CNBC’s Jim Cramer said that while comparisons between today’s market and the dot-com bubble are growing louder, one key difference stands out: Wall Street is punishing stocks even more aggressively than it did in 1999.
“We keep hearing this drumbeat that 2026 is 1999 all over again,” the “Mad Money” host said. “But the difference between now and 1999 is that this market does not stop punishing the companies that disappointed … You are unsafe at any level.”
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite both closed at record highs Monday, rising 0.19% and 0.10%. However, beneath the surface, Cramer said the market has become increasingly bifurcated, with investors piling into a narrow group of artificial intelligence winners while severely punishing companies that disappoint or simply fail to impress. The selling has come “with a level of fear I can’t ever remember seeing before,” he added.
He pointed to several healthcare and medical technology companies that have sold off sharply.
Abbott Laboratories, which he called “one of the greatest American companies in history,” is down 34% this year after narrowly missing earnings expectations.
“This is Abbott Labs for heavens sakes,” Cramer said. “A market that punishes Abbott Labs is a market that despises anything not connected to tech and the data center.”
Danaher has also been hit after what Cramer described as “a savage string of not-so-great quarters.” The stock is down 27% this year. He added that companies like Boston Scientific, Intuitive Surgical, Medtronic, ResMed, Stryker, and Zimmer Biomet have also hit new lows.
At the same time, Cramer said investors have become overly enthusiastic about stocks tied to artificial intelligence and data centers.
“It’s like portfolio managers have decided to abandon any stocks that are not connected to AI,” he said. “They cling to the data center because it is perceived to have very little economic sensitivity because the demand is so voracious.”
Still, Cramer cautioned against drawing direct comparisons to the dot-com era, arguing today’s market dynamics are far more extreme.
“The problem with the dot-com analogies, as I keep explaining, is that they just don’t hold up,” he said. “Here’s the bottom line: there’s some hated socks and some loved stocks. Right now, the hated are over hated and the loved are over loved.”