Peter Kramer/NBC Newswire/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
- "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer makes a lot of stock market calls, and not all of them pan out.
- The Inverse Cramer ETF bets against the financial pundit, by shorting stocks he's bullish on.
- The product is the handiwork of the money manager known for shorting Cathie Wood's stock picks.
There's now an easy way to be on the opposite side of every Jim Cramer recommendation, with the launch of an exchange-traded fund that shorts the "Mad Money" host's stock picks.
The Inverse Cramer ETF (SJIM) shorts equities the well-known financial pundit is bullish on. The ETF was launched on Thursday.
The ETF is the handiwork of Matthew Tuttle, the CEO of Tuttle Capital Management — the same money manager known for shorting Ark Invest's Cathie Wood's stock calls. Tuttle's AXS Short Innovation Daily ETF (SARK) allows traders to wager bets against Wood's flagship fund.
The Inverse Cramer ETF is an actively managed portfolio that carries an equally-weighted 20-50 names, Tuttle told Bloomberg, with the product having an expense ratio of 1.2%. Essentially, Tuttle and a few colleagues track the stocks by watching Cramer's on-air CNBC appearances and routinely sift through his social media.
"If [Cramer] specifically says either buy, buy, buy a stock, then we're gonna go short that stock at the next practical moment," Tuttle told Bloomberg's Trillions podcast, referring to the product's investment strategy. "If he tells you he hates a stock or sell, sell, sell or something like that, then we're gonna go long that name again at the next kind of practical entry point."
From the risk section of the ETF's prospectus, investors could lose money if Cramer is "absent from CNBC or Twitter for a prolonged period of time for any reason" or is "unexpectedly incapacitated," per an SEC filing last week.
Cramer in recent years has become a frequent punching bag among the Wall Street Bets crowd, which has long joked about shorting any stock the CNBC host is bullish on.
In his time as the brash CNBC commentator, he's made presumably thousands of calls that both have and haven't panned out about, both in regards to stocks and the economy. Way back in 2012, Cramer issued an urgent message to dump Hewlett Packard and Best Buy stock, which later surged 115% and 124% in the span of six months.
Still, the former hedge fund manager doesn't claim to be recommending a long-term portfolio during his TV show appearances.
Cramer took to social media when news of the planned Inverse ETF surfaced last year, citing his early and successful calls on Apple, Amazon, and Google in response.
—Jim Cramer (@jimcramer) October 7, 2022
"Jim's mission has always been to encourage long-term investing and a balanced portfolio that includes index funds and individual stocks," a CNBC spokesperson told Bloomberg. "He regards Mad Money as his classroom and believes educating those who want to pick individual stocks through insight and experience is the best way to help them take control of their finances."