CNBC’s Mad Money host Jim Cramer may really be an inverted soothsayer, as yet another of his predictions went in the complete opposite direction. That’s probably what happens when your brain just happens to be screwed on backwards.
Cramer was blowing whatever gaskets he had left over President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs during the April 4 edition of his show, heralding stock market Armageddon of 1987-like proportions as early as April 7 if Trump didn’t reverse course. “The implosion of our markets continues,” cried Cramer, dubbing tumbling stocks on Friday a “man-made obliteration.”
He predicted three “modalities:” a “quick bear market” similar to the 2020 pandemic year, a “2000s-style bear market,” or “it might be the Big Kahuna” Black Monday bear market of 1987, “where the market went down hard for three days” before diving another 22 percent. But Cramer, true to form, put more stock in the outlandish doomsday scenario.
“If the president doesn’t try to reach out and reward these countries and companies that played by the rules, then the 1987 scenario — the one where we went down three days and then down 22 percent on Monday — has the most cogency,” pronounced Cramer. “We will not have to wait out too long, will we? We’ll know by Monday.” So what ended up happening? Well, not a “Black Monday,” as Cramer prophesied. Instead, stocks just wildly “whipsawed” on both sides of the flat line, according to Yahoo! Finance. In fact, by “Monday's close, the S&P 500 and Dow Jones indexes closed down less than 1%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq actually closed in the green,” Axios reported.
Then came the kicker: the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 1,400 points, S&P 500 ticked up 3.4 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq spiked 4.2 percent on hopes of renewed trade negotiations the following day.
But Cramer was sure to let all his viewers know that if Trump “stays intransigent and does nothing to ameliorate the damage that I saw these last few days, I’m not going to be constructive here.” Then he let his audience know that he was on the verge of getting his pants in a bunch. “I will contain my anger, but only because I lived through 1987 and in the end I came out okay. I was in cash-for-the-crash. I know what this feels like,” Cramer railed.
Cramer doubled down, asserting that he “will be furious” if Europe ended up moving against “our fabulous tech companies next week” as a result of Trump’s tariffs. “That I promise you, because it should not happen. None of this has to happen.” Only, European stocks ultimately moved back up “sharply” on gains led by tech and oil “alongside bullish Wall Street indicators,” according to Finimize.
Must be tough living and thinking in reverse, eh Cramer?
