Jim Cramer on Palo Alto Networks (PANW): "Wait Until After They Report"

We recently published a list of 15 Stocks on Jim Cramer’s Radar. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW) stands against other stocks on Jim Cramer’s radar

On Friday’s episode of Mad Money, Jim Cramer reflected on this week’s market performance, with attention to upcoming earnings reports and broader market sentiment.

“Now we’ve been on a real rebound since post-Liberation Day meltdown back in the first week of April, with tech leading the way after really taking it on the chin.”

READ ALSO Jim Cramer Recently Commented On These 12 Stocks and Jim Cramer Put These 8 Stocks Under a Microscope Recently

According to Cramer, the rebound has been largely driven by tech stocks, which had previously been under pressure. However, he expressed uncertainty about whether that trend will hold, as he mentioned that the tech sector has been relatively quiet in terms of news, aside from a keynote from Jensen Huang. Looking ahead, Cramer noted that more retail earnings are expected this week.

“But here’s the bottom line: Unless we get news of new hostilities in the trade war with China, I think this market’s propensity will still be to go higher, even though we are overbought. And even with this late-night credit rating downgrade of the US debt, which is very quizzical to me, I think we’re containing the downside of the economy, and that means no recession, which tells me the negativity may be out of sync with the reality. That’s often the best kind of market…”

Our Methodology

For this article, we compiled a list of 15 stocks that were discussed by Jim Cramer during the episodes of Mad Money aired on May 16. 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).

Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 83

Cramer pointed out that Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW) stock tends to go down after it reports, regardless of how good the quarterly report is.

“Now the Charitable Trust also owns Palo Alto Networks, which reports Tuesday night. This stock has an odd habit of going down just no matter how good the quarter is, and they’re almost all good. So you might want to wait until after they report if you want to buy a cybersecurity company that is very high quality.”

Palo Alto (NASDAQ:PANW) provides cybersecurity services that include network defense, cloud protection, and virtual firewalls. The company offers tools designed to identify threats, stop attacks, and respond across various platforms and environments. It should be noted that on April 11, Cramer commented:

“Finally, they’re a little pricey but I want to own some cybersecurity companies and the trust owns two of them because they can’t really be tariffed and they have no natural enemies, including states that have sided against us in the trade war. For the cybersecurity firms, countries with state-sponsored hackers like China, they are an annuity stream. We have not one, but two for the trust, as I mentioned, Palo Alto, PANW, and CrowdStrike, CRWD. And I’ve got to tell you, either one is just terrific. Just terrific.”

Overall, PANW ranks 7th on our list of stocks on Jim Cramer’s radar. While we acknowledge the potential of PANW as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk.  If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than PANW and that has 100x upside potential, 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.