With the stock market off to a slow start this year, CNBC’s “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer made a bold prediction about one of the “Magnificent Seven” stocks on Wednesday.
What Happened: Amid the market declines, Cramer discussed broader market themes that investors could reference on down days. Given the strength with which the Mag 7 came into the year, there might be concerns about whether these stocks can sustain their momentum, he said on CNBC. Cramer delved into which of these mega-cap techs could be the first to decline.
“To me, it’s looking a little like Tesla, Inc. TSLA would be the first to fall,” Cramer said. “We have a CEO [who’s] getting a little petulant…again, talking about needing to control 25% to innovate.”
Cramer was referring to Tesla CEO Elon Musk‘s recent post on X in which he said, “I am uncomfortable growing Tesla to be a leader in AI & robotics without having ~25% voting control. Enough to be influential, but not so much that I can’t be overturned.”
“Unless that is the case, I would prefer to build products outside of Tesla,” he warned.
To make his case, Cramer mentioned a hypothetical scenario of Nvidia Corp. NVDA CEO Jensen Huang coming out and saying he needs five times his current holdings if he were to make a “super-duper generative AI.”
Cramer is a big fan of Nvidia and its CEO, so much so that he has named his dog after the company.
Why It’s Important: After a strong performance in 2023, tech stocks have had a rocky start to the new year. The weakness is primarily due to investors paring their Fed rate-cut bet, as they drew cues from hawkish comments from some central bank officials and a few strong economic readings received at the start of the year.
Valuation concerns, especially after last year’s heady gains, have kept investors at bay. That said, analysts are optimistic that improving AI use cases could benefit companies leveraged to the technology. Nvidia, Microsoft Corp. MSFT, and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD are the AI stalwarts that have received love from analysts recently.
Tesla, on the other hand, is stymied by fundamental issues such as slowing electric-vehicle adoption, which has prompted the company to cut prices to keep pushing volume. This, in turn, has impacted its bottom line even as the price cuts have not produced the desired effect.
Delving into the relative under-ownership of Tesla stock by institutional investors, Future Fund’s Gary Black listed several risk factors keeping big investors away.
More details on Tesla’s near-term trajectory could come through from the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report due Wednesday.
In premarket trading on Thursday, Tesla rose 1.41% to $218.59, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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