Jim Cramer Recommends Delta Air Lines (DAL): "If You Want to Trade One, Trade DAL"

We recently published a list of Jim Cramer Answers If the Market Has Bottomed and Weighs In On 11 Stocks. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer discusses.

On Monday, Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Money, highlighted how the market has turned upside down, with investors now buying stocks that they used to dislike, saying:

“If you told me this is where the market was headed two or three months ago, I would have thought you were insane, even crazier than I am. This radical transition over the past few weeks has just been frankly unfathomable. We’re now buying stocks we hated and we’re despising, and guess what we are now selling short the stocks that we used to worship. And it’s all happening on the fly. […] You can’t tell what’s underneath though but that makes it much easier for those real seekers who want to surf the Trump ‘stock wave’.”

READ ALSO: Jim Cramer Sounds the Alarm on China Rhetoric and Dollar Panic Then Analyzes 11 Key Stocks and Jim Cramer Hints at a Bigger Agenda Behind Tariffs and Breaks Down These 7 Stocks

Cramer centered the episode around the question on every investor’s mind: has the market finally bottomed?

“Fresh off a turbulent week for the tape, I’m opening up the phone lines and answering your most pressing questions because are we at a bottom? That’s what everybody wants to know. […] Well, the tariff exemptions, it looks like they’re coming. Market was eager to take a sigh of relief. I’m not so sure where we are with them, but the major indices jumped higher on President Trump’s announcement of temporary exemption on tariffs for phones computers and semiconductors, and really, I guess the subtext is for Apple. But in a tape this volatile we have headlines dropping left and right, I’ve got to tell you, I spend so much time trying to figure out what’s going on, but I think that periodically I nail it. So tonight what I want to do is open up our phone lines to hear directly from you, from the people of America.”

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 April 14. 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).

Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 84

While discussing airlines, Cramer pointed to Delta as the better trade if investors want airline exposure, due to its valuation and relative strength.

Here’s what he said:

“I know that people don’t like the stock but if you want an airline, the one that people are buying, it’s Delta. It’s all the way down to 40. It sells at seven times earnings. People feel that the travel bull market is over. I regard these as what I call trading vehicles. But if you want to trade one; the one you want to trade is Delta, DAL.”

Although Cramer has been cautious on travel and leisure stocks in recent months, he still highlights Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE:DAL) as his standout pick. Here’s what he said last month:

“Now for those of you who haven’t been paying attention, this week Delta Airlines slashed its first-quarter earnings outlook, citing, ‘the recent reduction in consumer and corporate confidence caused by increased macro uncertainty’, which they say drove ‘softness and domestic demand’ in recent weeks. Now for a long time, Delta was the best of the airlines so you really don’t want to hear that kind of commentary from them. Now these guys cut their guidance ahead of an appearance at the JPMorgan Industrials conference on Tuesday.”

Overall, DAL ranks 5th 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. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. 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 this cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.