Jim Cramer celebrated a dramatic pivot in market sentiment surrounding Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) during Mad Money’s July 23 episode. After days of urging investors to accumulate the stock following a strong earnings report that Wall Street initially dismissed, Cramer highlighted the FDA approval of JNJ’s OTTAVA Robotic Surgical System as the catalyst that finally forced investors to recognize the healthcare titan as a high-tech innovator:
I’ve been pounding the table on Johnson & Johnson for days now. I thought the quarter was excellent. Nobody agreed with me. The stock got hammered. I’ve been screaming about how terrific its technology is, saying perhaps it’s okay to diversify away from disc drives into JNJ. Nobody seemed to care. Then today we found out that J&J got a green light from the FDA for its OTTAVA Robotic Surgical System. Next thing you know, the stock’s going bonkers. Investors realize that J&J, wow, they’re a technology company. I say, “Duh, no kidding.” But the market’s shocked. Look out, J&J is tech. Although it won’t matter for a few years.
The OTTAVA Catalyst
On July 22, 2026, Johnson & Johnson announced that the U.S. FDA granted De Novo marketing authorization for its OTTAVA Robotic Surgical System. It is a major milestone as the world’s first table-integrated soft-tissue robotic platform. The authorization covers a wide range of general upper-abdominal procedures, including gastric bypass, sleeve gastrectomy, appendectomy, gallbladder removal, and hiatal hernia repair. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) plans a targeted commercial rollout with select U.S. hospital partners to ensure early adoption success while simultaneously pursuing international approvals and conducting ongoing U.S. clinical trials for additional procedures like inguinal hernia repair.
The “Permit Stock” Context: Why Cramer Pounded the Table
This sudden surge validates the broader strategy Cramer laid out on July 6, when he explained why high-quality defensive stocks like JNJ are essential for protecting capital when high-flying market sectors stumble:
Now, you can make good money for a while if you go all in on what’s hot, but I never do it because I know it’ll eventually blow up in your face… That’s why we run a diversified fund for the Investing Club. When you’re diversified, at any given moment, you’re going to own some losers, though, or at least some stocks that aren’t working. These stocks will lag while the data center roars, but they preserve your sanity when you get a tsunami-like sell-off in the hottest stocks out there. Well, the tsunami of data center selling is here, and today’s the day when I’m kind of patting myself on the back for keeping the Charitable Trust diversified, not going all in on the data center complex. Today’s the day when we’re grateful for our Johnson & Johnson position. Great new drug profits. Triple-A balance sheet, better than the United States… See, the lesson’s clear, people. The P&Gs and the J&Js in your portfolio allow you to safely own the techs. They’re kind of like permits. But if you don’t take something off the table of the techs when you’re up big, I think you’re going to live to regret it.
