Americans looking for bad advice need to look no further than CNBC’s host Jim Cramer, who has developed a pathetic reputation of consistently being dead wrong on the stock market and economy.
Cramer, host of the show Mad Money, has inadvertently shown himself capable of predicting the exact opposite of what will happen, especially in the stock market. It seems Cramer is more concerned with providing entertaining television rather than useful or helpful tips to prospective investors.
The 2023 “inverse Cramer effect” doesn't come as a shock considering his track record. For example, Cramer gave an upbeat Sept. 12, 2022 inflation forecast that was crushed just a day later by government data showing prices spiking 8.3 percent year-over-year. Cramer’s history of being so wrong in his predictions has gotten so comical that an ETF called “Inverse Cramer” was created so investors can bet against any position Cramer takes. MRC Business took a trip down memory lane to reminisce on how Cramer’s hottest takes went horribly wrong this year so far.
1. Cramer Called Silicon Valley Bank Stock ‘Winner’ Before ‘Biggest Bank Failure’ Since 2008 (Feb. 8).
Cramer’s 2023 got off to a bad start when he hyped up a bank that soon failed and rocked the financial world.
In a Feb. 8 edition of his CNBC show Mad Money, Cramer made some early predictions about the Q1 stock market, listing what he claimed were the top 10 stocks of the year. Among the cruise and technology corporations, Cramer inexplicably put Silicon Valley Bank’s parent company SVB Financial Group at number nine. Cramer blathered on about how the SVB’s “cheap” stock was worth it because “being a banker to these immense pools of capital has always been a very good business.”
Even worse, Cramer claimed that the bearish attitude toward SVB stock was “not justified,” instead calling it a “very compelling situation.” Based on this mindset, Cramer could never have predicted what would happen next.
Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) went belly-up only about a month after Cramer’s crazy take. A March 10 CNBC story headline read: “Silicon Valley Bank is shut down by regulators in biggest bank failure since global financial crisis.” According to CNBC, the SVB collapse, which the outlet dubbed dubbed, “a key player in the tech and venture capital community” left “companies and wealthy individuals largely unsure of what will happen to their money.” Cramer had no choice but to watch his crystal ball malfunction in real time. Cramer entered Twitter during the opening of the March 10 trading hours appearing enthusiastic. Specifically, Cramer claimed in a tweet, “Watch SIVB common. It is climbing despite endless bear raids....” But just nearly 40 minutes later, Cramer’s optimism went kaput when he tweeted “SIVB breaks price that i did not want to see....” Then at 8:12 a.m: “SIVB at $35... wow.”
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. eventually closed SVB and took control of its deposits.
However, it was not the end of Cramer’s clown show, and definitely not the last of his miserable takes.
2. Cramer Lauded Another Bank right Before Its Stock Went Under (Mar. 10).
Just over a month after he gave bad stock advice on air, Cramer came back for more with another poorly timed inverse prediction.
In a Mar. 10 post on X (formerly Twitter), Cramer praised First Republic Bank (FRC) for its position in the market, even after the recent fall of SVB. “FRC is new focus... very good bank,” Cramer alleged.
It’s almost as if Cramer cursed the bank. Only three days after Cramer made the post, the stock price for FRC plummeted 65 percent in premarket trading. First Republic Bank's turmoil did not end until federal regulators seized the bank's assets two months later, ultimately selling them to JPMorgan Chase. The Associated Press referred to the event as a "fire sale."
Cramer’s bad forecasts, at this point, had rightfully earned him public criticism and ridicule. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson for example, said on his show Tucker Carlson Tonight that “If [Cramer] ever endorses anything you’re doing, move to the Canary Islands, change your name because disaster is coming.” Carlson’s hilarious but completely accurate prediction only hours after Cramer’s FRC post, was more spot on than anything Cramer could have made.
But the story gets even worse. Cramer doubled down on his FRC stock prediction, and like before, it went very wrong.
Cramer praised FRC for what he claimed was good progress for the ailing bank, in an April 25 tweet. Cramer said, “It looks like First Republic v. everything else judging from these fine earnings.” Those “fine earnings” would turn into drastic losses almost immediately after Cramer made his comment.
That very same day, FRC’s stock value tumbled another 50 percent, totalling a more than 90 percent drop for the year. Not even the previous losses seen by the bank’s stock value could stop Cramer from absurdly praising FRC once again, and boy, did he deliver.
3. Cramer Predicted Meta’s ‘Fantastic’ Twitter Competitor Threads Would Kill Twitter (July 5-6).
In case Cramer’s bad bank predictions weren’t bad enough, he came back and made another on the social media war.
On the July 5 edition of CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Cramer anticipated with absurd optimism the startup of Mark Zuckerberg’s new app Threads. Cramer, calling Threads’ sister app Instagram “a really terrific product” and Twitter “awful,” claimed that Threads would defeat Twitter. “I say game, set, match Zuckerberg,” Cramer predicted. “[Zuckerberg] really understands…that you want to be committed to the community,” Cramer claimed.
The next day, after Threads officially launched, Cramer continued with his crazy prediction on Squawk on the Street. After lauding Threads, Cramer again boldly claimed, “Look, I think this is game. I think that Twitter will lose here.” He also alleged that “Anything Twitter can do, Zuck can do better. Anything Musk can do, still Zuck can do better.”
However, despite Cramer’s claims and support, Threads faltered massively as a legitimate Twitter competitor after its launch. In its first week, Threads dropped more than half of its daily users from almost 50 million to 23.6 million, and average daily engagement dropped from 21 to six minutes. By the end of the next week, daily users had dropped to 13 million, 70% of its most popular day. Meanwhile, Twitter has more than 200 million daily active users.
Threads continued to plummet in usership even after that. As of July 31, Threads had maintained only eight million of its daily users, which is more than 80% less than its most popular day. Twitter’s usership completely overshadowed this massive drop-off of Threads users and it would be difficult to call Threads a true competitor, let alone a Twitter killer.
Like with his previous ridiculous ideas, Cramer faced scorching criticism for this prediction. Social media personality Chairman reacted to Cramer’s conclusion on Twitter on Aug. 8, posting a chart showing the progression of internet interest for both apps and saying “One month ago, Jim Cramer said Mark Zuckerberg killed Twitter. Inverse Cramer never fails.”
4. Cramer Strikes Again With Bad Prediction on June Jobs Numbers (July 6.)
Cramer does not confine his astonishingly deep lack of success with economic takes and predictions to the stock market or social media competition.
In his Mad Money show on July 6, Cramer predicted that the June BLS jobs statistics were going to make a massive improvement. “I think we’re going to see a smoking hot [BLS] jobs number,” Cramer claimed, “and that’s not just because we got a strong [ADP Research Institute] number today.”
However, like many times before, Cramer’s prediction for the June jobs numbers, which he claimed were “more impactful than ever,” grossly underperformed.. According to the BLS report released on July 7, only 209,000 jobs were added to the economy, which was much less than the projected 240,000 and the 339,000 added the previous month. Even worse, the June number was revised all the way down to 185,000.
These awful predictions might be a great sign for Cramer to hang them up soon.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact CNBC at cnbcnewspr@nbcuni.com and demand it distance itself from Cramer’s wild stock takes.
