Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Money, said on Tuesday that, given the tight memory market, investors should focus on semiconductor capital equipment plays.
It really doesn’t take much to derail these commodity chip makers. Maybe their Korean competitors, like Samsung [and] SK Hynix, will expand their production capacity without our knowledge. Maybe the hyperscalers look at the sky-high prices of memory and data storage products and decide it’s time to dial back their data center investments. Possibility.
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Cramer emphasized that even a minor disturbance can severely damage these stocks, and added that he has watched such a scenario play out many times before. He said that given how far the shares have already climbed, investors who do not already own them are likely arriving too late. He then talked about a less risky way to stay exposed to the same trend. While he stressed that nothing in this space is truly safe, he called semiconductor capital equipment companies a safer alternative compared with the memory producers themselves.
Here’s the bottom line: If you want to play the memory and data storage without chasing stocks that have tripled or quadrupled in barely more than a year, I think the semiconductor capital equipment makers will be more durable winners here. I think Wall Street might not fully appreciate the long-term capacity expansions coming through the entire semiconductor ecosystem. While I don’t know how these companies will do when most of them report this week, that doesn’t interest me. I hope the stocks pull back because then you’ve got my blessing to buy them for the long haul, which is what we care about on Mad Money.
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 12 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money aired on January 27. 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 2025, which was taken from Insider Monkey’s database of 978 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 427.7% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 264 percentage points (see more details here).
Jim Cramer Talked About These 12 Stocks and the Memory Shortage
12. Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 75
Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer talked about, along with the memory shortage. Cramer highlighted the company’s $6 billion deal with Meta, as he stated:
If you use your powers of observation, if you exercise some curiosity, you can find some very, very good investments. And that’s what happened to the Charitable Trust today when we struck gold with Corning, which rallied more than 15% on news of a gigantic contract from Meta for $6 billion in fiber optic cables… Now, today in our morning meeting… Jeff Marks and I told club members, please do not sell, even though Corning reports tomorrow morning. Now, I suspect I have to tell you that after this run, a more than 15% gain in one day, almost anything they report could be a letdown. It wouldn’t shock me if the stock could go down. But why not take profits? Two reasons. One, if Meta wants $6 billion in fiber optic cables, what will Microsoft want, or Tesla, or Google, or Amazon?
And two, the actual NVIDIA chips that predominate in the data center are chock-full of copper. What if one day Corning can figure out how to make fiber for the inside of the chip? Wouldn’t shock me. Data centers would almost immediately burn less hot, and therefore, need less electricity for climate control. But I digress… If I’d only focused on iPhone glass at that Corning plant, I would’ve missed out on something that’s given my Charitable Trust a huge gain. So follow your curiosity, drill down on what you see. Sometimes, there’s a terrific investment idea hiding in plain sight.
Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW) develops optical fiber, cables, and related hardware for telecommunications, and produces glass substrates for displays used in TVs, computers, and mobile devices. Moreover, it supplies specialty materials, emission control products, and laboratory equipment.
11. Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 93
Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer talked about, along with the memory shortage. Cramer highlighted the reason for the stock’s tremendous rally in 2025 and to date in 2026, as he remarked:
Again, as with Taiwan Semi, this isn’t about memory chips. In this case, it’s CPUs that Intel can’t make enough of. That means more business for the capital equipment makers, especially Lam Research. CPUs are their bread and butter. Lam’s also one of the leading providers of the type of equipment used to make memory chips. So they’ll be one of the first companies to benefit as the memory and data storage companies look to boost their productions, which I know they want to. That’s why this stock rallied 137% last year before tackling on another 39% gain in January. Now, some of these semiconductor capital equipment companies will be reporting earnings in the next few days… While I expect all these companies to report great numbers, the bar is now incredibly high, given how much their stocks have run. So I can’t say for sure how their stocks will react as they are what I say coming in hot.
But that brings me to a very smart analyst note from Lynx Equity… that came into my inbox. It was published this morning. The Lynx analyst says that a beat-and-raise result is already baked into Lam Research’s stock. I agree with that. It’s hard to argue with. But the analyst is still very bullish on Lam, and that’s because they expect much better numbers in 2027 than the rest of Wall Street’s looking for. I agree with that. If management gives a qualitative view of wafer fab equipment into 2027, and we hope that not everybody is starting to build out at once, the Lynx analyst argues that the stock could soar. Otherwise, he expects it to sell off because it’s up 39% over the past few weeks. If Lam Research does sell off, though, that may be the real opportunity. I would be a buyer. I believe in this group long term, and Lam is my personal favorite. It’s incredibly well-run.
Lam Research Corporation (NASDAQ:LRCX) develops equipment for depositing, etching, and cleaning semiconductor materials. It includes systems for tungsten and copper metallization, plasma and atomic-layer deposition, dielectric and conductor etch, and wafer cleaning.
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