We recently published a list of Jim Cramer Discusses These 11 Stocks & Says People Don’t Understand Tariffs. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Ulta Beauty, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer discusses.
In a recent appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer commented on the markets ending another volatile week that ended after a massive $4 trillion selloff on the flagship S&P since the post-election week at the start. He outlined that one of the reasons that the week was tumultuous was that the President was “creating pain” and then saying that he was sorry that there was pain. Cramer described Trump as gratuitous and added that the President’s comments had killed the stock market’s rally.
Cramer added that Trump “took stocks that had been going up and reversed them.” Cramer’s “still trying to figure out where the playbook gets us,” with the playbook being the President’s comments about the economy and the stock market. Following this, co-host Carl Quintanilla asked Cramer his thoughts on rumors that the President was trying to drive the bond market down but the strategy didn’t seem to be working. In response, Cramer shared:
“Well I mean we had that auction yesterday, that didn’t go well. People are kind of so on edge, but it’s not a flight to quality on edge. It’s more of a flight to cash. I mean you know this idea of a flight to quality does include that there’s part of the curve you wanna be on. Now when I was a hedge fund manager, there were these moments where you’d hear flight to quality and that meant that you really wanted to be in 30-day paper. We’re kind of back to that. Because that’s safe. 30-day’s very safe. It’s safe from the President. And, look, I, the President’s interesting. He’s intriguing. But I never really felt that we were in a moment where stocks should go down. When I was close to President Biden, when he would ride the train and I’d see him in Washington. . .I would have the page [inaudible] stock price, he would come over [inaudible] I don’t care about any of those. Well the President does. He wants them lower! He’s creating a sale. I mean I’ve never seen a sale mandated before. No one was thinking that he was going to bend when he did that gratuitous tweet.”
Cramer wondered who was in the President’s ear and was advising him on his social media posts. Shifting gears, he shared that “we need steel to be a viable industry” especially as steel prices had struggled through 2024. Cramer has shared multiple times in his previous appearances that a big reason behind the lower steel prices is cheap Chinese steel flooding the US market through Mexico and he wants the President to act on it to stabilize the market.
He also shared his thoughts on the President’s latest round of tariffs on expensive alcoholic beverages:
“I mean the average person in this country, Republican or Democrat, is struggling to try to figure out what it means to put a big tariff on champagne other than the fact that well hey, there goes champagne. There’s no context. There’s no understanding. There’s no webpage you can go to that allows you to learn. You know you’re on your own, everyone’s on their own trying to figure out what a tariff means. And you know what does a tariff means? Well it means Pernod, Pernod Ricard, more expensive. You know, Campari. I mean people don’t know what these things mean. I’m in the liquor business and I don’t know what it means.”
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 March 14th.
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).
A photograph of a customer testing out different products in the skincare aisle at a store.
Ulta Beauty, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 47
Ulta Beauty, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) is one of the biggest beauty retailers in the US. Its shares have lost 19.8% year-to-date and are down by 35% over the past year. As has been the case with its peers, the stock has struggled due to weak consumer demand which has hurt sales and caused analysts to reduce their estimates. The troubles have also led Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway to sell its stake in the firm. Cramer discussed Ulta Beauty, Inc. (NASDAQ:ULTA) in detail:
“You’ll see the stock of Ulta going up today and it shouldn’t. But that’s because people feel some relief. They must not have read the conference call. Because the conference call is incredible in terms of how the new CEO, actually literally says, we’re doing so many things wrong. I was, Dave Kimbell was the previous CEO, I used to interview him all the time. You know, Kecia Steelman, come at the company itself. She says look, the company’s never been this intense. For the first time, we lost market share in the beauty category. She talks about they just operated, they have to change, they’re missing opportunities and I came back and just said, holy cow, she’s on the war path against the management of the previous team. Now I don’t think she necessarily wanted that to come out that way. But it made me think that she felt that Dave Kimbell and his team, because they’ve replaced a lot of them, have missed the mark. Quite shocking cause Ulta Beauty is one of the few beacons in what has been a horrendous, horrendous cohort.
“No they weren’t [the comps being disappointing] and that’s why the stock is up. And plus I mean, it’s just been a relentless, you know, Elf has been terrible. Estee Lauder is probably one of the worst plunges I have ever seen in my career. This is a very challenged group and you got to be careful about cosmetics. Remember, Kohl’s and Sephora, the only thing that’s keeping Kohl’s around is Sephora. That was a great deal that they made. But I want to stay away from cosmetics nine ways to Sunday. Anything cosmetics is just no place to be.”
Overall, ULTA ranks 4th on our list of stocks that Jim Cramer discusses. While we acknowledge the potential of ULTA as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ULTA 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.