In this article, we will look at the stocks Jim Cramer looked at as he discussed the recent bounce in software stocks. The host of CNBC’s Mad Money said Monday that software stocks are in the middle of a rebound after taking heavy losses tied to fears around artificial intelligence.
If history teaches us anything, any stock can bounce. Today, we saw a bounce in the software stocks that have been crushed by the idea, and in some cases, only the idea, that they will be annihilated by artificial intelligence. They’ve been dragged down because they’re all represented in the silly iShares software ETF, the IGV, which has been used and abused to bet against anything even tangentially related to software… Now, once the street sees that these stocks are rallying, you’ll hear their analyst cheerleaders come out and bull them up. That’s the nature of stocks that get crushed. They get sold and sold and sold until they’re oversold, and then they bounce for reasons that are not readily accessible. Next thing you know, the analysts come out of their foxholes, and they fire for effect. It works.
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Cramer advised investors who are thinking about exiting these positions not to rush, and suggested they wait for the rebound to play out because the move higher could be significant. Cramer also said he has been thinking through the broader AI narrative and believes it would be useful to separate software companies into clearer categories: those being disrupted by AI, those benefiting from it, and those largely unaffected.
If we do that, we can identify opportunities, stocks that have been knocked down as collateral damage, even as their businesses won’t be disrupted at all or will be turbocharged. Those are the ones that can return to their old levels.
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 17 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money aired on April 13. We listed the stocks in the order that Cramer mentioned them.
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 498.7% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 303 percentage points (see more details here).
Jim Cramer Looked at 17 Stocks, Including Microsoft, CrowdStrike, and Salesforce
17. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD)
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) was among the stocks Jim Cramer looked at as he discussed the recent bounce in software stocks. Cramer highlighted the impact of AI on the stock, as he said:
Then there are the two stocks of companies that shouldn’t even be grouped with the rest of the software industry at all. What are they doing in the index? The cybersecurity companies, CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks. They have nothing to do with traditional software at all, and the businesses are actually turbocharged by AI. That’s right. AI isn’t gobbling them; it’s supporting them, because it creates so many new vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit. That’s why CrowdStrike stock was up 6% today, Palo Alto, plus 4.35%. But they’re well off their highs, nowhere near them.
CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) provides cloud-based cybersecurity solutions. The company offers protection for endpoints, cloud systems, identities, and data. During the April 7 episode, Cramer highlighted the company’s partnership with Anthropic. He commented:
Oh, and for weeks, I’ve been hearing the drumbeat that CrowdStrike would be destroyed by Anthropic. But today, Anthropic announced a partnership with CrowdStrike as well as Palo Alto Networks and some others called Project Glass Wing to protect Anthropic users. Anthropic needs CrowdStrike. It doesn’t seek to wipe it out. Hence why CrowdStrike rallied 24 points, and I think there’s a lot more ahead there, too.
16. Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL)
Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) was among the stocks Jim Cramer looked at as he discussed the recent bounce in software stocks. Cramer noted the stock’s fall and rise over the recent months, as he remarked:
Oracle, the builder of so many data centers, an iconic enterprise software play, jumped nearly 13% today, which is a healthy sign given the previous trajectory. Stock’s been pretty much straight down from $345 to $145. Almost a complete round trip from when it announced it was going into the data center business in the first place. Again, some parts of Oracle are disruptable, others aren’t.
Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) provides cloud and on-premise software, databases, and IT infrastructure to help businesses manage operations. Cramer called it “one of the hardest stocks to value” during the April 10 episode, as he commented:
This is a very, very tough one. It’s one of the hardest stocks to value because we don’t know exactly what their balance sheet’s going to look like. They are, they plunged into the data center build at a time when I think a lot of people were saying maybe it was not a great call. I want to see the quarter. I know it doesn’t happen till June, but I just don’t like what I see developing away from Oracle that makes me feel like that they are the guys I want to bank on. That’s the problem. I mean, I saw CoreWeave today. Those guys are so, so good, and even though that stock’s up a lot, I actually like that one more than I like Oracle.
