We recently published Jim Cramer’s Surprised About US Travel As He Discusses These 18 Stocks. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer discussed.
In a recent appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer commented on the growing amount of stock buybacks and how the buybacks during April-May were the third best historically of the year. “Well, I’ll tell ya, the banks are the ones that are going to do it. They’re gonna start it and the banks have an appetite for their stock that is crazy,” he said.
Cramer also commented on President Trump’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, Peter Navarro. Navarro is an ardent believer in the trade imbalance that the US faces abroad and Cramer agrees with the assessment. “Well, Peter’s got, strong views. Peter’s a person with strong views,” according to Cramer.
Despite the fact that markets were roiled in April due to the President’s tariff announcements, when his co-host remarked that Navarro might not have the President’s ear, Cramer replied: “Well if that’s the case, death by China is winning right now. And death by China is Navarro.”
Another news bite that was brought up on the show was the decline in foreign arrivals in the US and the President saying the decline in foreign arrivals wasn’t a big deal. Cramer agrees with Trump as he said:
“So far, not. I think that the dollar being cheap for the first time in our lifetime is gonna make people. . .but when you listen to Proctor, you’re very conscious of the fact that the dollar’s weak and IBM and I think that people in the end, they’ll be excited. Excited to come to a place where the dollar’s finally not crushing them. And that does matter.”
However, he added:
“Well look, it’s not, obviously I think that there’s issues involving our country and how people view us and, look, you don’t need me to tell which way the wind blows. But I would have thought there would have been more weakness in travel. I’m just surprised that it’s just not bad.”
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 24th.
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).
Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK)
Number of Hedge Fund Holders In Q4 2024: 91
Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. It is a regular feature of Cramer’s morning show. In his previous appearances, the TV host has lamented that China is creating hurdles for Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK)’s drugs in the country. Cramer is also a fan of the firm’s CEO Rob Davis. Here are his latest thoughts about Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK):
“You know David, this is an earnings season so far where a lot of big ones, that look like they’re just shockingly bad, or disappointing, everyone knew. I mean, Merck reported a quarter, I think we all kind of knew that KEYTRUDA had slown a little bit. we know that there were some GARDASIL problems, WINREVAIR, a drug that they bought, pulmonary arterial hypertension, I thought it was terrific. 280 million. So I think that this is an example where we can just say, oh my god, Merck down almost 40%, I gotta take a hard look at it, Merck’s a good company.”
“You know how people are David, when you get to within a couple of years of a major drug like KEYTRUDA, that is so big. I mean KEYTRUDA by the way, accrued 4%, 7.2 billion. . .and to me, I look at this and I say, look, they’re gonna have a lot of money. And they’ll go do what’s right. Other people look at it and say, Pfizer had a lot of money and what did they do? So you Merck and Pfizer, you have one and two for long time that’s been the great ones. . . I look at Merck and say, the reason why it’s not down, is people just say, it just can’t be that bad at Merck. And I think that that’s actually probably a good sentiment.”
Overall, MRK ranks 7th on our list of stocks that Jim Cramer discussed. While we acknowledge the potential of MRK 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. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than MRK but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
