Jim Cramer's appearance on Squawk on the Street aired on January 17th covered a wide variety of topics. As the day was in the final few days of the outgoing Biden administration, Cramer shared his thoughts about the policies of the outgoing and incoming governments. Commenting on President-elect Trump's nominee for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent's confirmation hearing Cramer shared that he "liked it." He shared the reasons behind his approval.
"Well, I think that, in the end, he respects the process. I think a lot of the, I think there's the process respecters and the process undoers," Cramer thinks. He "felt that Secretary Bessent, soon to be, I gotta be careful, who knows, he's talking about, there was a give and take. There was a moment when he was give and take with Senator Sanders." While during their exchange, Cramer thought "Sanders thought that he was gonna, tee off on Sanders." However, Bessent and Sanders actually "had common ground, and there was a lot of respect. And then I think Sanders had nothing to say, it was kind of like, okay," according to the CNBC host.
Another hot topic in the markets is the President-elect's potential policies on cryptocurrency. When asked by co-host Sara Eisen about his thoughts on Trump passing an executive order for crypto, Cramer stated "I agree and I think, well look the President-elect has made it no secret that he wants a strategic crypto reserve. So I'm not quite sure where that would be. Not in Fort Knox, it's kind of, anywhere, right. I would like to make sure the blockchain is severe. I'm trying really hard to get a grip on that reserve because it doesn't jump out at me."
One country that Cramer regularly targets in his morning thoughts is China. This time around, he likened China to East Germany. " We thought East Germany was incredibly powerful. They would go to the Olympics, and we'd say they're amazing. We thought their schools were really great. And it turned out to be an empty suit," believes Cramer. China needs "exports, they need everybody, they need help from everyone and they don't wanna help anyone," according to him.
In fact, China might be one of the reasons "President-elect Trump was elected," he shared. Cramer shared that this is "because the Chinese dumped everything in every, of what we used to make. I mean my father sold gift wrap. They wiped out the gift wrap companies. So my father ended up working for the Chinese. They were nice to him." China's hostility leads Cramer to "think that we all should be cognizant that the Chinese are not our friends. But they are trying. I think that's smart to try."
The CNBC host also shared his on a recent conversation between China's President Xi Jinping and the President-elect. "Well look I think that Taiwan is a hot button. Because President-elect Trump has said why doesn't Taiwan pay more for its defense? I get that. That's a kind of the NATO, consistent, right, consistent with NATO," he shared. Cramer also shared his thoughts on Bessent saying tariffs are not inflationary. According to him, "Well, I liked that even though everything we've ever read all our lives says that they're inflationary."
He still likes Bessent since Cramer believes "Bessent's a serious guy. I mean when you sit down and you watch these presentations and interactions in the European world where they interview him. The man is so thoughtful. That you're close to Secretary Yellen, I think that in terms of a chess match, I'll bet Bessent. He's really exciting. He's an exciting intellect." In fact, Cramer thinks that Bessent "may know more about the way the economy interacts with our country than anyone out there."
Finally, the outgoing Biden administration, particularly the Treasury Department, has been repeatedly targeted by Chinese hackers. Cramer quoted a cybersecurity CEO and shared:
"He was describing how out of date most of our government is in terms of identity. Meaning that you can, someone's hacking you, you're blocked, because they don't have the eye, like you know it's vision, or it's finger. And we don't do that. We use very old fashioned technology from the nineties where it's very easy to hack. Everyone in the world knows the last four digits of your social security number.. . .we need to have visual, or we need to have fingerprint, and we don't. Which is crazy."
Our Methodology
To make our list of the stocks that Jim Cramer talked about, we listed down all the stocks he mentioned during CNBC’s Squawk on the Street aired on January 17th.
For these stocks, we also mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds invest in? 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 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points. (see more details here).
Why Novo Nordisk A/S (NVO) Went Down On Friday?
An elderly couple receiving insulin from a pharmacist, representing healthcare company's successful pharmaceutical products.
Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) is a Danish pharmaceutical company that is one of the leading players in the global weight loss drug market. Cramer's recent comments about the firm wondered whether the incoming Trump administration could target it to negotiate with Denmark to cede Greenland to the US. Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO)'s shares are down by 26.8% over the past year after having dealt a hefty 17.8% blow in December after its weight loss drug trial missed investor expectations. Cramer's latest comments for Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE:NVO) surrounded its weight loss drugs being picked for Medicare price negotiations:
"[On weight loss drugs being part of Medicare] I think that there are a lot of people who felt that this had to happen. Uh, David Ricks, would be one of them, the CEO of Lilly. I think that you don't have comorbidities with these and it's going to be difficult. Otherwise they would, you know you talk about eight billion dollars, maybe for Novo, and Lilly's drug is superior in terms of weight reduction at the same dose. No one thought that they would be able to just run amok. And I think that while the stocks are down, it's going to be the greatest drug of all time. And everybody knows that. The persistence level of people who take it is much higher than what we're hearing about. Drug and exercise, exercise has failed us. Diet has failed us. So drug is the way to make it so that people who can't lose weight have to take it. But it's not a shock. You go sell it, I don't care."
Overall NVO ranks 8th on our list of the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed. While we acknowledge the potential of NVO 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 timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than NVO but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
