Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's "Mad Money," landed himself in the social media hot seat after a clip of him resurfaced urging viewers to buy shares of SVB Financial, the parent company of Silicon Valley Bank, the New York Post reported. On Friday, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation shut down Silicon Valley Bank, sending shockwaves through the financial world.
"The ninth-best performer to date has been SVB Financial. Don't yawn," Cramer told viewers on his Feb. 8 show.
Cramer touted the company as a "merchant bank with a deposit base that Wall Street has mistakenly been concerned by" and said it was "less dependent upon private equity and venture capital offerings."
At the time, SVB Financial was trading at $320.40 a share, which Cramer said was still cheap.
On social media, critics of Cramer made sure to remind others of the ill-fated stock tip.
"One month ago, Jim Cramer urged investors to buy Silicon Valley Bank stock $SIVB," Watcher.Guru tweeted Friday. "Today, the bank was closed by California regulators, making it the 2nd largest banking failure in US history."
"At first it was funny that Jim Cramer was always wrong," another Twitter user, Appatunity, chimed in. "Now it's extremely sad how many people and families he's destroyed by always being wrong. The guy needs to be taken off the air for good."
One Twitter user, drawing parallels to the 2008 financial crash, Genevieve Roch-Decter, tweeted, "Jim Cramer said a month ago Silicon Valley Bank was a buy.
"He also said Bear Sterns [the investment firm that collapsed in the subprime mortgage crisis] was fine in 2008. This man deserves an Oscar."
Over time, the "Mad Money" host's misses have evolved into an internet meme known as inverse Cramer, whereby social media users joke about making the opposite investment recommended by the tv personality.
"If he specifically says either 'buy, buy, buy a stock,' then we're gonna go short that stock at the next practical moment," Matthew Tuttle, the CEO of Tuttle Capital Management, told Bloomberg News. Tuttle's comments follow after his firm launched an Inverse Cramer Tracker ETF.
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