Jim Cramer spent Monday night on Mad Money doing something television hosts rarely do on camera: calling himself an idiot. A viewer named Kyle phoned in about her Corning (NYSE:GLW | GLW Price Prediction) position, worried about the wild swings, and Cramer used the question to torch his own track record on the mega-caps before validating her thesis.
Kyle told Cramer she bought Corning a few months ago and had watched steady appreciation punctuated by what she called massive swings. Cramer’s first move was to disclose that his Charitable Trust had just trimmed. “We actually sold some for the trust today. It’s been a big win,” he said. Then came the self-flagellation. “I just castigated myself over Microsoft, over Nvidia, over Apple, over Meta… Yeah, I’m the biggest idiot in the world, but we own a lot of Corning too.”
His framing of the broader tape is the part worth taping to your monitor. “The script is flipped in the tech trade. The suppliers are winning right now and the old leaders have to earn their way back.” Kyle’s marching orders from Cramer were simple: stay with the position.
Why Corning became the AI supplier trade
The math behind Cramer’s enthusiasm sits inside Corning’s optical communications segment. On the Q1 2026 report filed April 28, 2026, Corning posted EPS of $0.70 against a consensus of $0.6916, its fourth consecutive EPS beat. Optical Communications revenue landed at $1.846 billion, up 36% year over year, powered by hyperscaler data center connectivity.
Then came the kicker. CEO Wendell Weeks disclosed that Corning “finalized two more hyperscaler deals similar in size and duration to our recently announced multiyear, up-to-$6 billion agreement with Meta.” You can read the exact language in the company’s 8-K exhibit filed with the SEC. Since then, Corning also secured a multibillion-dollar Amazon deal to supply optical fiber for AI data centers. The deal brings roughly 1,000 new jobs in North Carolina. Bank of America now estimates up to $10.3 billion in AI data center-related revenue by 2030.
Q2 2026 guidance calls for core sales around $4.60 billion and core EPS of $0.73 to $0.77. So the story Cramer is telling Kyle is that Corning stopped being a glass company that also made cables and started being the plumbing behind hyperscaler capex.
The score behind Cramer’s self-castigation
Look at what the tape did to the old leaders and you understand the confession. Year to date through June 30, 2026, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is down 22.53%. Meta (NASDAQ:META) is off 14.52% even as it signs Corning up for a fiber deal worth up to $6 billion. NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) has managed just 7.42%, Apple 6.64%, and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) 3.26%.
Corning, over the same window, is up 192.71%. One year: up 391.06%. That is what Cramer means by the script flipping. The company selling picks to five gold miners has outrun the miners themselves by an order of magnitude.
The volatility Kyle is worried about
Now for the other side. Corning trades at a trailing P/E near 123x and a forward P/E around 81x, with an analyst target price of $206.07 that already sits below where the stock trades. GuruFocus recently flagged the shares as 321% overvalued against intrinsic value, and insiders sold $54.1 million over the past three months with zero purchases. On July 1, the stock gave back 14.06% in a single session, which is roughly what Kyle called about.
Cramer’s trust took profits into that strength for a reason. The rotation into suppliers is real, the hyperscaler deals are contractual, and the AI data center buildout that Jensen Huang described as “the largest infrastructure expansion in human history” genuinely benefits the fiber guys. Kyle’s swings are the cost of admission when a stock triples in six months. What Cramer was telling her, between the insults he threw at himself, is that the trade is still working. The old leaders are the ones who need to prove something now.
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