Investors are quietly building a new playbook: keep riding the AI rocket, but pair it with old‑economy resilience and under‑the‑radar healthcare innovators that actually move the needle in patients’ lives.
When Tech Flies Too Close to the Sun
Wall Street’s love affair with high‑flying tech has gone from fling to full‑blown relationship status, but even the biggest AI romantics are starting to ask a practical question: what do you own with your chip darlings so the portfolio can still sleep at night? Jim Cramer has been leaning into that very dilemma, urging investors to anchor their AI exposure with companies that throw off cash, sport defensible franchises, and aren’t priced like the future has already arrived.
His latest prescription: look beyond the usual megacap suspects and toward healthcare and consumer names that benefit from secular trends, resilient demand, and, ideally, some good old‑fashioned multiple expansion. It is a subtle message wrapped in a familiar Cramerism—own the winners, but don’t confuse a momentum trade with a retirement plan.
Cramer’s Quiet Counterweight Strategy
Cramer’s recent segment on pairing “high‑flying tech” with four more grounded stocks reads like a gentle intervention for investors who have never met a semiconductor they did not like. Among his favored names are stalwarts such as CVS Health (CVS), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), and Cardinal Health (CAH)—companies that, in his view, have been pushed to the sidelines as investors chased AI at any price.
CVS Health (CVS), he argues, still sits at the spine of the American healthcare system, straddling insurance, pharmacies, and primary care at a time when consumers are demanding more convenient, integrated solutions. Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) brings fortress‑like balance sheet strength and a diversified pharma and medtech engine, the sort of profile that can quietly compound while investors argue about who really owns the AI crown. Cardinal Health (CAH), meanwhile, has been “decimated,” in Cramer’s telling, more because of investor fashion than a breakdown in fundamentals, as it shifts from traditional drug distribution into higher‑margin services supporting specialized medical practices.
In other words, while everyone is staring at GPU shipments from the likes of NVIDIA (NVDA) and its peers, Cramer is gently pointing at the plumbing of healthcare and asking, “You sure you want to ignore this?”
The Healthcare Undercard: Where Innovation Meets Cash Flow
Yet the real story may be what sits just beyond the blue‑chip healthcare universe: a set of smaller, more focused companies riding concrete clinical and regulatory milestones rather than narrative alone. This is where the new playbook gets interesting—pair megacap resilience with specialist names that can grow far faster if their science and execution line up.
Two such stories have begun to break through the noise: Modular Medical (MODD), a diabetes‑tech innovator, and Eupraxia Pharmaceuticals (EPRX), a clinical‑stage company targeting eosinophilic esophagitis, a chronic inflammatory condition of the esophagus often shorthand as EoE. Both live in the slipstream of larger healthcare themes—metabolic disease and immune‑mediated disorders—yet operate with the focus and urgency of earlier‑stage platforms.
Modular Medical: A Tubeless Shot at the Diabetes Market
Modular Medical (MODD) has spent the past few years working on its Pivot tubeless insulin patch pump, aiming squarely at the millions of people with diabetes who find traditional pumps too complex, too invasive, or simply too intimidating. After navigating a delayed regulatory timeline linked in part to the broader U.S. government shutdown saga, the company secured FDA 510(k) clearance for Pivot in April of this year, effectively unlocking its path to commercial launch.
The company has been methodically de‑risking the story: submitting its 510(k) filing, validating manufacturing lines, and obtaining institutional review board approval to collect real‑world insulin‑delivery data in controlled environments while awaiting feedback from regulators. Management has consistently framed Pivot’s value proposition around “transformative simplicity”—a deliberately lower‑friction device designed to capture patients who have been left behind by highly sophisticated but complex pump ecosystems from larger players like Insulet (PODD) and Tandem Diabetes Care (TNDM).
If Pivot can deliver on that promise, Modular Medical (MODD) is suddenly not just a device company but a leverage play on the intersection of medtech, chronic disease management, and the ongoing shift toward more user‑friendly wearables. For investors riding AI‑driven software names such as C3.ai (AI) or cloud‑heavy platforms, Pivot offers exposure to a very different sort of “interface”—one that sits on the skin, not the cloud.
Eupraxia: Quietly Re‑Writing the EoE Playbook
Further up the risk curve, Eupraxia Pharmaceuticals (EPRX) has been steadily advancing EP‑104GI in eosinophilic esophagitis, a condition where chronic inflammation narrows the esophagus and erodes quality of life. In a field historically defined by short‑lived responses and cumbersome treatment regimens, Eupraxia’s recent data readouts have started to look like the clinical equivalent of compound interest.
In its open‑label, dose‑escalation Phase 1b/2a RESOLVE trial, the company reported positive nine‑month data from the highest‑dose cohort, with sustained symptom relief and improved tissue health and, notably, no serious adverse events. Subsequent 52‑week results from the broader RESOLVE program showed durable symptom and tissue responses beyond nine months, with roughly two‑thirds of patients in one cohort maintaining clinical remission a year after a single dose.
Financially, Eupraxia Pharmaceuticals (EPRX) has signaled that its balance sheet can support operations through upcoming trial milestones, a runway that spans several important data catalysts, including further Phase 2b readouts. For a clinical‑stage company, that combination—compelling early efficacy, a tolerable safety profile so far, and funded visibility to the next set of results—is exactly the mix that tends to interest risk‑aware healthcare investors.
Building the New “Barbell” Portfolio
So how does an investor translate this mosaic into an actual portfolio framework rather than a collection of anecdotes? The emerging template looks like a refined barbell:
- On one side, the AI leaders and high‑growth tech names—think NVIDIA (NVDA), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and select software plays—that dominate headlines and capture secular compute and software trends.
- In the middle, Cramer‑style ballast—cash‑generative healthcare and consumer franchises such as CVS Health (CVS), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), and Cardinal Health (CAH) that can benefit if investors eventually remember that earnings still matter.
- On the other side, targeted innovation plays like Modular Medical (MODD) and Eupraxia Pharmaceuticals (EPRX), where well‑timed regulatory wins or clinical data can move the needle far more than one more AI press release.
The humor, if one can call it that, is that in an era obsessed with artificial intelligence and data centers, some of the most compelling opportunities are coming from very human problems: better managing blood sugar, keeping food from getting stuck in the esophagus, and making the healthcare system slightly less maddening to navigate. The machines may be learning, but so, slowly, is the market.
The Upshot for Investors
For allocators trying to write their next quarterly letter—or their next social‑media thread—the takeaway is less about abandoning growth than about broadening what “growth” means. High‑flying tech remains a core part of the story, but pairing it with resilient healthcare incumbents and emerging medtech and biotech names can create a portfolio that is more than just a bet on the next GPU cycle.
In that sense, following Cramer’s nudge toward under‑owned healthcare and layering in names like CVS Health (CVS), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Cardinal Health (CAH), Modular Medical (MODD), and Eupraxia Pharmaceuticals (EPRX) is less a contrarian stance than a return to first principles: diversify across cash flows, cycles, and scientific risk. For investors willing to do that work, the opportunity is not only to participate in the AI boom, but to own the kind of companies that may still be compounding long after today’s buzzwords have been replaced by the next big thing.
The Sources
- CNBC – “Cramer says look to these 4 stocks to go with your high-flying tech names”
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/23/cramer-says-look-to-these-4-stocks-to-go-with-your-high-flying-tech-names.html - CNBC – Mad Money with Jim Cramer (show page / segment context)
https://www.cnbc.com/mad-money/cnbc - Yahoo Finance – “Modular Medical Receives FDA 510(k) Clearance for Pivot Tubeless Insulin Pump”
https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/healthcare/articles/modular-medical-receives-fda-510-130000624.htmlfinance.yahoo - Yahoo Finance – “Modular Medical Achieves Key Manufacturing Milestone for Pivot Tubeless Insulin Patch Pump”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/modular-medical-achieves-key-manufacturing-133000481.htmlfinance.yahoo - Yahoo Finance – “Modular Medical Submits Pivot Tubeless Insulin Patch Pump for FDA 510(k) Clearance”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/modular-medical-submits-pivot-tubeless-140000932.htmlfinance.yahoo - Yahoo Finance – “Eupraxia Pharmaceuticals Reports Positive Nine-Month Tissue Health and Symptom Data from the Highest Dose Cohort in its Ongoing Phase 1b/2a RESOLVE Trial in Eosinophilic Esophagitis”
https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/healthcare/articles/eupraxia-pharmaceuticals-reports-positive-nine-110000734.htmlfinance.yahoo - GlobeNewswire – “Eupraxia Pharmaceuticals Reports Positive Nine-Month Tissue Health and Symptom Data from the Highest Dose Cohort in its Ongoing Phase 1b/2a RESOLVE Trial in Eosinophilic Esophagitis”
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/04/21/3277764/0/en/eupraxia-pharmaceuticals-reports-positive-nine-month-tissue-health-and-symptom-data.htmlglobenewswire - BioSpace – “Eupraxia Pharmaceuticals Reports Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results”
https://www.biospace.com/press-releases/eupraxia-pharmaceuticals-reports-third-quarter-2025-financial-resultsbiospace - Investing.com – “Eupraxia reports durable 52-week results for EoE treatment”
https://ca.investing.com/news/company-news/eupraxia-reports-durable-52week-results-for-eoe-treatment-93CH-4316257investing - Yahoo Finance – Eupraxia Pharmaceuticals Inc. (EPRX) news page
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/EPRX.TO/news/finance.yahoo
