We recently compiled a list of the Jim Cramer Recently Talked About These 11 S&P 500 Stocks. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) stands against the other stocks Jim Cramer recently talked about.
On Monday, Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money, took a closer look at how the S&P 500 performed in January, highlighting both the successes and the setbacks, and commented on the ongoing tariffs activity. Reflecting on the market’s early response to President Trump’s policies in 2025, Cramer noted that while January was generally a good month for stocks, some of the biggest gainers have since experienced significant pullbacks. According to Cramer, it is important to evaluate both the winners and losers as the year progresses.
Furthermore, Cramer mentioned that his family, with substantial business dealings in Mexico, took Trump’s campaign promise of imposing tariffs on the country seriously, while others did not. While the implementation of a 25% tariff has been delayed by a month, Cramer pointed out that its impact remains real. If enacted, the tariff could become a serious barrier to profitability for businesses on both sides of the border.
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What Cramer did not expect, however, was the response from Mexico’s newly elected president, Claudia Sheinbaum. Sheinbaum took a bold step by deploying 10,000 National Guard troops to address illegal immigration and combat the influx of fentanyl into the country. In exchange, she secured a temporary one-month pause on the tariff.
“I think this opens the door for a change in trade policy, the one that’s much more targeted, now, that’s much smarter than the tit-for-tat approach that China adopted, one that could possibly preserve a lot of commerce we have with Mexico, our biggest trading partner.”
Cramer believes that this approach could help preserve the vital trade relationship between the U.S. and Mexico, a relationship worth $807 billion in 2023. Cramer also cautioned that while this adjustment may help avoid an immediate economic downturn, there’s a risk of unintended consequences. If Mexico’s economy does slip into recession due to the tariffs, Cramer warned, the resulting economic strain could trigger a surge in illegal immigration.
“Bottom line, pretty disparate group of winners and losers if you ask me. Very different from 2024. So why don’t we see how things play out for the rest of the year?”
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 11 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money on February 3. We listed the stocks in the order that Cramer mentioned them. We also provided hedge fund sentiment for each stock as of the third quarter of 2024, which was taken from Insider Monkey’s database of 900 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 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).
Solar panel workers installing a new farm for clean energy generation.
Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 97
Cramer noted that Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST), an electricity retailer and power generation company, was the fourth-best performer in the S&P 500 in January. Highlighting that the company is a nuclear play, he said:
“When you look at Constellation and Vistra, look, these nuclear stocks have had explosive multi-year moves as the data center build-out has created this electricity shortage around the whole country and nuclear remains the preferred power source for any company that cares about climate change.”
Cramer highlighted the recent major data center announcements from Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, SoftBank, and OpenAI. Last month, the three companies revealed plans for Stargate, which is a $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative. Cramer noted that this news caused stocks like Vistra (NYSE:VST) to surge, as investors reacted positively to the prospects of AI-driven demand for energy. However, Cramer pointed out that the market now faces uncertainty due to DeepSeek, with Wall Street questioning whether these tech giants have overextended their spending on AI hardware. He added:
“Both Constellation and Vistra got obliterated in response, although they’ve now rebounded pretty substantially from the lows. And again, they still finished January up big. I’ve seen some analysis suggest that DeepSeek has been downplaying its real cost but until we get more clarity, I don’t wanna stick my neck out for nuclear stocks because these only work when the data center story is ironclad.
Now I do know that Scott Strazik from GE Vernova, which builds nuclear power plants, is getting more bullish about the near-term possibility of orders but even under the best of circumstances, these things take years to construct.”
Overall VST ranks 2nd on our list of the S&P 500 stocks Jim Cramer recently talked about. While we acknowledge the potential of VST 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 VST 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 was originally published at Insider Monkey.