Why Jim Cramer Says the Iran War Is Affecting Nvidia — Even If Nobody Can Quantify It

When Jim Cramer discusses Nvidia these days, there’s a certain level of annoyance in his voice. The subtle edge of a man who has watched markets for decades and still finds himself shrugging at something he cannot fully explain is audible in the clips. The stock is immobile. As Jensen Huang stands under stage lights at GTC, promising a trillion dollars in business by the end of 2027, it remains there at about $183. And as he watches from the floor of that AI festival in his shirtsleeves, Cramer keeps returning to the same unsettling notion: that it has something to do with the Iranian conflict, even though no one can pinpoint it.

It’s not like him to acknowledge it. Typically, Cramer is the one with the percentage, the chart, and the catchphrase. However, he has been cautious—almost hesitant—about this one. He has repeatedly stated that the decline in Nvidia’s stock is related to the Iran War. Not all of them. Not even the majority of it. Just something. And the story lies in that imprecision itself.

On the surface, the market doesn’t seem to support him. The Dow hardly moved when news of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz once more surfaced in April. According to Cramer, stocks hardly flinched as West Texas crude surged more than five percent in a single session. A few days prior, the S&P 500 had just closed at a record high. Watching this on their phones while sipping coffee in the morning, investors appeared to have concluded that the war was background noise, unpleasant and costly for the airlines and cruise lines, but not the factor that determines whether the AI revolution continues to print money.

Nevertheless, Nvidia, the purported catalyst for that revolution, is unwilling to advance. On stage, Huang doubled his demand estimate. between half a trillion and a full trillion. Saying the number aloud is nearly embarrassing. The stock yawned as well. Sellers appeared. Standing in the center of it, Cramer appeared genuinely perplexed, much like a sports commentator does when a star player misses an open shot for no apparent reason.

His theory, which is woven throughout multiple segments, is that the market exhibits a degree of hesitancy that is absent from any earnings report. Bond yields make up a portion of it. A portion of it stems from the concern that Nvidia’s largest clients, the cloud giants and hyperscalers, are secretly producing their own chips. A portion of it stems from the fear that if the conflict continues, Washington may limit the entire addressable market for the semiconductor industry. In real time, none of that can be measured. It’s all heavy.

Watching Cramer discuss this gives me the impression that he’s describing the kind of market mood that can only be experienced after years of watching them. The Gulf War. The dot-com relax. The freeze of 2008. There were times when traders were unable to articulate exactly what was bothering them, only that something was. He seems to believe that Nvidia is currently experiencing one of those moments.

He might be mistaken. It’s possible that Huang’s keynote was just too much, too quickly, for analysts who hadn’t sharpened their pencils yet, and the stock is just recovering from a huge run. Cramer has alluded to this, saying that once the figures on Wall Street’s spreadsheets are updated, the real action will take place. He keeps saying it’s a delayed reaction. Believe me.

However, there is also the other, more subdued option. that a war cannot truly be completely avoided by the AI revolution, despite its claims to be unaffected by geopolitics. The Strait of Hormuz is doing something that no one has yet figured out how to depict on a chart, somewhere between Huang’s trillion-dollar promise and the stock’s obstinate $183.

Cramer is unable to measure it. It’s unusual for him to freely acknowledge that. Perhaps that’s the most truthful statement about Nvidia made by a TV personality in months.