Jim Cramer’s Stunning Meme Stock Reversal—What Changed in 2025?

Wall Street's loudest cheerleader just flipped the script. Jim Cramer—once the meme-stock circus's reluctant ringmaster—now embraces the very assets he mocked. Is this a late-stage epiphany or just another ratings play?

From ridicule to rally cry: Cramer's pivot shocks markets

The CNBC host's sudden U-turn on speculative trades reeks of either genius timing or desperate relevance-seeking. His newfound love for 'degenerate' assets coincides perfectly with crypto's resurgence—how convenient.

Memo to Cramer: next time try being early rather than fashionably late. The real meme was your original take all along.

Cramer calls out short sellers over Kohl’s stock surge

Let’s be clear. Jim wasn’t praising Kohl’s actual business. He straight-up said that the company’s partnerships with Sephora or Amazon weren’t driving the stock’s movement. Instead, he argued that the stock was being bought because of how heavily it was shorted.

According to Jim, this was purely a momentum play built around short interest. He pointed out that Kohl’s had been discussed on the WallStreetBets subreddit, the same place that sparked the infamous 2021 short squeeze. He said the playbook looked identical.

Back in 2021, the GameStop squeeze cost hedge funds close to $20 billion, driven by retail traders banding together online to force short sellers into panic-buying shares to close their positions.

And here’s the weirdest part: Jim used to hate this kind of stuff. He was one of the loudest voices calling out meme stocks as hype machines. He regularly said names like GameStop and AMC were being driven by emotion, not numbers. He dismissed the POTUS’ TRUMP Media & Technology Group (DJT) as “overvalued” and said the moves weren’t backed by revenue or profits.

Just a few years ago, Jim sided with the short sellers. He tried hard to talk down retail investor excitement during the GameStop frenzy. His 2021 take? Sell GameStop at $400. That got him roasted so badly online that a new meme was born: Inverse Cramer.

Retail traders started doing the exact opposite of what he recommended. It became a whole thing. He was mocked all over Reddit, especially in the r/WallStreetBets community, for being the poster child of outdated investment thinking.

So for him to now say hedge funds should “cover and move on” feels like a full reversal. He believes the short position doesn’t match Kohl’s fundamentals, or retail power. There’s debt, and sales are slipping, but the company isn’t falling apart. And that’s his issue. He doesn’t think the target makes sense if you’re betting on total collapse.

Jim also called out hedge funds directly, saying they should’ve closed their shorts earlier this year when the stock dipped after Wall Street panicked about President Donald Trump’s new tariffs. That spring sell-off, according to him, was the time to exit. Not now.

“In the end, the short sellers have the wrong target,” Jim said. “A company with declining sales and a lot of debt, but not one that’s about to fall apart, which is what you need if you were still shorting Kohl’s down here in the single digits.”

KEY Difference Wire: the secret tool crypto projects use to get guaranteed media coverage