We recently published a list of Jim Cramer Looked At These 11 Stocks Recently. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Albemarle Corporation (NYSE:ALB) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer looked at recently.
On Wednesday, Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Money, shared his thoughts on the volatile trading day, pointing out that President Donald Trump’s actions are reshaping how investors assess stocks. Cramer highlighted that before Trump came into the office, his method of evaluating a stock was looking at its price, earnings, revenues, and gross margins.
“Now, though, I start with a simple question: Can President Trump hurt the stock? Can he damage it with an offhanded comment? Can he crush it in anger? And most important, does the price-to-earnings multiple make sense in this new world in light of the president’s love of tariffs and total hostility to the way this country’s been running the past, not to mention many of our country’s friends?”
Cramer specifically pointed to the automotive industry as a significant example of how Trump’s approach to trade has shifted the dynamics of the market. He recalled how the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was originally created, partly to protect the U.S. auto industry from the influx of low-cost imports from countries like Japan and South Korea.
“Without NAFTA, auto companies couldn’t compete against the flood of imports from Japan and South Korea, which only have a 2.5% tariff on them. The tariffs President Trump slapped on American companies that import products from Mexico or Canada, 10 times that.”
Cramer also acknowledged that the recent pause in tariffs for the auto industry caused a brief surge in market activity, which led to some unpredictability in stock movements. However, he noted that if automakers are forced to either pay the hefty tariffs or shift their production to the U.S., replacing inexpensive labor in Mexico with higher-cost union labor, their earnings could face a sharp decline. Cramer speculated that such a scenario could result in a significant cut in earnings, though he hoped the impact would not be as severe.
“Here’s the bottom line: This market is fiercely trying to revalue stocks because of the president’s comments. And we do it day after day after day because he’s always making so much news. So it’s been doing a poor job and that’s created a ton of opportunities for you to both buy and sell and I say you take them right away.”
Our Methodology
For this article, we compiled a list of 11 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episode of Mad Money aired on March 5. We listed the stocks in the order that Cramer mentioned them. We also provided hedge fund sentiment for each stock as of the fourth quarter of 2024, which was taken from Insider Monkey’s database of over 1,000 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 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
Albemarle Corporation (ALB): 'A Business We Don’t Want to Be In' – Jim Cramer
A team of scientists in a laboratory observing the sophisticated engineering of specialty chemicals.
During the lightning round, a caller asked what Cramer thought about the cyclical recovery in commodities amid the tariff talks, especially Albemarle Corporation (NYSE:ALB). Here’s what Cramer said in response:
“I can’t go, I can’t go with it. I can’t go. I’ll tell you why I can’t go with it because in the end we, I, we forgot about EVs. I mean like, you know, we like, pretty soon, we’re going to be like buying gas guzzlers. I want to stay away from that one, but so does everybody else. That’s the only problem.”
Albemarle (NYSE:ALB) offers a range of energy storage and specialty chemical solutions, including lithium compounds for batteries, specialty chemicals like bromine and lithium solutions, and clean fuels technologies. It is worth noting that Cramer has been bearish on the company before as evidenced by the comment he made in August 2024:
“Yeah, it’s a good lithium miner, but a business that we don’t want to be in. I mean this is just an EV. EVs are not ready yet. There aren’t enough charging stations, a lot of other different issues. So we’re gonna steer clear of Albemarle.”
Overall, ALB ranks 9th on our list of stocks that Jim Cramer looked at recently. While we acknowledge the potential of ALB 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 time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than ALB but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
