Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Money, on Monday reviewed the biggest gainers and laggards in the S&P 500 for January.
The first month of 2026 is officially in the books. So before we move on to another very busy week of earnings, I want to go over the state of the market. Last month, we saw this big change in leadership with the small-cap focused Russell 2000, rallying an astounding 5.3%… Dow Jones Industrial Average up 1.7%…. The tech-heavy Nasdaq… up just 1.2%. When you look at individual sectors, energy, materials, and consumer staples led the way.
READ ALSO: 15 Stocks on Jim Cramer’s Recent Game Plan and Jim Cramer Shared His Thoughts on These 16 Stocks.
Cramer pointed out how different it looks compared with last year, when long-time leaders such as technology and financial stocks were far stronger, while now those areas are trailing. He said that to truly understand the market’s tone, it helps to closely examine both the 10 best and the 10 worst performers in the S&P 500 for January. He added that breaking the market down like that sharpens focus and helps investors see patterns that might otherwise be missed.
So here’s the bottom line: When you look at the 10 best performers of January, there’s a lot going on, but most of the strength is semiconductor-related, with a smattering of beaten-down stocks from other industries that are making some much-deserved comebacks… There are a lot of names where we’re seeing shrinking price-to-earnings multiples, and that’s thanks to artificial intelligence worries, especially in software, as well as a couple of firms that have been hurt by the government, Humana, Constellation Energy. And then some are just doing badly like The Trade Desk, Las Vegas Sands. It’s a motley crew of badness. Only way I can put it.
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 16 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money aired on February 2. We listed the stocks according to Cramer’s rankings, except for the 9th and 10th-worst-performing stocks. 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).
Jim Cramer Highlighted 16 Noteworthy S&P 500 Stocks
16. Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 58
Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS) is one of the noteworthy S&P 500 stocks Jim Cramer highlighted. Cramer noted the stock’s recent decline during the episode, as he said:
Finally, the eighth worst performer last month was Las Vegas Sands. That’s the casino company that’s now exclusively a play on Macau and Singapore. Stock sank 19% last month in large part because they did report a disappointing quarter last Wednesday with weak margins in Macau, thanks to elevated promotional spending.
It looks like wealthy Chinese consumers are still hesitant to spend heavily, perhaps because the real estate market’s doing so badly there…. There’s nothing particular that makes me understand why things were really that bad there. As I said on Friday, I’m skeptical of the gambling industry right now. Even if I were willing to take a chance on a bounce, I’d rather do it with a company that gets most of its business from the United States. I do like Wynn, for instance.
Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE:LVS) owns and operates resorts that include hotels, casinos, and retail malls. The properties also provide convention facilities, restaurants, and entertainment venues.
15. Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 119
Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) is one of the noteworthy S&P 500 stocks Jim Cramer highlighted. Cramer noted that the Charitable Trust has held the stock for quite a long time, as he stated:
Salesforce was the seventh worst, down almost 20%. GoDaddy, which offers tools to register and construct websites, many people use them, was ninth worst, down roughly 19%. Tyler Tech, which makes software for public sector customers, rounded out the bottom 10 with its stock down nearly 19%… Salesforce, get this, 30 times down to 16 times. GoDaddy, 30 times down to 14 times. Tyler, 54 down to 29. That’s a textbook example of multiple compression. It’s extraordinary. Now, if you don’t understand anything that I just said about PEs and multiple compressions, I spend so much time talking about it here because it is the most important thing about your stocks, knowing the multiple, knowing why compressor expands, How to Make Money in Any Market.
This is what you need to know if you’re going to own stocks of high price-to-earnings multiple companies. At this point, you could argue that there’s some overshooting on the downside. If you believe in this industry, I’d recommend going with ServiceNow or Salesforce. We own the latter for the Charitable Trust. We’ve owned it for years and years. But honestly, you could have made the same argument a month ago, and you would’ve taken huge losses in January. So I don’t blame anyone who wants to avoid the entire enterprise software cohort here. It is an incredibly bad market. Incredible. I mean, you compare that to, say, like to the transports. Fresh high, fresh high, fresh high. These are fresh low, fresh low, fresh low.
Salesforce, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) provides CRM-focused tools that help businesses manage customer interactions, use AI agents, analyze data, collaborate, and run marketing, commerce, and field service operations.
