Jim Cramer chokes up as he apologizes for pushing Meta stock: ‘I screwed up!’
Jim Cramer appeared to choke up during Thursday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” as the investor apologized to viewers for previously recommending they buy shares of Meta — which tumbled to their lowest levels in six years.
“Let me say this,” a somber Cramer told the CNBC co-panelists in a clip that went viral on Twitter, addressing a Thursday rout in Meta shares that sent them plunging 25% in a single trading session.
“I made a mistake here,” Cramer said, his voice halting and trembling as he spoke. “I was wrong.”
In June, Cramer told his CNBC viewers that they ought to buy Meta stock because its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was “simply unstoppable.” Cramer touted the future of the metaverse, which is “a cool place to go.”
The CNBC segment from June 23 even included a metaverse avatar of Cramer and other network panelists.
Cramer appeared to be taken by Zuckerberg, gushing: “Mark knows I like to garden, I watched a garden” using the virtual reality headset that is used to access the metaverse.
But the plummeting stock price forced the host to change his tune on Thursday.
“I trusted this management team,” said a dejected Cramer, who was wearing a pained expression on his face as he unpacked his bad read on the company.
Cramer said that putting his faith in the current management team at Meta was “ill-advised.” He added that he was surprised that the company didn’t exercise more “discipline” in its spending.
Cramer said he was particularly taken aback that Meta burned through its cash reserves in order to invest in the metaverse.
“I had thought there’d be an understanding that you just can’t spend and spend right through your free cash flow, that there had to be some level of discipline,” Cramer said.
When host David Faber asked Cramer what he got wrong, Cramer replied: “What did I get wrong?” he said, visibly choking up.
“I trusted them, not myself. For that I regret. I’ve been in this business for 40 years, and I did a bad job. I’m not proud.”
The Post has sought comment from Meta.
As of 3 p.m. Eastern time, shares of Meta were down more than 25%. They were trading at just above $97 a share — the lowest since 2016.
Meta announced on Wednesday that revenue dropped for the second consecutive quarter as the company struggles with falling advertising sales due to stiff competition from rising social media app TikTok.
The Menlo Park, Calif.-company earned $4.4 billion, or $1.64 per share, in the three-month period that ended Sept. 30. That’s down 52% from, $9.19 billion, or $3.22 per share, in the same period a year earlier.
Revenue fell 4% to $27.71 billion from $29.01 billion, slightly higher than the $27.4 billion that analysts had predicted.
Cramer has gained a reputation online as an untrustworthy prognosticator of the stock market as Twitter and Reddit trolls have frequently trended the term “Inverse Cramer” — the idea being that investors should do the opposite of whatever the CNBC personality recommends.
One fund manager, Tuttle Capital Management, has taken the concept further, filing prospectuses for two Cramer-tracking funds — the “Inverse Cramer ETF” and the “Long Cramer,” according to Nasdaq.
