If you’ve spent more than five minutes on financial Twitter or scrolled through a Reddit stock sub, you know the joke. Jim Cramer, the high-energy host of CNBC’s Mad Money, says "Buy!" and everyone else runs for the exits. It’s a meme. It’s a legend. For a while, it was even a tradable security.
The inverse Jim Cramer ETF (ticker: SJIM) was born out of this specific brand of internet snark. People wanted a way to bet against the guy who famously told viewers Bear Stearns was "fine" just days before it evaporated in 2008. But here is the thing: the reality of shorting a TV personality is way more complicated than the memes suggest.
The Rise and Fall of SJIM
Basically, the Inverse Cramer Tracker ETF was designed to do exactly what it said on the tin. It was an actively managed fund that went short on the stocks Cramer recommended and went long on the ones he hated. It launched in March 2023, courtesy of Matthew Tuttle and the team at Tuttle Capital Management.
Matt Tuttle is the same guy who launched SARK, the fund that shorts Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF. He’s kinda the king of "anti-thematic" investing.
The fund didn't just guess. The managers literally watched Mad Money and tracked Cramer’s Twitter (now X) feed in real-time. If Jim got excited about a tech stock at 6:00 PM, the fund was ready to bet against it by the next morning. It sounded like a license to print money for the "Inverse Cramer" crowd.
It wasn't.
By early 2024, the party was over. SJIM officially stopped trading on February 13, 2024. It lasted less than a year. When it closed, it had only managed to attract about $2.4 million in assets. For an ETF, that’s tiny. It’s basically pocket change in the world of institutional finance.
Why the Inverse Jim Cramer ETF Failed
Honestly, the biggest reason SJIM failed wasn't just because people stopped hating Cramer. It was because the "Magnificent Seven" exists.
Cramer spent a huge chunk of 2023 telling people to buy Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple. Guess what? Those stocks went to the moon. If you’re running an inverse Jim Cramer ETF, and the guy you’re betting against is telling people to buy the best-performing stocks in history, you’re going to get steamrolled.
- The Performance Gap: SJIM lost roughly 15% on a total return basis from its launch until its closure.
- The Long Side Failed Too: There was a sister fund called the Long Cramer Tracker ETF (LJIM) that bought what he liked. It closed even earlier, in September 2023, because nobody wanted to pay a 1.2% expense ratio just to follow a TV host's free advice.
- High Fees: Speaking of that 1.2% expense ratio—that’s expensive. Most basic index funds cost almost nothing. To pay over 1% for a "meme" strategy is a tough sell for serious investors.
Tuttle himself admitted that the interest in a long/short portfolio based on a media figure never really materialized the way they hoped. Retail investors wanted more volatility, more leverage, and more "oomph" than a broad collection of Cramer-hated stocks could provide.
The "Inverse Midas Touch" Myth
We love a good villain. Cramer is easy to cast in that role because he’s loud, he’s everywhere, and he’s been doing this for forty years. When you make thousands of calls a year, some are going to be catastrophically wrong. Those are the ones that go viral.
But a 2016 study by Wharton graduate students looked at Cramer’s "Action Alerts Plus" portfolio and found it returned about 64.5% over a 15-year period. Sure, the S&P 500 did about 70% in that same timeframe, so he technically underperformed the market. But he didn't go to zero.
Shorting a guy who is essentially "slightly worse than the S&P 500" isn't a winning strategy. To make money shorting, you need the target to be spectacularly wrong, consistently. Cramer is often just... mediocre. And "mediocre" is a death sentence for an inverse ETF after you factor in trading costs and management fees.
Lessons for the Solo Investor
So, what did we actually learn from the inverse Jim Cramer ETF experiment?
First, memes don't always make money. The "Inverse Cramer" joke is funny on a message board, but when you put real capital behind it, the math gets ugly. Shorting is inherently risky because your losses are theoretically infinite, while your gains are capped at 100%.
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Second, timing is everything. SJIM launched right as the AI boom was lifting the very stocks Cramer was cheering for. If it had launched in 2021 when everything was crashing, it might still be around today.
Third, don't ignore the "drag." Every time an active ETF like SJIM trades, it costs money. Because Cramer changes his mind constantly, the fund had a high turnover rate. That eats into returns. You aren't just betting against Jim; you're betting against the house, the brokers, and the tax man.
How to Handle Market Noise Now
Since you can't buy SJIM anymore, how do you handle the "Cramer effect"?
- Ignore the "Buy" or "Sell" buttons: Treat TV financial news as entertainment, not an instruction manual. The time between a host saying "buy" and you actually executing a trade is usually long enough for the "pop" to have already happened.
- Watch the Volume: If a stock spikes after a televised mention, it’s often a "liquidity event." Institutional players might use that surge of retail buying to sell their own positions.
- Check the Fundamentals: If you're tempted to inverse a personality, ask why. Are you betting against the person, or is the company actually overvalued?
- Look for Real Trends: Instead of tracking a single person, look at broader sentiment indicators like the Put/Call ratio or the Fear & Greed Index. These give a better pulse of the market than one guy in a studio in New Jersey.
The inverse Jim Cramer ETF was a fascinating moment in financial history. It showed us that the gap between "internet funny" and "financially viable" is a mile wide. Betting against a "broken clock" sounds great until you realize that even a broken clock is right twice a day—and in a bull market, those two times can last for months.
Focus on building a diversified portfolio that doesn't rely on the whims of a single media personality. Whether you love him or hate him, Jim Cramer is just one voice in a very loud room. Your best bet is usually to turn down the volume and stick to a long-term plan.