Was Jim Cramer Right About Intel Corporation (INTC)?

We recently published a list of Jim Cramer Nailed These 12 Stock Predictions. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) stands against other stocks that Jim Cramer discusses.

During a recent episode of Mad Money, which aired on Wednesday, the 7^th of May, Jim Cramer gave some advice on how experts pick their stocks:

“I want to pull back the curtain and show you how a professional looks for stocks to buy and knows what to sell. There’s no magic. There’s no hidden talent. Just a bunch of disciplines, disciplines that can help you try to make mad money if you master them.”

READ ALSO: 13 Stock Predictions That Jim Cramer Got Completely Wrong

Cramer reminded investors to do solid research and only buy stocks they truly believe in, even if that belief comes with skepticism, as long as they think the price will go up. But he warned that belief alone isn’t enough if a stock is falling; the drop must be unrelated to the company’s actual performance to be a buying opportunity. Here’s his advice:

“Be certain you’re dealing with a momentarily damaged stock and not a troubled company that’s going down, down, down. How can you tell the difference between a damaged company and a damaged stock? The fundamentals haven’t changed, the stock probably hasn’t fallen from grace. It’s pulled back for mechanical reasons, profit taking, or some panic in the market in general.”

He then added that hedge funds often cause irrational market swings by treating stocks like short-term trades, not long-term investments. But if a company’s fundamentals do start to break down, it no longer belongs in your portfolio.

Our Methodology

For this article, we compiled a list of 12 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during Mad Money episodes that aired on the 7^th and 8^th of May 2o24. We then calculated their performance for the past 12 months, until May 7^th, 2025, market close. We have also included the hedge fund sentiment for the stocks, which we sourced from Insider Monkey’s Q4 2024 database of over 900 hedge funds. The stocks are listed in the order that Cramer mentioned them.

Please note that this article mentions Jim Cramer’s previous opinions and may not account for any changes to his opinions regarding the stocks that are mentioned. It is primarily an examination of how his previously provided opinions have panned out.

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).

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 83

Back in that older episode, Cramer was asked about Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) and immediately cut the caller off, suggesting he has nothing good to say about the company without elaborating:

“I’m gonna tell you something—just stop right there. Because you’re a Philadelphia PH and Nana Mary, a true Philadelphian from the north side, always says one thing: ‘If you don’t have anything good to say about something, then don’t say it.’ Nana Mary says—I ain’t talking Intel.”

His decision to say nothing spoke volumes, as the stock collapsed by 33.80% since those comments.

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) is a legacy semiconductor giant best known for its x86 processors, though it has struggled in recent years to regain market share from rivals in both PC and data center chips. Cramer remains a big fan of the stock and its new CEO. Here’s what he said on April 25^th:

“I know. And you could talk about Intel, when it comes to that, also OpEx. Intel being a great manufacturer that is in no mood to be able to expand. Wow.”

“I think people should read his [CEO’s] band of brothers speech about who is going to get there. It’s a very King Henry the Vth speech, Christmas Day. I thought it was very inspirational. But they still have layers upon layers. I mean they’re now saying 17 billion in 25 and 16 billion that’s . . their OpEx, and they’ve cut their OpEx. I think that they have, I cannot believe the bureaucracy, Carl that Intel had, it’s just, it’s sad. I can’t believe how much bureaucracy and how engineers lost their ability to run the best engineering company we had in this country.”

“Oh my, such a great speech and I was telling one of my contacts there I said listen I’m ready to go to war for Lip-Bu. You just say, he is gonna save this company.”

“[On whether it was too late to save INTC] No, and this man has so may friends. . .he’s been success with. . maybe the most successful individual investor in hardware in history. Hardware, not enterprise software. And he’s so inspirational, in his own quiet way, and he knows so many people, he’s gonna fix this company but he would tell you, don’t count on me yet.”

“I’m telling you, you want to win for this man. . . .He’s Andy Reed, quiet winner. I really like this guy.”

“Well, Gelsinger was messianic, without a cause. . . .See, Pat was about himself. And this man has no ego whatsoever. He is about the team. And I have to tell you that this man is going to save this company and what he’s going to do, is not talk about it. Other than negative until it’s ready.”

“He is fixing the balance sheet. He’s so smart. He says listen Jim we’re gonna fix the balance sheet. So don’t get ahead of me, they’re going to fix the balance sheet. . . Engineers were not even in the, do you know engineers weren’t even in the top? . . in the management committee, there were no engineers. Can you imagine that?”

Overall, INTC ranks 10th on our list of stocks that Jim Cramer discusses. While we acknowledge the potential of INTC 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 INTC 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.