CNBC’s Jim Cramer touted Signature Bank stock a year before it collapsed
A clip of CNBC “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer praising Signature Bank as a good investment has resurfaced following news that the lender was shut down by regulators on Sunday following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
Cramer, who has been pummeled on social media over stock market prognostications gone wrong, told viewers on April 12 of last year that Signature Bank qualified as a “GARP stock” — one that embodies the principle of “growth at a reasonable price.”
Cramer listed Signature alongside State Street, Bank of New York Mellon, and Charles Schwab as “investable” stocks that would benefit from the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates.
Cramer’s plugging of Signature Bank resurfaced just days after other clips that showed him praising Silicon Valley Bank mere weeks before the tech-centric lender imploded, sparking a crisis across the US financial sector.
Cramer is likewise being criticized for touting First Republic Bank, the San Francisco-based regional lender whose stock price was down more than 76% in early trading on Wall Street on Monday.
On Friday, the same day SVB went under, Cramer tweeted: “FRC is new focus…very good bank.”
In his plug for Signature Bank, Cramer said that instead of buying shares in banking giants like JPMorgan, investors should look toward “under-the-radar financials.”
“I think it’s a good time to pay some attention to the underappreciated financials with GARP appeal,” Cramer told his “Mad Money” audience last year.
“We don’t invest in hope, we invest in possibilities, and the odds of winning with growth at a reasonable price have rarely looked this good.”
“Tonight I got four of them that pass the GARP test,” Cramer said.
The first stock on the list was Signature Bank, which Cramer said was a “New York-based commercial bank” with “36 client offices sprinkled across the New York metro area, California, and North Carolina.”
“The thing about Signature is that it’s a business-oriented bank,” Cramer continued.
“To the extent that they have a consumer business, it’s focused on the wealthy — namely business owners and senior executives who do a lot of business,” he said.
“You can make a lot of money working with them,” Cramer added.
Cramer said that in January, he touted Signature because it was the “fifth-best-performing [stock] in the S&P 500” in 2021.
He then bragged about telling viewers that Signature “had run too much” and suggested “waiting for a better entry point” at which to buy the stock.
Cramer then flashed a chart showing that Signature stock had fallen some 17% since January of last year.
On social media, Cramer was once again eviscerated.
“Can’t wait to see what he says on his show today! He needs to quit or retire,” one Twitter commentator wrote.
Another Twitter user commented: “If you take financial advice from a man screaming on tv what do you expect?”
One commenter sarcastically noted: “This guy does not miss.”
Investment gurus seeking to capitalize on Cramer’s poor forecasting track record introduced a pair of exchange traded funds which are predicated on a strategy that contradicts whatever the CNBC personality recommends.
Last fall, Cramer appeared on CNBC’s airwaves and offered an emotional apology to viewers for touting Meta stock, the value of which plummeted by some 25% during a single trading session.
Since the apology aired, however, Meta shares have rebounded.
