You can still find stocks to buy on tough days in the market

Oil spiking and hot inflation data shook Wednesday’s stock market, leaving investors with few places to hide. But there’s still room to nibble on select stocks, according to CNBC’s Jim Cramer.

“If I didn’t own it, I would buy the stock of Nvidia,” Cramer said on “Mad Money,” explaining that the AI-leader and CNBC Investing Club pick is not tied to the Iran war or pegged to stagflation concerns. “Its lack of upside has more to do with the structure of the market. Nvidia is over-owned right now.”

For the past eight months, Nvidia’s stock has been muted despite positive updates and stellar earnings. Cramer believes it could finally break out if everything the company announced at this week’s GTC developers event — including a new inference chip and $1 trillion of expected Blackwell and Vera Rubin orders through 2027 — comes to fruition.

Cramer was at the conference in California earlier this week and interviewed a very bullish Jensen Huang for Tuesday evening’s “Mad Money.” The CEO expanded on those announcements and called AI agent maker OpenClaw the next ChatGPT.

Stocks like Nvidia are “too cheap to avoid” on a forward price-to-earnings basis, Cramer said, with the caveat to buy some but not a lot due to the macro uncertainty. Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald see a path to earnings per share of $15 in 2027, which, if realized, would put Nvidia stock at about 12 times 2027 EPS estimates. The S&P 500 trades at 18 times.

As for the broader market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended at a 2026 closing low Wednesday, sinking more than 750 points, or 1.6%, on inflation fright that was fueled by soaring oil prices from the war and a hot wholesale inflation report for February, which measured before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. The first spikes in oil didn’t come until the first trade day on March 2. The S&P 500 fell 1.36%, while the Nasdaq dropped 1.46%.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s commentary on Wednesday afternoon after central bankers held interest rates steady offered no reassurance. Powell said that inflation did not slow as much as policymakers had hoped. He did, however, alleviate stagflation fears, saying unemployment is nowhere near the levels associated with a 1970s-type economy of soaring joblessness and sky-high prices.

However, Cramer acknowledged that it is harder to find good stocks in the current climate, which brought him back to Nvidia, calling it “one of the fastest growing firms with one of the lowest valuations.

A combination like that, he added, is “always tempting.” He did note that pressures like higher oil prices and a Fed that might not be able to cut rates under President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Powell could weigh on Nvidia shares in the short run.

“But [that] absolutely doesn’t matter to Nvidia’s long-term prospects.”