Here's a sentence you probably didn't expect to read: doing the exact opposite of what Jim Cramer recommends was the winning investment strategy of 2025, handily beating the stock picks of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Yes, really. The "Inverse Cramer" approach delivered a 60% return this year, while Pelosi's portfolio gained about 25%, according to Autopilot, a financial platform that lets investors mirror the trades of famous market personalities.
The Dethroning of a Stock Picking Queen
Pelosi has become something of a celebrity in investing circles thanks to the regular disclosure of stock trades made by her husband, Paul Pelosi. Those transactions, which must be reported under congressional rules, have historically beaten the market with impressive consistency.
But 2025 wasn't her year. "The Queen has been dethroned. Inverse Cramer officially beats out Pelosi for the top portfolio on Autopilot," announced the account that tracks Pelosi's stock picks.
UnusualWhales, which monitors political stock transactions, pegged Pelosi's 2025 gains at 20.1%, ranking her just 28th among Congress members. "You just can't make this up. Cramer's Inverse portfolio beat Nancy Pelosi's portfolio in 2025," the tracking service tweeted.
What Exactly Is Inverse Cramer?
The concept is delightfully simple: take whatever the CNBC "Mad Money" host says to do, then do the opposite. Cramer appears on television five days a week, offering stock opinions during trading hours and on his after-market show. He's prolific on social media too, making his recommendations numerous enough that tracking services have emerged to monitor them all.
The strategy gained enough attention that Tuttle Capital actually launched ETFs in October 2022 to track both Cramer's picks and inverse positions. The experiment didn't last long. The long Cramer ETF shut down in September 2023, with the Inverse Cramer version following in February 2024.
"We started the fund in order to point out the danger of following TV stockpickers, Jim Cramer specifically, and the total lack of accountability," Tuttle Capital CEO Matthew Tuttle previously told MarketDash.
Tuttle said the mission was accomplished, "but retail investors are more focused on volatile products" and interest fizzled. "A lot of the success or failure of an ETF is timing and the timing with what has happened with the Magnificent 7 didn't work out."
He used the analogy of "a broken clock is right twice a day," suggesting Cramer's bullish calls on Magnificent 7 stocks happened to be correct during that period.