In his recent appearance on CNBC's Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer commented on the devastation from the California wildfires and its impact on the services business. Cramer wondered "whether we're supposed to be thinking about how much business was really, service business was hurt because of California." He also contemplated whether wealthy people who were invested in the "service part of the economy" seemed to be "just, not spending, because they don't know what their situation is."
One of Cramer's favorite barometers of the stock market performance is his bear-bull indicator. The show marked a rare occasion this year when the CNBC TV show host mentioned this indicator. Cramer shared that "The bull indicator is the lowest since June 2022, and bear's the highest since September 2022. So you got, it's reflected everywhere. The level of confusion that's turning into negativity."
One sector that came to his attention during the show was the alcoholic beverages industry. According to Cramer, "The stoners aren't making money. Beer's not making any money. Hard liquor's not, oh my god the browns, people talk about the browns. They're down so much."
He shared some of the reasons behind why alcohol stocks might be suffering. Cramer outlined:
"The numbers are just incredible. People just have shifted to food. What it really is this they want one beer instead of two. They want, instead of having two margis they'll have one margi. And that's the big change. It's moderation. And that is amazing because we've never seen moderation. We've seen people just drink more and more and more. And then the price went up very big. None of these liquor companies are willing to cut prices. I don't know why they're not. They'll all break one day. They're just going to break. They'll break."
As markets opened during his show, Cramer commented that they were struggling after President Trump's latest tariff announcements. "It's a fraught moment," he outlined and added, "I don't want anyone to think that we're minimizing it. It's a very fraught moment. Because the President is in accelerated computing mode on tariffs."
Continuing with the analogy of the AI GPUs, Cramer shared:
"Between, yes, pre-train and post-train, I don't know. I mean look I try to be constructive about this stuff. Last night I couldn't be, because I said look, these are great American companies and they have no idea . . . they don't know what to do. They just don't know what to do."
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 February 27th.
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).
Is Constellation Brands, Inc. (STZ) the Best Dividend-Paying Beverage Stock to Buy?
A winemaker examining a glass of red wine from a barrel in a cellar.
Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ) is an alcoholic beverages firm that has grappled with a shifting market and inflation for more than a year. Its shares have lost 29% over the past year, driven primarily by a massive 17% drop in January. Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ)'s shares dropped after the firm's fourth-quarter results saw it lower annual beer sales guidance growth to a 5.5% midpoint from an earlier 7%. Here's what Cramer said:
"By the way, Constellation Brands, it's like a parade of horribles. I mean we know that beer's unhealthy, we know there's cannabis. But they have Mexican beer, and the company kept famously saying to me the President's not going to tariff Mexican beer. You can't make Mexican beer in America. Well I don't think the President's all that nuanced about these tariffs."
Overall STZ ranks 7th on our list of the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed. While we acknowledge the potential of STZ 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 STZ but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
