In a fresh appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer speculated on the reasons behind the market selloff on Monday. The selloff, which hit nearly all sectors, wiped out $4 trillion in market value from the flagship S&P index from its post-election high. One reason that investors fled the market was the worry about a recession. When asked whether he was worried about a recession, Crmaer shared: “You bet I am. I don’t want a recession, let alone a manufactured recession. I don’t want to feel worried about my job. Everybody’s job.”
The CNBC TV host also commented on a recent National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) report, which stated that small businesses were growing pessimistic in February. Commenting on the report, he outlined:
“That’s the base. The small businesses. It’s the backbone of our country. Don’t attack the backbone. These are the people who hire the base and they are the base. And the base is the greatest base in the world it’s the working person. And working person across, it’s not who you wanna alienate. Now, I have historically, I’ve worked with the President. Now you could say well wait a second, clown, that was in The Apprentice. I had him on many times on our show. This is not the President I know. Optimistic. Telling us that things, you know don’t worry because there are jobs being created. Right now. And we’re going to go and look at the tariffs of our neighbors. Here’s all the tariffs, doesn’t seem right. But no. Don’t be like, don’t be like that first guy. Be like Roosevelt, and not FDR. TR. Study TR. Right now. Get the. . .books, there’s a lot of good books about TR.”
Cramer also believes a bounce in the market following the selloff is possible. He reiterated that zero-day options were behind a lot of the market’s woes, and trading activity was harming investors with long positions while leaving short-sellers unscathed. According to him:
“Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, look, I think people don’t realize, you talk to Robinhood you’ll get it, people don’t realize the power of these zero-day options. They have the ability to push stocks down because we’re not that big a liquid market. You know people just say oh like Jim that’s ridiculous. Well, why don’t you do some homework like I have. Verizon. Jesus, not even a good phone company.”
The worries of a recession have in part been influenced by tariffs on imports. Cramer believes the market is worried about a manufactured recession which is also harming bank stocks:
“Well, banks are good, bank stocks go down everyday, why? Well because of the manufactured recession. Manufactured. We were doing well. But, the base doesn’t understand, tariff, all they know is, I don’t wanna lose my job right now with my plumbing and heating company in order to be able to get a job with Taiwan Semi in 2030.”
He commented on a non stock market topic, Elon Musk’s xAI and its Grok AI model. Cramer is impressed by Grok as he shared:
“I think that if you take a look at Grok, which is a company separate from [the EV company] that’s owned by Musk, Grok has broken out and is well ahead of all the other agents. Why? They have the most NVIDIA chips. And if you go to Grok and you ask about something it’s no longer, it doesn’t read like Google anymore. It’s a really in-depth analysis. Why? Because it scrapes Twitter.”
The host also believes that while President Trump’s tariffs are warranted due to the US being unfairly treated by its trading partners, Trump’s approach could use fine-tuning. According to Cramer:
“Remember, I’m constructive on the market. Because I don’t think, you know if President Trump were to speak softly and carry, I don’t know a howitzer. . .he can do the howitzer thing, he could speak softly and have nuclear weapons. Anything but speak loudly and not have a howitzer. Cause that doesn’t work.”
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 March 11th.
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).
Jim Cramer Says “Delta Air Lines (DAL) Is Not That Bad”
Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL) is one of the biggest airlines in America. Its shares are up 9% over the past year and closed 2024 after gaining 52%. However, 2025 hasn’t been kind to Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL)’s shares. They have lost a whopping 21% yar-to-date with the latest dip coming in March after the firm cut its guidance to send the shares 8% lower. Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL) now expects midpoint revenue growth and EPS of 3.5% and 40 cents in 2025 which is significantly down from the earlier 8% and 85 cents. Here is what Cramer said:
“Okay well first of all I want to be constructive here. Cause everybody’s giving up. I noticed that, that the airlines that have said things are okay like United are bouncing. Delta’s not that bad.”
Overall, DAL ranks 8th on our list of stocks that Jim Cramer discusses. While we acknowledge the potential of DAL 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. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than DAL but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.
