Jim Cramer’s Mad Money Recap: 5 Stocks, Including CrowdStrike & Microsoft

In this article, we will look at Jim Cramer’s Mad Money Recap: 5 Stocks, Including CrowdStrike & Microsoft. Please visit Jim Cramer’s Mad Money Recap: 12 Stocks, Including RTX & Marvell, if you’d like to see the extended list and methodology behind it.

5. Lennar Corporation (NYSE:LEN)

Lennar Corporation (NYSE:LEN) was among the stocks covered in Jim Cramer’s Mad Money recap as he urged investors to focus on the fundamentals of companies. A caller mentioned they bought LEN and TOL shares after hearing bullish comments from Cramer, but noted that LEN has been down. Cramer replied:

You buy Lennar. I saw, I read through D.R. Horton, the largest home builder, I read through the conference call today. I said, holy cow. The combination of that fellow who was on the Hill today, Warsh, and this, you’re going to make money in the home builders. I think you buy some Lennar tomorrow, and Stuart Miller will not let you down, trust me.

Lennar Corporation (NYSE:LEN) builds and sells single-family and multifamily homes, develops residential land, and manages rental properties for buyers ranging from first-time to luxury. Cramer mentioned the company during the December 18, 2025, episode. The Mad Money host said:

Let’s start with Lennar. It turned in a technically mixed but mostly bad set of numbers on Tuesday night. The good news, deliveries came in better than expected, up 4% year-over-year. Total revenues also surprised to the upside, although they still declined 6% from the previous year. That’s not good. Within the core home building segment, revenues and average sales price both exceeded expectations even as they represented declines of 7 and 10%, respectively. The bad news, the most important thing, profitability, or the lack thereof. Lennar’s home-building gross margin came in at 17.0%. That was down over 500 basis points year-over-year and well below expectations. I always look at gross margins when I do home builders. That’s my number one metric.

Home building operating earnings were down 52% year-over-year, much worse than expected, and Lennar only earned $2.3 per share. Wall Street was looking for $2.26. That’s an almost 50% decline year-over-year. That’s not good. It gets worse. With every quarter, Lennar also gives us some more forward-looking metrics, and those painted a pretty discouraging picture. New orders, they came in lower than expected. The average sales price for new orders was in line with expectations. That’s good, but still below the average selling prices for deliveries this past quarter, and it was down huge year-over-year.

Lennar’s guidance for the current quarter, weak. The company expects to deliver 17,000-18,000 homes in the current quarter, well below the 20,089 number that Wall Street was looking for. That was shocking to me. Management says the average sales price for these homes will be between $365,000-$375,000. And they’re talking about a home building gross margin coming in between 15 and 16%. Both of those represent deterioration from the quarter they just reported.

How about the full-year forecast for 2026? Lennar’s guidance for deliveries was also weaker than expected. Man. Now, Lennar has been pretty transparent about its strategy. They’re focused on keeping volumes up, and they’re willing to make sacrifices on price and incentives in order to keep moving lots of inventory. Admirable, but their strategy comes with a big hit to profitability. Worse, when you look at the new orders numbers and the forward guidance, it doesn’t seem to be working. Even with Lennar giving buyers great deals, demand still seems to be softening. And you understand, these guys are fantastic at what they do, so this was shocking to me… In my opinion, Miller (CEO Stuart Miller) sounded a little befuddled by how long it’s taken to get the housing market back on its feet. Lennar has already cut its prices a great deal at this point.

4. UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH)

UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) was among the stocks covered in Jim Cramer’s Mad Money recap as he urged investors to focus on the fundamentals of companies. Cramer showed a positive sentiment toward the company, as he commented:

Then there’s UnitedHealth. This company’s long been the cream of the health insurer crop, but it got hit by some serious management missteps. Sure, this was a tougher one to see coming. Steve Hemsley, a tremendous CEO, ran the company from 2006 to 2017, and his company was the best in the industry by far. UNH ran a ground, not because the business went bad, but because management went bad. Look, I don’t need to rehash it. Others say that Hemsley returned to the CEO role in May of last year. He made it clear that he needed some time to fix the company. He pulled guidance, said there was a lot of work to do. I was genuinely worried that UNH might be permanently broken. I was wrong. The balance sheet was good. Hemsley was his same old great self. Today, the company reported what I think will be the first of many upside surprises. Just like the way Hemsley always used to do, clockwork. You don’t just get one good quarter from Hemsley, you get many. Stock shot up nearly 7%. I think it’s a buy. I think it can return to its former greatness.

UnitedHealth Group Incorporated (NYSE:UNH) provides health care services, insurance plans, pharmacy care, and data-driven solutions.

3. Blackstone Inc. (NYSE:BX)

Blackstone Inc. (NYSE:BX) was among the stocks covered in Jim Cramer’s Mad Money recap as he urged investors to focus on the fundamentals of companies. Cramer mentioned the company during the episode and stated:

How about Blackstone, BX? Okay, not that long ago, we were reading about how this terrific private equity firm could be crushed by its private credit business line. Now, it had owned a fund that had big redemptions because of fear that the fund’s software investments would be destroyed by Anthropic. See the theme?… The stock fell from $160s in January to the low $100s. Other private equity firms gated funds or did limited redemptions. Blackstone, what did they do? They actually went to their employees and said, hey, would you like to step in and buy some of the private credit funds to help recover redemptions? I actually know they did this voluntarily. I was screaming up and down because, it was voluntary, that you had to buy the stock…. It quickly fell another 10 points… Then the software stocks in the most important software index sprang back to life. Too many short sellers, but not a lot of failures. It looks like Anthropic is not the kiss of death after all. Blackstone stock roars back to $133 at one point today, even though it pulled back in the afternoon to $128.50. The move was worth catching, even as it seemed like throwing good money after bad when the stock kept falling after the employees made their contribution.

Blackstone Inc. (NYSE:BX) manages alternative assets, specializing in private equity, real estate, hedge fund solutions, and credit strategies.

2. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) was among the stocks covered in Jim Cramer’s Mad Money recap as he urged investors to focus on the fundamentals of companies. Cramer noted that dumping the stock “could have been a big mistake,” as he remarked:

Or how about Microsoft? Now, we’ve owned it for the Charitable Trust for ages. I’ve been looking pretty silly, frankly. We’re aware that Copilot has issues, but we’re also aware that Azure cloud infrastructure business is robust. Windows franchise remains second to none. So we held on to it. Stock’s been ugly, fell from $555 at its heights last summer to $356 at the end of March, where it began a sustained run during which all I heard was derision and how could you be so stupid to own it?… Then today, after the beginning of a nice rumble higher, an incredibly positive Citi piece of research emerges and ignites the stock… This is the first positive piece I’ve seen on Microsoft since the negativists took over the microphone… Microsoft’s enterprise software is doing incredibly well. Some product lines, sure, some are going to get hurt by Anthropic or even OpenAI, which is their partner, but it’s got a fantastic balance sheet. It can improve its AI offering, and it can take some hits, for heaven’s sake. I’m glad we didn’t dump it. First day I’ve said that in a long time. It could have been a big mistake. Stock’s back up to $424, up six bucks today. I bet you analysts come out of the woodwork and say, you know what, we really like Microsoft.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) develops software, hardware, and cloud-based solutions. The company provides products like Windows, Azure, Office, LinkedIn, and Xbox.

1. CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD)

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) was among the stocks covered in Jim Cramer’s Mad Money recap as he urged investors to focus on the fundamentals of companies. Cramer discussed the false AI worries around the stock, as he commented:

Let’s start with CrowdStrike. Here’s the premier cloud native cybersecurity company that has one of the greatest records in the industry. If you recall, there was a major outage caused by CrowdStrike… It was back above pre-outage levels, though, by mid-November that year as George Kurtz, the CEO, took it upon himself to have a tour, 100 accounts, 100 days, a little bit more or less. But you know what? The stock never looked back after that until late 2025 when we started to hear that Anthropic was gunning for their business. We owned the stock for the Charitable Trust, and I was mystified why anyone would think that Anthropic would offer cybersecurity for other properties, let alone its own. I know they were working with CrowdStrike to ensure the data was protected, but no one listened to me, and the stock started its steep decline.

Now, I had George Kurtz, the CEO of CrowdStrike, on the show several times to explain how Anthropic wasn’t looking to directly compete with their kind of cybersecurity. Nobody cared. This stock got pummeled some more. It only got worse when Anthropic revealed that it has a model, Mythos… Again, I could not believe this. How could people not see that AI and Anthropic weren’t headwinds for cybersecurity and CrowdStrike? They were tailwinds. You need much better security in a world where hackers also have access to AI tools… Now, on a down day with many stocks getting just clocked, CrowdStrike rallies nearly 4% on the exact same thing that I’ve been telling you for weeks, and no one’s cared… If you thought it was true that Anthropic was gunning for CrowdStrike, okay, you know, gunning for the whole industry, I get that, but it was wrong. I think this was day one of CrowdStrike’s comeback from purgatory. Yeah, I like that. The stock’s still down for the year. That’s nuts.

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) provides cloud-based cybersecurity solutions. The company offers protection for endpoints, cloud systems, identities, and data.

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