Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

Im new to the game. Dont know the darnest thing about investing. I figured I can learn some of the jargon by watching his CNBC show. I looked on the net and couldn't find any negetive comments about him.

Behind the wild antics is he a decent analyst?
How does his podcast, Action Alert PLus, and books compare to his show? Are they all solid too?

Thanks for the help.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

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I looked on the net and couldn't find any negetive comments about him.


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You didn't look very hard.

eastbay

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

You can do much better by investing in index funds.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

I tend to think of Cramer and investing in the same light as Phil Hellmuth and poker.

Both have done very well in the past in their professions and have made a lot of money for themselves.
Both make for good ratings on TV for their standout antics.
Both have made a lot of money outside of their professions by marketing themselves successfully.
Both are very appealing to people just starting out in the field.
Both are terrible at teaching others on how to do what they do.
Both are laughed at by people who know what they are doing.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

Read "Trading with the Enemy" by Nicholas Maier(sp?) for a candid look at JC

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

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I tend to think of Cramer and investing in the same light as Phil Hellmuth and poker.

Both have done very well in the past in their professions and have made a lot of money for themselves.
Both make for good ratings on TV for their standout antics.
Both have made a lot of money outside of their professions by marketing themselves successfully.
Both are very appealing to people just starting out in the field.
Both are terrible at teaching others on how to do what they do.
Both are laughed at by people who know what they are doing.

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Cramer has not come close to approaching, in the financial world, the stature Hellmuth has in the poker world.

You can do okay by going against Cramer. I know a couple guys that do that when Cramer has moved a stock. He doesn't take tv seriously. Some of his buy rec's are so ridiculous that it's obvious he did little or no research on them. There's even a website or two that track how crappy his picks are.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

sandbaggin has been

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

John,

I would recommend watching Cramer as good entertainment, if you are interested in the market.

However, with so many people watching the show, his picks are of little value if blindly followed. Also, the stuff he talks about on his show, he's already talked about on thestreet.com (and even more so, the pay site realmoney.com), so viewers taking his picks from TV are essentially the bagholders (if they don't know how to properly trade the reaction to his comments).

He has a few books, and they are good reading material. Reading them will also help you to understand how he thinks, based on his background, which is different than your typical investor.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

No way should you be watching Jim Cramer for your introduction to investing. Read a book like A Random Walk Down Wall Street, or Investing for Dummies. As another poster said, you are better off with index funds, at least while you're still learning.

The Hellmuth/Cramer comparison is decent, except for the fact that despite the antics and teaching ability, Hellmuth absolutely pwns at what he does.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

IMO he's a pretty good listen for overall market conditions and sector analysis, and even good for some ideas that I wouldn't have thought of. If you can use some of your own discretion, I think he's definitely worth listening to as an information source. You gotta realize though, that he's gonna air a show and recommend several stocks even if there really aren't any new good stocks worth recommending that day. Beginners snatching up every stock he recommends will lose.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

His book "Confessions of a street addict is fantastic and explains his whole history. He doesn't claim to be perfect or even close.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

Taking investment advise from a guy who bites the head off styrofoam bulls after BBQ-ing them while wearing a chef's must be +EV.

His value add to me is that I know he regularly talks to the hedgies, analysts, and sell side trading desks. I view him as a proxy for what those guys are thinking/doing.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

[ QUOTE ]
Im new to the game. Dont know the darnest thing about investing. I figured I can learn some of the jargon by watching his CNBC show. I looked on the net and couldn't find any negetive comments about him.

Behind the wild antics is he a decent analyst?
How does his podcast, Action Alert PLus, and books compare to his show? Are they all solid too?

Thanks for the help.

[/ QUOTE ]

Cramer did 30%+ a year, gross, at his Hedge Fund for 11.5 years or whatever. He was an amazing stock-picker, trader, and HF manager. You can learn tons by listening to him. I would NOT attempt to trade like him unless that is your style AND you are a 20-hours a day markets junkie.

He is a super-smart, downtoearth, nice guy in person.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

His antics got me back actively in the market for the first time since the bubble. That I give him credit for.

As for his stock picks, some worked out for me and some went south. For sure, you cannot listen blindly to him.
As he says "Buy and Homework".

Most frustratingly, he will often recommend buying a stock one week, and then selling it the very next week. Most folks, who are buy-and-hold investors, find this difficult to deal with. He proclaims himself very much NOT to be a buy-and-hold investor, which sets him apart from 90% of the advice in the books you'll read on the subject.

He recommends reading Investor's Business Daily, and since I've started doing that, I get 95% of my stock ideas there. It is momentum investing, to be sure, but if you also look at the fundamentals underneath the IBD100 stocks, you can find some jewels.

IMHO.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

I talked to a big-time money manager from Smith-Barney couple of months back and he told me JC is simply for poor people/housewives who have no idea about investing and want to make money just buy investing in one stock, which is the opposite of "diversification and asset allocation", praised by many others

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

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I talked to a big-time money manager from Smith-Barney couple of months back and he told me JC is simply for poor people/housewives who have no idea about investing and want to make money just buy investing in one stock, which is the opposite of "diversification and asset allocation", praised by many others

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JJC active and specifically tells people NOT To do that on almost every show I've seen [not many, but consistent.]
He tells people not to even think about this stuff without doing lots of research and buying at least 5 stocks. which is really the least a new investor can do.

I'd be interested if the money mgr you spoke to has ever managed a several hundred million dollar hedge fund to 30%+ returns annually a la Cramer. Jealousy is rampant on Wall St.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

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I talked to a big-time money manager from Smith-Barney couple of months back and he told me JC is simply for poor people/housewives who have no idea about investing and want to make money just buy investing in one stock, which is the opposite of "diversification and asset allocation", praised by many others

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JJC active and specifically tells people NOT To do that on almost every show I've seen [not many, but consistent.]
He tells people not to even think about this stuff without doing lots of research and buying at least 5 stocks. which is really the least a new investor can do.

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It sounds like you've never seen Mad Money. When he hypes a stock, he doesn't say to go out and buy 4 others in the same sector. He goes on a rant about a specific stock.

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I'd be interested if the money mgr you spoke to has ever managed a several hundred million dollar hedge fund to 30%+ returns annually a la Cramer. Jealousy is rampant on Wall St.

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That's in the past. And it has very little to do with the hyping he does on tv. Some of the crap he hypes would never find it's way into the funds he used to run.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

Pig,

Jim recommends each person starting out have a portfolio of 5 stocks and do an hour of research on each per week. It is not to buy 4 other random stocks in a sector.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

Only the beginning of the show are useful, where he did his research. When the housewives call in later at the show to ask for an opinion for a single company's stock then that's when Cramer goes crazy, no?

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

I like him.

His book is excellent, IMO.

One big difference--in his book he talks about opportunities in say 100Million small cap stocks. And usually he doesn't talk about them much on his show because they're too small. He talks a lot about big cap stocks and they're less profitable and also heavily studied by the biggies on Wall Street.

But it's like a lot of things. Some of the things he says makes sense. Like I did buy Google after he talked about high Google's growth rate was v. its P/E. But even though he is constantly pushing SEARS--I just can't see it. It's P/E is high. And Sears, quite frankly, still sucks. Maybe I'm wrong. Jim Cramer thinks Sears is the next Berkshire Hathaway and his friend Eddie Lambert the next Warren Buffet. Ya. Maybe. But I don't see the fundamentals in SEARS. If it dropped 50% in price--I'd buy it though.

He also is compared on his picks where someone calls and he says "buy" or "sell". Some sites compare his picks to what a wonder monkey might do and Cramer sometimes wins and sometimes doesn't.

I don't put most of his recommendations in the same category as stocks he might deem a triple buy or a stock he pushes quite hard (like Sears, Google, Goldman-Sachs).

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

No serious investor watches this show unless they are looking for sell signals. He's good entertainment but light on facts - he rarely talks about valuation multiples or insightful industry facts.

Remember the addage - "Those who can, do - those who can't, teach"

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

I only watched Cramer's Mad Money once, but I can
say that his show helped one of my positions a lot.
I had bought ESLR at ~$6 Two weeks later, Cramer
recommends it on his show, and the stock shoots up
to like $9 or $10 and Im thinking awesome, Im already
at my target, so I sold. The stock shot up all the
way to $17, so unfortunately I missed out. Its hard
to know how much was Cramer and how much was the
value of the stock and oil prices, but either way after
he recommended it, it shot up. Of course, 6 months
later it started to drop, and now sits at ~$8.60

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

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No serious investor watches this show unless they are looking for sell signals. He's good entertainment but light on facts - he rarely talks about valuation multiples or insightful industry facts.

Remember the addage - "Those who can, do - those who can't, teach"

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So you've beaten his audited 30%+ track record? Wow, that's pretty awesome.

"Those who can't teach, criticize."

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

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Remember the addage - "Those who can, do - those who can't, teach"

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i think you missed the whole, 30+%/year over 12 years while managing his hedge fund....i'd say that qualifies as someone who "can"....

cramers show can be very helpful for noobs so long as they dont hang on his every pick and actually do some research before they buy his picks....the show is more of a tool to give you ideas, not necessarily to choose your portfolio....

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

he shouts too much

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

I don't buy his self-proclaimed track record.

BTW, if you could do 12-15% per year you could easily be managing $$$ billions.

He's like the no-money down real estate guys -- selling the book/seminar because you really can't make money following their advice.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

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BTW, if you could do 12-15% per year you could easily be managing $$$ billions.

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This sin't exactly true. Some things you do to make greater risk-adjusted returns might not translate to a larger scale. Diseconomies of scale.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

Correct - I'll adjust - If you can make 12-15% on an ever increasing portfolio, people will throw money at you and you be managing billions.

BTW, there are many examples of this in hedge fund world and they aren't Mr. Cramer.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

Here is the thing you have to remember about him. He has a 1 hour TV show 5 days a week. He has to fill that time somehow so he spends it picking stocks and going over other peoples picks that they call in with.

Of course if you take every 1 of his picks and add up all the gains and losses it isn't going to be as good as if you had just gone with a core 5-10 stocks. If you add up all 1000 stocks you basically are the market so your results will match what the market is doing.

You need to find the stocks that he really loves and then investigate them. If you don't really love it too for whatever reason then don't buy it. If you do really love it then go ahead and buy. But don't just take any old stock just because he said to buy it and buy it. He has to fill that air time with something and it is picking stocks...so find the best ones and go with those.


Also get as much info as you can and read and learn from others too. Inform yourself as much as possible.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

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I don't buy his self-proclaimed track record.

BTW, if you could do 12-15% per year you could easily be managing $$$ billions.

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a) You're a fool.
b) It's not self-proclaimed, it was audited by independent accounts and verified by his third party administrator when he ran Cramer Berkowitz.
c) He was running hundreds of millions of dollars. Believe it or not, that was a ton of money 5+ years ago for a single L/S hedge fund.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

I don't know about all of this, but a buddy of mine watched his show or read on one of his website about google in early 2005. He dropped in 100K to google at $97 a share ( or something like that). Then my friend told me about it and I bought in at $104 a share. I dropped 40k in. Left it in there and sold at $364 a share. Sold it a few months ago so for a year, that was a GREAT turn around. IMHO

Also here lately, I have been following my same buddy in some penny stocks. It's hit or miss but I have done 50k profit in one week. Also, I have loss 30k in one week. Doesn't matter because that's all profit and I took out what I wanted from my "Google money".

google is my 401k - between the stock and adsense money, I love GOOGLE!!!

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

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No serious investor watches this show unless they are looking for sell signals. He's good entertainment but light on facts - he rarely talks about valuation multiples or insightful industry facts.

Remember the addage - "Those who can, do - those who can't, teach"

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So you've beaten his audited 30%+ track record? Wow, that's pretty awesome.

"Those who can't teach, criticize."

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I have dealt with the guy. I would guess, and its only a guess that this is a half truth...maybe a subset of his fund did this and it is audited in such a fashion he can point at it. I always thought he mainly played the new issue game....

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

He seems like a bright guy, and he has tons of experience in the stock market. His TV show is ENTERTAINMENT though.

I watch his show occasionally, and sometimes if gives me interesting ideas to pursue further on my own. For example he did a segment on First Cash Financial Services once (FCFS) and thoroughly explained what he liked about the company, its valuations, etc.... It made sense to me, so I did my own research and a few weeks later I decided to take a position in the stock. But there are plenty of his "recommendations" that I don't agree with/ don't even bother researching.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

Jim Cramer is a genius. But you cannot blindly follow his picks. New investors should use actively managed funds from managers with great track records that beat the market. Cramer throws around alot of ideas that are subpar you've gotta be able to relate his ideas with your knowledge of the market and the opinion of other good analysts (if you don't work on the street).

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

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No serious investor watches this show unless they are looking for sell signals. He's good entertainment but light on facts - he rarely talks about valuation multiples or insightful industry facts.

Remember the addage - "Those who can, do - those who can't, teach"

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this is the dumbest thing i've ever heard. 24% a year. and YOU DO REALIZE he has to put on an entertaining show each night (meaning new ideas, many more new ideas than he'd probably like to, as there are obviously stocks he likes more than others, - ie a top 10) ... Why do you hate on Cramer?

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New investors should use actively managed funds from managers with great track records that beat the market.

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A little part of me died while reading this.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

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New investors should use actively managed funds from managers with great track records that beat the market.

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No they shouldn't.

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

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New investors should use actively managed funds from managers with great track records that beat the market.

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A little part of me died while reading this.

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Why?

granted I doubt there are very many funds that meet this description, but if a company has a long(say 70 year) history of beating the s&p by 1% annually, then it's both believable and worth a lot over time.

My dad initially bought some index when he both retired from Monsanto and sold the farm. Sounded like the smart move to me. Later a broker came to the door and he agreed to listen. The broker showed a conservative fund with low turnover that tried to beat the market by a small %, especially during downturns. It had a long history of doing this well.

Is your objection simply that a new investor will not be able to evaluate a fund effectively, or that this is actually a bad strategy?

Thanks,
John

Re: Your Opinions About Jim Cramer
 

Cramer is definitely better than his old running mate Larry Kudlow. Goldilocks Goldilocks Goldilocks