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♒ How bad is Jim Cramer at picking stocks?

today's news sentiment=🔴 | we analyzed Jim Cramer's tweets to see just how bad his stock-picking track record really is (spoiler: it's not great)

Hey, this is Market Mood — the only newsletter that doomscrolls stock market news for you. So you can spend more time watching those Tik Toks of tiny little dogs asleep in purses… or whatever the kids are watching these days.

Babbl News sentiment Index

Cramer Debate: How Bad is He?

Jimothee Cramer. The Mad Money Manz. That old dawg of FinTwit. He’s kinda like your kooky uncle who can’t help but saying some weird shit at Thanksgiving dinner — but you love ‘em anyways because he means well.

One of the most-known (and most-mocked) TV stockpickers of the early 2000’s, Jim’s actually managed to build more of reputation amongst the youth in recent years… for supposedly being pretty awful at stock-picking.

Like, almost notoriously bad.

Nowadays it’s become a pretty common shtick for people to poke fun at his picks whenever he tweets ‘em out; there are literally entire Twitter accounts & ETF’s dedicated to shorting what he says hahaha: @CramerTracker

But… is he really that bad?

We decided to find out for ourselves — to settle the debate of whether he’s worth paying attention to once & for all.

So we doomscrolled our way through his tweets from the past six months, analyzed the sentiment of each of his stock picks (using babbl’s news monitoring website), and tracked the performance of each one over time. Here’s what we found:

Analysis of @JimCramer’s Tweet Picks:

Since August, Jim has tweeted 339 times (excluding replies). Of these, we could only find about 39 (~1 in 9) containing explicit bullish or bearish sentiment about an individual stock — so we focused on these. Things like:

  • @jimcramer: "The lack of respect for is incredible...” [bullish]

  • @jimcramer: “Goldman, i worked for you. You were terrific. But i worry about your quarter as well as your cranial power…” [bearish]

We made a list of all these bullish/bearish stock mentions, then went back and calculated the percent change of each stock’s price over the two weeks that followed. The complete table of results is right here.

The Results:

Over the past 6-months, if you bought Jim’s picks on the day he mentioned them & sold two weeks later each time (the opposite goes for bearish picks) on a $1000 principle investment, you would now have $165.90.

More succinctly: his picks since August would be down -83% cumulatively. Some specifics:

  • Individually, the average 2-week return on Jim’s picks was -4% (not great)

  • Jim tends towards being bullish (🟢28 picks) instead of bearish (🔴11 picks)

  • On average, his bullish picks did better (-2.7% 2w) than his bearish picks (-6.9%)

  • His worst pick (by far) was going full bear mode on the week before the stock mooned +120% 😅

There you have it folks. TBH I was rooting for Jim here, hoping that this would avenge his name as a stock picker. Alas, the inverse-Cramer method would have paid off well.

It goes to show… Jim is an entertainer folks, he’s not the authority on quality stocks to dollar-cost-average into. He’s here to keep things interesting, not be your financial advisor.

After all, his show was called Mad Money for a reason… because trading the stocks he picks at face value would be a bit insane. 😂

NEWS NUGGETS🥔

Top trending commentary parsed from news coverage…

Bullish Nuggets

🟢 | 📰 MotleyFool | 🗣️ Airbnb’s long-term upside is a no brainer…

“Now that the company's valuation has been pushed down to levels that leave room for big upsides, and with its business looking quite strong on balance, Airbnb stock is a strong buy for long-term investors.”

🟢 | 🐣 @EquityBrian | 🗣️ Alibaba is still a good looking stock after rising from the ashes…

“Even after a nearly 100% rally from its October lows, $BABA valuation is still extremely attractive.  10.55x NTM EV/EBITA with a 5.2% FCF yield.”

🟢 | 📰 Investing.com | 🗣️ Barclay’s upgrades Qualcomm’s rating…

“An upgrade so close to the company’s quarterly earnings report due on February 1 is a bullish sign for a stock that many investors have had on their radar in recent months.”

Bearish Nuggets

🔴 | 📰 GlobalNewswire | 🗣️ Enovix’s big post-SPAC lawsuit…

“Lawsuit: Enovix narrowly avoided a three-month delay in the buildout of Enovix Fab-1 facility, a delay that would have prevented the Company from having a single manufacturing line in place by the time Enovix went public in July2021.”

🔴 | 📰 FirstPost | 🗣️ 3M’s near term prospects look dimmer…

“‘MMM to some extent had recently lowered investor/Street expectation but weak 4Q22 results and softer 2023 guidance (weak demand environment) should weigh on the stock in the near-term.’ The decision to cut jobs by 3M comes amid the recent layoffs by companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.”

🔴$FFIV | 📰 Zack's | 🗣️ F5’s post earnings outlook trends lower…

“Ahead of earnings the estimate revisions trend for F5: unfavorable. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to underperform the market in the near future.”

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.

SENTIMENT KEY: 🟢=bullish, 🌑=neutral, 🔴=bearish