During a recent episode of Mad Money, which aired on Friday the 2nd of May, Jim Cramer discussed some macro-based data that affected the stock market over the past week:
“When you get a strong employment report like we did this morning, it does a lot of things that you need to know about. First, it takes a near-term recession kind of off the table. Very difficult to have recession with a 4.2% unemployment rate. That’s just too much demand for workers.”
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He warned his viewers to not get excited about the recent rally but admitted that the recent earnings reports were encouraging:
“So keep in mind that today’s rally may not be one off as we go through our game plan for next week. But first, let me just say we’re over the hump. We’ve now had companies that reported fabulous numbers.”
His last cautious warning was to look out for any possible geopolitical escalations between the U.S. and China:
“Here’s the bottom line: We know that we’re living through a time of great tumult. We could easily be thrown off if President Trump responds harshly to this Chinese olive branch this very weekend. If that happens, there could be some unwinding to do. Right now, though, it looks like the momentum can keep up as long as we don’t get a total breakdown in the nascent trade talks between the world’s two biggest nations.”
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 11 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during Mad Money episodes that aired on the 5th and 6th of May, 2024. We then calculated their performance for the past 12 months, until May 6th, 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).
11. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 166
Cramer talked about Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in the context of its earnings report, upcoming product launches, and its connection to Nvidia’s Vision Pro integration at the time. Cramer was trying to reassure investors after Apple’s stock had fallen sharply. Here’s what he said back then:
“Apple pulled back hard going into its good quarter. It reminds you that the critics and commentators can often lead you astray.
[…] Apple now has a pretty clear glide path. […] The next generation phone might be a must-buy. […] I think the jokes about the Vision Pro will be retired next year… and that possibility is not baked into the share price at all. […]
“Apple’s quarter was better than feared, its guidance was better than expected. […] When I asked Tim Cook whether the next iPhone would have all the cool AI capabilities that Samsung had, he laughed and assured me not to worry about that. Now that makes me think that the next iPhone iteration will be a must buy which means that you should be buying Apple stock right now.”
Although the iPhone giant is only up by 8.46% since those comments, they can still be seen as an accurate prediction.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is facing some unique challenges recently. While discussing its most recent earnings, here’s what Cramer said on the 1st of May:
“Apple gave us a classic top and bottom line beat with sales up 5% year-over-year and earnings per share up 8% despite strong FX headwinds in the period.
Everyone was worried about iPhone sales, but those came in nearly $1 billion ahead of expectations with Apple CEO Tim Cook telling me tonight there was no evidence of a temporary sales boost from consumers buying ahead of the tariffs. China sales a little light of but isn’t that expected by now? Offset by much better than expected sales in the Americas and the rest of Asia.
Apple continues to achieve record sales in many emerging markets. The stock, by the way, get this: It’s reduced its share count by over 40% since 2012. It announced a new $100 billion dollar share purchase repurchase tonight. Only the very consistent service revenue line was light. That was disappointing. Got to call it when I see it.
I expect that the company will give more color on the exposure to tariffs and the potential impact that they might have on the rest of the year during the earnings call which is currently ongoing. And while the strength of the first quarter results themselves are a great reminder of why it never really pays to get too negative on the world’s largest company, Apple’s estimating it will have $900 million in cost increases and tariffs next quarter. That is suboptimal. Not their fault. It will matter, but it’s suboptimal. […]
Even though it’s the slowest growing and the most tariffed, it does still make the most beloved products in the world.”
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