoint investors with its software revenue. With the NFL season in full swing, Cramer has recently started to discuss International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) in the context of its software for fantasy football picks. Here are his latest thoughts about the football picks:
“Look at what Arvind Krishna told me yesterday from IBM. 36 billion pieces of data to do your fantasy football. And that’s how when you pick a guy, the next guy shows up. That’s 36 billion, we can’t do that. Humans can’t do anything versus what these machines can do.”
Previously, Cramer discussed International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM)’s share price action:
“What do we make of the recent rollercoaster action in IBM? Going into the most recent quarter in late July, this stock was up 50% over the past 12 months. Finally, it felt like the legacy tech colossus had gotten a new lease on life thanks to its popular AI-related solutions. But when IBM reported a month and a half ago, even though the headline numbers came in better than expected, Wall Street was concerned by their slowing software growth. Management was adamant that this came from the mainframe side, which should improve later in the cycle, but that wasn’t enough to prevent the stock from plunging 7.6% in a single session. Since then, the stock has struggled to find its footing.”
2. RH (NYSE:RH)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 49
RH (NYSE:RH) is back on Jim Cramer’s radar as hopes of an interest rate cut lift home building and housing stocks. Its shares have lost a whopping 39% year-to-date but jumped by 13.5% last week as investors bet on mortgage rates dropping following an anticipated interest rate cut. Cramer’s previous comments about RH (NYSE:RH) have wondered whether its industry can survive a talent shortage. This time, he discussed the housing market and remarks by RH (NYSE:RH)’s CEO:
“Housing seems so small, when you look at all the data, so many people are required, from when the paperwork, the actual bricks, the Home Depots. . .housing is so much bigger than a data center because when it’s finished you also have to furnish it. Data center’s one and done. And when you go to a big data center, there’s nobody’s there!
“This housing market is the worst in forty years. Gary Friedman would tell you that, from RH, he’s the best at this. . .”
Here are Cramer’s previous thoughts about RH (NYSE:RH):
“Let’s talk about Wayfair, Williams-Sonoma, and RH, the old Restoration Hardware… I know both Williams-Sonoma and RH are a different story. They make some fine furniture here, and they’d like to make more furniture, but it’s difficult to find skilled workers to make high-quality merchandise. I’m not slagging our workers. The people who used to make furniture simply moved on to other things, or they retired. … Tariff wouldn’t go far enough to make them come back. At the end of the day, I’m skeptical that we can bring back the American furniture industry as we remember it, and even if we could… would it be worth the cost? I don’t know… Unless the federal government wants to get into the business of making furniture, forcing the hand of RH and Williams-Sonoma, it won’t make a difference to the industry as a whole. There will most likely not be a revival of those great furniture cities.”
1. e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. (NYSE:ELF)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q2 2025: 43
e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. (NYSE:ELF)’s shares have gained 9.2% year-to-date after going through a rollercoaster during the year’s first half. Since their post-Liberation Day bottom, the stock has gained 149%. The stock suffered due to the firm’s exposure to tariffs since it sources from China. However, e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. (NYSE:ELF)’s shares have performed well recently as it seems that investors are optimistic about the firm’s ability to target the cosmetics market in an inflationary environment, which has harmed consumer spending. Cramer was nothing but full of praise for e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. (NYSE:ELF)’s CEO Tarang Amin:
“Look, this is very exciting. Because, uh, this is the man who destroyed the pricing of the traditional industry, by making it so that people can afford cosmetics. But he also has big tariff problems. Because he [inaudible] China.”
Here are Cramer’s previous thoughts about e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. (NYSE:ELF): ‘
“[On why ELF was selling its products in Dollar General] Because it’s the last one. The shorts are telling me, not that I listen to the shorts, but the shorts are saying, what’s after Dollar General? Is there anything after?”
While we acknowledge the potential of ELF to grow, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ELF and that has 100x upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.
Disclosure: None. Insider Monkey focuses on uncovering the best investment ideas of hedge funds and insiders. Please subscribe to our free daily e-newsletter to get the latest investment ideas from hedge funds’ investor letters by entering your email address below.
