Jim Cramer says buy these best-of-breed tech stocks first as Nasdaq gets hit

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Tuesday laid out a strategy for equity investors who are trying to navigate this week’s Nasdaq Composite slide.

The tech-heavy index has fallen 1.76% through the first two trading days, compared with the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s gain of 0.6% and the broad S&P 500’s modest 0.15% decline.

The “Mad Money” host has said he sees this rotation out of technology stocks as largely a result of investors taking profits in winning positions and deploying profits in parts of the market that have lagged.

But it won’t last forever, Cramer said Tuesday while pointing viewers toward a cohort of tech stocks he believes will be the first to bottom. He called this group the “red hots” and said it’s the leading place to look for buying opportunities in that industry.

“These are companies that did absolutely nothing wrong. … They reported better-than-expected results top and bottom, forecasted higher growth, yet their stocks are still getting crushed this week,” Cramer said, ticking off the following firms: Alphabet, Microsoft, Cloudflare, Palo Alto Networks, Roblox, AMD and Nvidia.

“They are all doing fantastically. I won’t mince words: These are the names you want to buy first,” the former hedge fund manager contended. “These best-of-breed stocks tend to bottom before all the others.”

Cramer said his call is rooted in analyzing tech-led sell-offs over the course of his roughly 40 years of experience on Wall Street.

“Amazingly, almost every time these high-multiple stocks sell off, the fall lasts for … three days from the start, and then they begin to flatline before powering higher again, as if nothing really happened except for a shake-out of the weak hands and a recharge,” Cramer said.

“It’s a little tricky with the holiday,” he added, referring to the U.S. stock market being closed Thursday because of Thanksgiving, “but these high-fliers should be putting in bottoms by Friday.”

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