They call this guy “Downtown” Josh Brown for some strange reason. I’ve been watching CNBC almost religiously since some time before 2019 and he’s been nothing but wrong. Although he speaks truth, his market calls are so awful that he should have been picked up by Fox Business by now. CNBC, and its parent company, NBC Universal, obviously isn’t about performance. More like RAR, ratings above replacement, if that’s a metric.
Down Josh Brown strongly recommended going long Amazon (AMZN) above 3,500 and basically every week thereafter until it fell below, maybe, 2,800; The Carlyle Group (CG) above 50 and basically every week thereafter until it fell below, maybe 38; and ChargePoint (CHPT) above 35. Currently, AMZN is trading at a back split adjusted 2,720 but fell as low as 1,628, CG is trading at 29.86 but fell as low as 24.59, and CHPT is trading at 7.275, which is near its 52-week low of 7.21. If you invested $100,000 equally between those three stocks based on his recommendation, they would have been worth about $38,800 at their lows, or -61.2%. As of today, it would have been worth about $52,735, or -47.3%. WTF. I stupidly chose to follow two of those recommendations and built a small dollar cost averaged position in CG and CHPT as they kept falling in 2022. I’m still holding CHPT.
Understanding that being a hired market commentator required to, pretty much, make a stock pick per segment is a tough job, it’s a job, nonetheless. One that damn well should be performance based. Rather than make strong recommendations, he could have said that it wasn’t the time to buy them just yet or anything in between. Even if those stocks recover their pandemic-highs, trading/investing is about timing. That’s something he knows very well. Down Josh Brown completely missed the market correction.
I’m not bitter. My portfolio is up 13% from its 2022 low, up 9% YTD, and I’m only down <$100 in CHPT now with it being at its all-time lows. But THERE SHOULD BE ACCOUNTABILITY. This is America, or was. It’s not like CNBC doesn’t fire commentators. It rightfully got rid of O’Liar (Kevin O’Leary) soon after the FTX fall-out and Tiffany McGhee, a black women on-boarded in the thick of COVID-19. O’Liar aside, I’d bet McGhee’s recommendations have fared better than Down Josh Brown’s, the so-called reformed broker.
Update (8/19/2023): On last night’s episode of Taking Stock, which aired on CNBC in the 6PM EDT time slot, co-host Down Josh Brown introduced himself as the Long Island Warren Buffett. Wow. WTF. That guy is nothing like him. Mr. Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway bought AMZN before the COVID-19 era. Not when it was at its all-time highs. Jim Cramer on Mad Money this past week even called CHPT, Down Josh Brown’s other pick, a commodity and strongly recommended against buying it in response to a caller.
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