In his latest appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer unpacked the deepening uncertainty gripping both markets and politics as investors brace for higher inflation, elevated yields, and an unpredictable White House. With bond yields climbing and tariffs expanding across sectors, Cramer highlighted just how fragile investor conviction has become:
[talking about rising bond yields on 10Y treasuries] “You have a lot of people who say, you know what, I’ve got to revisit everything because of the inflationary nature. Maybe I have to buy them at 5-6%. Now, the reason I say that is because I think when the average person looks at the huge inflation that’s coming, they can’t think of a reason to buy bonds. And that’s where I’m stuck. Why would I buy that piece of paper? I mean, if the Japanese are selling that piece of paper and the Chinese are selling that piece of paper, why am I buying that piece of paper? And the answer is, I’m not. Let’s wait. A lot of things are ‘let’s wait’ in the bond market. In the stock market, there’s people taking action every minute on craziness.”
READ ALSO: Jim Cramer Says Tariff Pain Isn’t Over Yet And Reviews These 9 Stocks and Jim Cramer Calls Market Decline ‘Man-Made’ and Breaks Down 15 Stocks.
He also emphasized the sheer weight of presidential authority in shaping market sentiment, warning that Main Street rhetoric alone won’t shield investors from the fallout:
“The president is very powerful right now. Immensely powerful. More powerful than ever in my life. It would be amazing if the president said, you know what, we’re done for now. We’re done. But he came out and said, now it’s pharma’s turn. So as long as this keeps up, and he said he doesn’t care about Wall Street, he cares about Main Street. At a certain point, if you care about Main Street, then you do actually care about the 401k.”
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 April 9th.
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).
7. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 166
As uncertainty around trade and inflation weighs heavily on market valuations, Jim Cramer argued that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) sits at the epicenter of investor anxiety, suffering more than any other major tech stock amid tariff concerns and earnings ambiguity. He said:
“I’ve spent maybe 40 minutes trying to figure out what price-to-earnings multiple I should put on the company known as Apple. And the reason I say that is because it’s at the fulcrum of this moment because it’s the one that has uniformly hurt the worst. President last night said billions, 500 billions as if that Apple’s putting here, but it’s; I don’t want to say it’s disingenuous, but I do think that there’s a notion that Apple has by far hurt the most. Do you give it a 16 multiple? Do you give it a 20 multiple? Do you use 645 for the earnings? Now, I’m bringing this up as a metaphor for the lack of secure, lack of any sort of even, let’s just say thought – a rigorous thought – of what Apple – this is one of the largest companies in the world – is going to earn next year and what multiple. And you default to thinking, OK, what’s the historic multiple? Then you take it to a 20, use a 645, and bingo, you see where I’m going. […] What is the most hurt stock? Apple. It is up $5.79. Are those just fools buying it?”
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