Cramer Urges Buying 25% of a Vistra Position as He Calls Shares Too Low

Q: With Stryker's recent billion-dollar acquisition spree, why does Jim Cramer claim the company isn't making deals?

Cramer’s remark appears to be outdated or imprecise, not a reflection of Stryker’s actual recent activity. The record shows Stryker has been making deals aggressively. It completed the roughly $4.9 billion acquisition of Inari Medical in early 2025 and has also bought Amplitude Vascular Systems, Vertos Medical, care.ai, MOLLI Surgical, Artelon and other assets. Company executives have publicly described M&A as a core part of Stryker’s strategy, alongside heavy internal R&D spending. What Cramer seems to mean is that Stryker has not become the kind of industry “consolidator” he long expected — a company doing transformative, repeated roll-up deals that visibly reshape the sector. His disappointment is less about whether Stryker has done acquisitions at all and more about whether it has fulfilled his earlier vision of leading a broader consolidation wave in medtech. That distinction matters because Stryker’s recent acquisitions have largely been targeted strategic additions rather than the sort of constant, headline-grabbing consolidation Cramer may have anticipated. In other words, the company is clearly doing M&A, but perhaps not in the scale, frequency or market-defining way he had once expected. So the short answer is that Cramer’s comment does not square with the current facts. Stryker is making deals; his criticism is better understood as frustration that the company has not become the dominant consolidator he once predicted.

1 articles · Updated · CNBC · Jun 17

Vistra was the clearest buy call in Jim Cramer's latest stock picks, with Cramer saying the stock has fallen enough to become attractive again.
A 25% starter position was his risk-control advice because he still views the shares as a "falling knife" after they ran too high and then pulled back.
Fair Isaac drew a pass instead, with Cramer saying AI-related pressure makes the stock too painful to own despite liking the company.
Clover Health got a partial nod only as a speculative play, while Cramer said he still prefers UnitedHealth and CVS for longer-term holdings.
Stryker remained a disappointment in his view because the consolidation scenario he expected in the sector has not materialized.