My positions: I'm long Intel (INTC). I don't own IBM. Nothing below is investment advice. It's me checking the receipts on a stock I actually hold.
Key points
- Cramer said buy IBM at $290.23 on July 13. It fell 25% the next day, its worst session ever.
- He's called Intel his favorite stock 5 times since June 8. All five are underwater, and Thursday it fell another 3.5%.
- Fading him still loses. The informal inverse Cramer index is down 0.1% this year vs 10% for the S&P 500.
Monday night, Jim Cramer told his viewers to buy IBM (IBM). Not look at it. Buy it.
"I want you to buy the stock of IBM," he said on CNBC. "You buy some now and then, it's been having these kind of panic fits, just panic attacks, you buy the rest then. I think IBM's terrific."
IBM closed at $290.23 that day. We logged it.
Tuesday morning IBM preannounced a bad quarter. Revenue short. Earnings short. Software growth short. CEO Arvind Krishna said the company "faltered" because big customer deals didn't close. The stock fell 25 percent to $217.07. That's the worst single day in IBM's history. Not this year. History.
Then Cramer did the part nobody turned into a meme. He got bearish at the bottom.
"I'm too worried about these trends to say that IBM's now safe to buy," he said Tuesday night. "I can't tell you to buy a stock because I hope something is true."
Fade his Monday call, and you made a fortune. Fade his Tuesday call, and you lost money. IBM slid another 2.7 percent Wednesday to $211.20. He's been right since the moment he turned negative.
Then he said INTEL
Wednesday morning, Cramer posted on X that Intel (INTC) is his favorite stock. He noted Intel is now the third-largest customer of ASML (ASML), which just guided its capacity higher.
I own Intel. So that one landed a little differently.
Our tracker has five Cramer calls on Intel since June 8, and every single one is bullish. Thursday it dropped again, down another 3.5% to $99.35. Here's what each call looks like against that price.
| Date called | Where | Price then | Price now | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 8 | X | $110.27 | $99.35 | -9.9% |
| Jun 17 | X | $121.10 | $99.35 | -18.0% |
| Jun 30 | Mad Money | $139.63 | $99.35 | -28.9% |
| Jul 6 | Mad Money | $124.00 | $99.35 | -19.9% |
| Jul 15 | X | $102.99 | $99.35 | -3.5% |
The June 30 call is the one that stings. He called Intel his favorite that week and Intel topped out at $142.35 that same week. He hit the high within about 2 percent.
So he's been loudly in love with Intel for five straight weeks while it fell 30 percent off the June high. That isn't a curse that lands overnight like IBM. It's a slow bleed with a cheerleader.
The honest part
I'd love to stop there. The numbers won't let me.
Fading Cramer as an actual strategy does not work. The informal inverse Cramer index traders joke about is down roughly 0.1 percent this year according to The Deep Dive. The S&P 500 is up about 10 percent. You'd have done better buying an index fund and going outside.
We ran our own version last week and got the same split (the full table is here). His tech calls were getting hammered while everything else came out close to flat. He isn't bad at stocks. He's been bad at chips in this particular window. That's a much smaller claim than the internet makes it.
Here's the uncomfortable bit for me. Call number five came at $102.99. The first four came at $110, $121, $139 and $124. Those were expensive. This one isn't. If you're going to laugh at a guy for being early you have to notice when he finally says it at a lower price.
And I'm not exactly clean here. I bought Intel knowing our own scoring tool grades it 36 out of 100, a D (I wrote about overriding my own tool here). Cramer and I are long the same stock for different reasons. One of us is going to look silly and it might be me.
Every call is logged at our inverse Cramer tracker with the real price on the day and the real price now. The IBM buy from Monday is in there, logged before the stock opened down 24 percent Tuesday. So are all five Intel calls. Go check my math.
This is general market commentary and opinion, not investment advice. Markets can go down as well as up, and you can lose money. Always do your own research and consider speaking with a licensed financial professional before making any investment decision.
