We recently compiled a list of the Jim Cramer’s Bold Predictions About These 15 Tech Stocks. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stands against the other tech stocks Jim Cramer recently talked about.
Like all of us, Jim Cramer is always wondering what’s next for the stock market. So far, the year has seen AI continue to dominate the market, accompanied by the Federal Reserve and the 2024 US Presidential Election. Now, with the election over and investors pondering over the incoming administration’s tariff policies, like us, Cramer is also focused on the Federal Reserve.
The reason why the Fed and tariffs are related is because the latter can cause inflation to force the former to keep interest rates higher for longer. While it tries to decipher what’s ahead for AI, Wall Street is also wondering about the pace, magnitude, and frequency of the Federal Reserve’s 2025 interest rate cut cycle. This nervousness is reflected in bond yields touching 4.38% on Friday, and asset manager Apollo Global warning that four key inflation indicators appear to be reaccelerating. As per Apollo, the Core CPI, the Core PCE, the Supercore CPI, and the Supercore CPE have all started to rise again.
In Mad Money aired last week, Cramer also had the Fed in mind. Cramer, in his show, commented on the nervousness in the market. The television show host wondered why the stock market wasn’t responding to semiconductor stocks doing well. He started out by sharing that “I hate the endless focus on the Fed. By everybody. Because it detracts you from benefiting from long-term performance for your stock portfolio.” This is because Cramer believes that “every little signal from the Federal Reserve brings out predictions, causing many people to sell good stocks when they are freaked out.”
He did add that the economic data shows that there will be dissent at the Federal Reserve when it comes to further reducing interest rates at the upcoming December meeting. Cramer shared that “while I don’t think the data is cool enough to be positive about the prospects of more cuts for now, I also don’t want you to make decisions purely on what the Fed does. Contrary to popular belief, there’s more to investing than monetary policy. And I wish everyone knew that. They don’t.”
On the topic of tariffs, Cramer had plenty to share in November. He started out by analyzing the performance of the benchmark S&P index between mid-2017 and the start of 2020. Cramer pointed out that “this is where we start to get the real tariff action from the first Trump administration.” He shared that “Trump imposed tariffs on steel, aluminum, solar panels, and washing machines among other goods.” While “all these helped the industries in question . . .the broader market didn’t like that we were triggering a global trade war.”
Cramer pointed out the index’s performance between January 22nd and December 24th, 2018 to bolster the view that tariffs weren’t great for the stock market. However, before you write them off, consider his remarks. According to Cramer, during this time period, “the S&P 500 lost 18% of its value. Of course, some of that is because the Fed got much more aggressive about raising interest rates through this period. Taking them up. a 100 basis points that year. But it definitely wasn’t just the Fed. You can see from the chart that virtually every time we got more tariffs, the S&P would roll over, every time China retaliated, we’d sell off.”
Yet, according to Cramer, “once the Fed decided to stop tightening at the very end of 2018, the S&P was finally able to find a floor.” Following this, the market “rebounded like crazy” as part of a “bullish trading cycle, one that continued until Covid hit in 2020. Long story short, the market couldn’t handle the trade war when the Fed was tightening. But as soon as the Fed started easing, all those losses evaporated.”
Using charts from Jessica Inskip, Cramer compared the last intersection of the Fed and Trump tariffs with today’s environment. He outlined that the “Fed is now our friend.” Why is that so? Well, according to Cramer, as soon as the Fed stopped tightening, the market “stopped reacting as aggressively to the trade war.” He shared that Inskip believes that “something like a trade war can certainly hurt us badly when the market’s already trending bearishly. But if we’ve got a bullish trading cycle like we do right now, then she’s not worried as long as we can maintain this cycle.”
So, as Cramer remains cautiously optimistic about the stock market’s future, we decided to see how his views about stocks have stood the test of time.
Our Methodology
To make our list of the 15 stocks Jim Cramer has made bold predictions about, we compiled his statements about top tech stocks and ranked them by the date the statements were made.
For these stocks, we also mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds invest in? 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 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points. (see more details here).
A wide view of an Apple store, showing the range of products the company offers.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q3 2024: 158
Date of Cramer’s Comments: 10-14-24
Cramer spent a good part of his show in October criticizing Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s bears. Since it derives 51% of its revenue, the firm’s hypothesis is tied to the iconic smartphone. This means that any perceived weakness in iPhone sales tends to drive the stock price. Here’s what was on Cramer’s mind:
“Today, two firms, JPMorgan and Evercore, talked about why you need to buy Apple. Both pieces stress that maybe people have gotten too bearish on the stock ahead of the earnings. So we might need to rethink all that negativity and just buy the darn thing. I mean, it’s bizarre that so many people are so eager to hate the stock of one of the greatest companies in history, especially when the stock’s been such a great long-term performer. Quizzical, isn’t it? Yet this happens whenever they launch a new phone. It feels like almost every day we come in and some analyst lowers their estimates because of tracker work that showed iPhone 16 lead times were short and there’s not much demand, right? I mean blah, blah blah.
“So many analysts have now shaded down their estimates for Apple that, get this, if business is simply okay, the estimates will prove to be too low. So these two bold analysts at JP Morgan [and] Evercore wanted to take the other side of the trade, the positive side. Plus, many of the objections to Apple may not hold as much water as they did even a couple [of] weeks ago. For example, we know a lot of people were worried about Chinese demand, but get this, if the Chinese government’s actually able to stimulate, right, the stimulus plan starts working well, don’t you think that China’s issues are a smaller concern, more money for consumers in China means more orders for the prestigious iPhone.
“This is why I always say own it, don’t trade it. The analysts always try to scare you out of Apple based on incomplete data and from a long-term perspective, think about it, they’re always wrong. If you sell Apple in the most recent bout of negativity, you miss a tremendous run over the past week. And then, you did it before that you missed another run, then another and another. No wonder they call this stock the Teflon Don or at least Ben Reitzes over at Melius, a big Apple supporter calls it that, and I like it.”
Since then, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s shares have gained 7.28% after tumbling by 4% in October. Some of this fall was based on, surprise surprise, a report by well-known analyst Ming-chi Kuo sharing that the firm had cut its iPhone orders. As for the recent share price rise, Wedbush’s Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) permabull Dan Ives believes that Wall Street is starting to think that the iPhone 16 is the start of a supercycle and that the firm’s Chinese woes might soon be over.
Overall AAPL ranks 5th on our list of the tech stocks Jim Cramer recently talked about. While we acknowledge the potential of AAPL as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AAPL but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.