The business of stock prognostication is a tough one: a lot of uncertainty abounds, markets swing through surprisingly long bouts of herd-following and counter-trend sentiments, bots and market makers can rampage through the best technical setups, and companies sometimes only disclose the minimally required information. I dare to prognosticate only with risk management as a key partner. So I hold a lot of sympathy for those who also dare to prognosticate on stocks. CNBC’s Jim Cramer is one of those prognosticators I respect. So I was taken aback to discover his apparent inconsistency on his call on Nvidia Corporation (NVDA), a stock closely followed by a LOT of fans and detractors. For example, 117,000 accounts watch NVDA on StockTwits; 266,000 follow Apple (AAPL).
After Nvidia Corporation (NVDA) blew up to the tune of an 18.8% post-earnings loss, I eagerly listened to the Mad Money podcast Friday night to hear what Cramer had to say about the company’s earnings and stock. Cramer is/was a big fan of the stock. I was quite surprised to hear him do a victory lap in the wake of this disaster. NVDA’s blow-up validated a prescient warning he issued last month: he predicted that NVDA would miss on its next earnings report. His Trust even dumped its entire NVDA position.
I could not remember this warning on Cramer’s Mad Money show, so I did a search. The results appeared right at the top of the list because Thestreet.com made sure to reference Cramer’s October warning. He made this bearish call at an “Investment Bootcamp.” Cramer and his partner Jeff Marks were quite explicit: they sold NVDA ahead of an expected earnings miss but planned to add it right back into the portfolio after a big drop because of all the bullish secular trends surrounding NVDA. Cramer concluded the included video clip by saying: “I am not going to get “Facebooked” with this Nvidia…But we have to take action when we can, not when we have to.” This segment was a display of smart risk management and timely profit-taking. After all, Cramer was up $100 in the stock. Brilliant.
Given this sensible strategy, I was quite baffled to also find in my search that Cramer advised an investor during the Lightning Round of his special Veteran’s Day episode of Mad Money (Monday, November 12th) to buy some NVDA before and after the company’s earnings report. He did not reference his October prediction of post-earnings calamity.
“Yes[, this is a good time to start nibbling on Nvidia]. OK, Nvidia reports on Thursday. I think the quarter is going to be just OK, not great. I think your next quarter is going to have a product gap because they’ve got this Turing chip that is so smart that nobody’s running for it yet. But the answer is I agree. I’d buy a little before and then a little after. Do not make a big commitment because the stock is in free fall, but I like your thinking. Long term, it is the best in show.”
Fast forward to the 3:45 mark in the video below (notice how NVDA is even called “best-in-show”!)
Cramer’s lightning round: How investors should approach the ‘best-in-show’ stock of Nvidia from CNBC.
I credit Cramer for pointing out that NVDA was in free-fall at the time; that observation was his warning about the short-term risks in the stock. Still, failing to mention his core thesis of an earnings miss is confusing if not outright bizarre. The post-earnings reminder from TheStreet.com underlines what Cramer really thought about NVDA. It is possible I missed some other information that would tie up the loose ends, connect the dots, and bring understanding to this inconsistency. However, I cannot imagine what that information might be. Perhaps I am splitting hairs here. After all, Cramer dumped NVDA in the vicinity of $250/share. With the stock trading at $199 at the close on Nov 12th, it is possible Cramer already started to find the stock attractively priced for the planned reacquisition of stock. At that point, perhaps the market was already pricing in the earnings miss Cramer expected. The problem of course is that Cramer specifically said he expected earnings to be “OK” and not the big whiff he announced in October.
Regardless, I do think it makes sense to keep NVDA on the buy radar. The stock closed Friday at a 14-month low. The stock attempted a bounce from the gap down open but faded. If the stock closes above that intraday high of $171, I think it is worth the risk of a purchase with a tight stop below the intraday low of $161.61. On the downside, I see little support for the stock until $139.54 where NVDA began a sharp bounce from a June, 2017 sell-off. Below that point, support comes from filling a gap-up created in May, 2017 that ranged from $102.94 to $114.29. The stock could of course manage a dead cat bounce from current levels just because it is so far below its lower Bollinger Band (BB).
Source: FreeStockCharts.com
Be careful out there!
Full disclosure: no positions