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Jim Cramer is ‘furious’ as Intel crashes nearly 30% — but Uncle Sam is the top shareholder. What it means for taxpayers
Jim Cramer had high hopes Intel’s stock (NASDAQ:INTC) would soar to a new all-time high. Now he’s praying for a bounce.
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In an Oct. 29 post on X (1), the Mad Money host admitted that he’s “disappointed” and “actually furious” about Intel, as the stock plunged after weaker-than-expected guidance (2) tied to pressures on the sales of personal computers. It’s now down nearly 50% in about a month (3), trading at $56.28 as of Nov.9 (4).
Rewind to June, when Cramer went on record claiming Intel was his “new favorite stock in this market (5),” announcing he started buying the chipmaker for his charitable trust (6) when it was trading above $100 per share.
Even though Cramer had reservations about jumping into a stock that had already rallied over 200% on the year, he thought Intel would gain market share thanks to the AI data center buildout. As Cramer reasoned, “There’s a revolution going on and this revolution requires as many CPUs as possible,” referring to central processing units, the powerful processing chips used to run AI programs.
The day after Intel’s third-quarter 2026 earnings report, Cramer bemoaned (7) the fact that company leaders didn’t give investors earlier insight into their struggles, arguing, “The chipmaker should have preannounced this terrible guidance.”
Cramer signaled (8) he can’t justify selling his stash of Intel after such a decline. At the same time, he doesn’t recommend fresh buys either, admitting he “used poor judgment because I believed in the longer-term story without thinking about the short-term story.”
With shares sliding from a high of over $140 (9) to under half that, it’s understandable why Intel bulls like Cramer are fuming.
But the story of Intel’s stock decline isn’t just bad news for individual investors. Ever since the U.S. government got involved, every American has invested some of their tax dollars into Intel.
The government’s big gamble on Intel
In August 2025, the U.S. government became a large Intel shareholder (10), taking a 9.9% stake in the company. The $8.9-billion funding deal gave the U.S. 433.3 million Intel shares at an average price of $20.47 per share.
At the time, President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social (11) that “The United States paid nothing for these Shares and the Shares are now valued at approximately $11 Billion Dollars.”
But the government had already earmarked Intel $5.7 billion in CHIPS Act grants (12) and $3.2 billion through the Secure Enclave program (10). The 2025 deal simply sped up the transaction, using these taxpayer funds to buy shares rather than paying them out as grants.
Although Intel’s stock performance won’t directly impact each taxpayer’s pocketbook, such a large concentration in the government’s hands will have implications.
On the positive side, if Intel recovers, then the government can rest easy with a profitable position.
If times get tougher, however, then the U.S. will have a losing position on its balance sheet. In that case, it’s possible — but not inevitable — that more taxpayer funds might prop up Intel’s business.
And Intel is just one company that U.S. taxpayers now have to worry about. The Wall Street Journal (13) reported that the federal government has spent $30 billion on 43 stock deals.
Moneywise reached out to Intel for further comment, but we didn’t hear back by publication time.
Days before the massive declines in tech stocks (14) on Oct. 30, Cramer had been signaling a cautious tone on episodes of “Mad Money.”
Two major concerns Cramer (15) pointed out include higher borrowing rates and questionable financing deals, like the $63-billion (16) arrangement where AI giant Anthropic, the maker of Claude, agreed to buy hardware from American semiconductor giant Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO).
Aside from GPU giant Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Cramer now says the financing behind these data centers is getting risky as “The rates are getting so high.”
That doesn’t mean Cramer is bearish on the entire AI trade. The CNBC host (15) maintains he’s “an unabashed believer in the AI build-out,” and he still recommends some hyperscalers like Amazon (8) (NASDAQ: AMZN). However, he wasn’t buying the price bounces for AI stocks earlier in the week — especially debt-saddled neoclouds like CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV).
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Cramer still calls himself a believer in the AI build-out. But after the Oct. 30 tech sell-off, he suggested investors “look at other sectors in the economy.” He also recommended “buys” (8) in two companies far from the chip trade: Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) and FedEx (NYSE: FDX).
You don’t need to own either stock. But if most of your portfolio rides on a handful of big tech names, Intel’s one-day drop shows how fast a crowded trade can turn. Putting some of that money into other sectors could help soften the next drop.
The good news? Cramer’s edge isn’t magic. He has spent decades studying the American market and he probably has a team of analysts working under him.
The average Joe doesn’t have those kinds of resources, but that doesn’t mean they’re doomed to fail.
Take a broader approach
Intel shows what concentration risk looks like up close. Cramer started buying for his charitable trust when the stock was above $100 a share in late June. By Nov. 9, it dropped to nearly half that.
Individual stocks can deliver big gains, but they can also hit your savings hard. If too much of your portfolio is tied to one company or a small group of stocks, a single earnings report can do outsized damage.
For those who don’t want to take on that level of risk, a simpler approach is to own the market instead of trying to guess its next move. An S&P 500 index fund holds hundreds of major U.S. companies across 11 sectors, so your savings don’t depend on whichever stock is trending.
That diversification can matter when markets get volatile. Returns are never guaranteed, but the S&P 500 has delivered an average annual return of 10.51% (17) since its inception in 1957.
For investors who want to make regular contributions, apps such as Acorns can also automate investing by putting spare change from everyday purchases toward a portfolio of your choosing.
Your money goes into a diversified portfolio of ETFs matched to your investing profile and is managed by experts at leading investment firms like Vanguard and BlackRock.
You can even tailor the investment strategy to your risk tolerance or set up your portfolio to invest in specific sectors of the economy. This includes areas like heavy industry, energy, consumer staples and utilities.
Plus, if you sign up today with a $5 recurring deposit, Acorns will add a $20 bonus to help you begin your investment journey.
A hedge when stocks stumble
Stocks aren’t the only asset investors turn to when market volatility starts making headlines. Gold has long been used as a diversification tool because it isn’t tied to any single company, currency, or economy and it can’t be printed like paper money.
The precious metal has drawn investors for centuries, especially during periods of economic uncertainty. Gold prices have more than doubled over the past five years, hitting multiple record highs along the way and outpacing the S&P 500 over the same period (18).
Opening a gold IRA with the help of American Hartford Gold allows you to invest in gold and other precious metals in physical form while also providing the significant tax advantages of an IRA.
You can get free setup, shipping and insured storage for up to five years with American Hartford Gold. Plus, you can roll over your existing IRA or 401(k) into a precious metals IRA completely tax and penalty-free.
Not every investment has to rise and fall with the market. Rather than betting on a sector that can lose nearly 50% in a span of months, consider investing a portion of your portfolio in relatively lower-risk assets that provide regular income.
For instance, the Arrived Real Estate Income Fund is designed to generate regular dividend income while focusing on capital preservation.
The fund already manages more than $83 million in assets and has historically delivered an annualized cash yield of more than 8.4%. To put this in perspective, even the “aristocrats” of dividend stocks struggle to reach a high-water mark of 5.51%, according to Morningstar (19).
How it works is simple: Arrived offers short-term loans for professional real estate projects seeking to renovate, refinance or fund new construction. Each loan goes through a disciplined selection process and is backed by residential real estate, adding another layer of underwriting rigor and downside protection.
Even better, Arrived Real Estate Income Fund investors also have quarterly liquidity options beginning six months after their initial investment, offering more flexibility than many traditional income-focused investments.
– With files from Eric Esposito.
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Article Sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see ourethics and guidelines.
X (1); Intel (2), (10); MarketWatch (3); Yahoo Finance Canada (4); CNBC (5), (7), (8), (9), (15); Yahoo Finance (6), (14); Truth Social (11); Reuters (12); The Wall Street Journal (13); Broadcom Investor Relations (16); Investopedia (17); APMEX (18); Morningstar (19)
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