Cramer reveals his favorite Mag 7 stock and looks at the ‘wow factor’ of another

Jim Cramer on Thursday put Meta Platforms and Apple in the spotlight.

Skip NavigationJoin ICJoin ProLivestreamMenuJim Cramer on Thursday put Apple and Meta Platforms in the spotlight following the former’s “Sunrise and Shine” event and the latter’s Muse AI launch. Starting with Meta , Jim said on CNBC that the stock is the Investing Club’s favorite of the so-called Magnificent 7, following last month’s up to $18 billion settlement with attorneys general across the nation over allegations that the company knowingly designed its platforms to be addictive, which harmed young people. With that in the rearview, Meta is back on the warpath and pumping out AI advancements at full speed. (Meta and Apple are two of the Mag 7. Fellow Club names Alphabet , Amazon , Microsoft , and Nvidia , as well as Tesla are the others.) Analysts at JPMorgan upgraded shares to an overweight buy from neutral in a client note Thursday. They also raised their price target to $820 from $640, implying 25% upside. “We believe there’s still meaningful upside potential as Meta is in the early stages of releasing frontier models and AI-driven products beyond advertising, notably Muse AI agent and Meta Model API access. Frontier models are at the core of Meta’s product and monetization pipeline over a multi-year period, and its path toward superintelligence,” the analysts wrote. We have a buy-equivalent 1 rating and $700 price target. Muse Spark made a splash last week when an industry index gave it a top score, putting it in rarefied air with frontier models from leading labs like OpenAI and Anthropic. Spark also lays the groundwork for additional AI offerings, the most recent of which is Muse, the company’s vertically integrated AI agent. When connected to external tools, Muse can do everything from keeping track of your daily schedule to setting up dinner reservations, applying to jobs, and more. We think it’s only the beginning , and while monetization is not yet the focus, having an in-house frontier model at the team’s disposal opens up massive revenue opportunities in the future as adoption grows. We argued the market wasn’t appreciating the events of the past week, despite the recent move higher. Let’s not forget that Meta said it is working on a cloud to sell excess compute, which would put it in line with other hyperscalers. Turning to Apple , Jim said Wednesday’s launch had a “wow factor,” with the unveiling of the company’s entry into the foldable smartphones . It’s called the iPhone Duo, with a starting price of $1,999. Jim said that newer, previous iPhone models are holding their value and can be used as trade-ins to offset the Duo price or to upgrade to one of the iPhone 18 Pro or Pro Max models, which got $100 price increases due to the surge in memory costs. The iPhone price increases, which followed similar Mac and iPad hikes this summer, will help protect margins but weren’t so steep as to cause us concern that demand will take too great a hit. Plus, the Duo offers up a new form factor while the flagship 18s offer all the upgrades we would expect from a new generation iPhone. Above all, perhaps, Apple Intelligence finally seems ready for prime time. We’ve been playing with Muse, and while we are impressed — and think Meta has a strong product and the ability to control the plug-in and model, a level of flexibility Apple may lack given its collaboration with Alphabet — Apple brings the advantage of providing the deepest possible AI integration one could hope for on iPhone. It should also be noted that we don’t think AI is a winner-take-all race. The future likely isn’t about choosing one agent and becoming super loyal to only that agent. Rather, the future more likely looks like humans leveraging entire teams of agents that talk to each other to accomplish tasks as efficiently and at the highest level as possible. For example, a year from now, Siri or Muse may be members of your personal team, rather than competitors vying for your sole attention. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long AAPL, META. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.Read More

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