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Jim Cramer


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Jim Cramer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

James J. Cramer


Born February 10, 1955 (1955-02-10) (age 52)[1]
Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation Television personality
Author
James J. "Jim" Cramer (born February 10, 1955[2] in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania) is an American television personality, former hedge fund manager, and best-selling author. In 2007, NewsBios.com named him one of the 100 most influential business journalists in the United States.

Cramer is host of CNBC's Mad Money and co-founder of TheStreet.com. According to the January 27, 2007 episode of High Net Worth on CNBC, Cramer claimed to have a net worth of over $100 million. He currently resides in Summit, New Jersey. His estate includes a farm and considers himself a gentleman farmer.

Contents
1 Early years
2 Career
2.1 Journalist
2.2 Lawyer
2.3 Investor
2.4 TheStreet.com
2.5 Mad Money
2.6 Other television and radio shows
2.7 Cameos and Other Appearances
3 Controversy
3.1 Fox News Channel Lawsuit
3.2 Trading With The Enemy
3.3 SEC Subpoena
3.4 Market Manipulation: TheStreet.com Interview
4 Criticism
5 Bibliography
6 References
7 External links



Early years
[3] He grew up in the town of Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia. One of his first jobs was selling ice cream at Veterans Stadium during Philadelphia Phillies games. Cramer went to Springfield Township High School in Montgomery County.

Cramer graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1977 where he was also president of the Harvard Crimson. At this point in his life, Cramer was a staunch leftist, naming his plan to revitalize the Crimson after Lenin's "What Is To Be Done?".[4]


Career

Journalist
After college, following a two-month tenure as the key operator at Congressional Quarterly, he worked as a journalist at the Tallahassee Democrat in Tallahassee, Florida. Living almost next door to the Chi Omega sorority house and Florida State University, he was one of the first on the scene after serial killer Ted Bundy attacked four women, killing two of them in 1978.[citation needed] After Tallahassee, he worked at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner as a spot news reporter, covering "basically anyone who died violently in California."[5] While he was covering a shooting in San Diego for the Examiner, a burglar cleaned out both his bungalow in L.A., and his checking account. For the next nine months, he lived mostly out of his car, with a pistol and hatchet for protection.[6]


Lawyer
Following this experience, Cramer moved in with his sister in Greenwich Village[citation needed]. His sister was studying to be a lawyer and encouraged Cramer to become a prosecutor. Cramer was one of the earliest reporters at American Lawyer magazine, where he worked for founder Steven Brill[7]. Cramer later earned a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School.[8]). After graduating in 1984, Cramer's plans to become a prosecutor were dashed when he was denied employment with the Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, headed at the time by Rudy Giuliani, because his law school grades were deemed not good enough.[9]


Investor
Cramer obtained employment in 1984 as a stock broker in Goldman Sachs' Sales & Trading department. Cramer's success in this position led him to found his own hedge fund, Cramer & Co. (later Cramer, Berkowitz, & Co.) in 1987. The fund operated out of the offices of hedge fund pioneer Michael Steinhardt's Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Co., and early investors included Eliot Spitzer (a Harvard classmate), Steven Brill, and Martin Peretz.[1] A year later, Cramer married Karen Backfisch-Olufsen, who was a trader with Steinhardt's firm. More recently, Cramer has been a contributor to New York magazine since 2000.[10] He is also an occasional contributor to Dime magazine.[11] Cramer retired from his hedge fund in 2001. It was taken over by his former partner Jeff Berkowitz.


TheStreet.com
In 1996 Cramer co-founded TheStreet.com with The New Republic editor Martin Peretz, one of his hedge fund's original clients. Cramer later had a falling out with Peretz over business matters.[12] Cramer is currently a market commentator and adviser to the TheStreet.com, as well as its largest shareholder. Cramer also manages a charitable trust stock portfolio which is tied to TheStreet.com through a subscription service called the Action Alerts PLUS Portfolio.


Mad Money
Main article: Mad Money
Cramer now has his own television show on CNBC, Mad Money with Jim Cramer, which features his rapid-fire opinions on stocks suggested by callers. Mad Money is also well known for over-the-top antics such as Cramer throwing chairs, throwing his latest book whenever a caller mentions it, humorous sound effects, and for the catch-phrase "Booyah".


Cramer frequently takes the show on the road to various U.S. colleges. The name of the show is a play on Cramer's mental condition. Mad Money continues to be one of CNBC's most highly rated shows.[13]

Other television and radio shows
After being a frequent guest commentator on CNBC in the late 1990s, Cramer co-hosted CNBC shows America Now and Kudlow & Cramer with Lawrence Kudlow in the early 2000s. Kudlow and Cramer split when Kudlow called Cramer 'sweet potato bull macho' on the air on October 17, 2002.

Cramer hosted a one-hour radio show, "Jim Cramer's Real Money," until December 2006. The show was similar to his Mad Money TV show. He also guest hosted in the slot caused by the cancellation of Imus in the Morning (MSNBC and WFAN/Westwood One) in May 2007.


Cameos and Other Appearances
This article does not cite any references or sources. (June 2007)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

60 Minutes interview
On November 13, 2005, Dan Rather did a sit-down interview with Cramer on 60 Minutes. Among the topics of discussion were Cramer's past at his fund (including footage of Cramer trading during the 90s at his New York offices), his violent temper while at the fund, and what finally led him to come to his senses and "calm down". Footage of Cramer at his family home with his daughters and wife was also included. On November 15, 2005, Jim mentioned on his program that he received hundreds and hundreds of e-mails after his 60 Minutes interview. This report was taped before Cramer's radio show, Smart Money with Jim Cramer moved to WOR and became syndicated under the CBS Radio banner.

Arrested Development
In 2005, Cramer appeared as himself in two episodes of the now-defunct FOX TV series Arrested Development. He appeared to first announce that he had upgraded Bluth Company stock to a "Don't Buy" from a "Triple Sell", and then to say that the stock was not a "Don't Buy" anymore, but a "Risky".

Cramer has also made appearances on NBC's Today, NBC Nightly News, Live with Regis and Kelly, ESPN Classic's Cheap Seats, NBC's Late Night With Conan O'Brien, Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Jimmy Kimmel Live.


Controversy

Fox News Channel Lawsuit
In 2000, Cramer settled a lawsuit with Fox News Channel in which Fox had claimed Cramer reneged on a deal to produce a show for them. Their conflict began when Fox complained that Cramer promoted TheStreet.com's stock on the air.[14]


Trading With The Enemy
In 2002, Nicholas Maier, a former trader at Cramer's hedge fund, released the book, Trading With The Enemy, about his time at Cramer, Berkowitz & Co. In the book, Maier alleged that Cramer and the hedge fund engaged in illegal trading practices. Maier also stated that Cramer was the subject of an SEC investigation. Cramer denied the allegations and threatened to sue the publisher for libel. The publisher of the book quickly destroyed 4000 copies of the original release, and re-released it after editing out 4 pages that were possibly libelous.[15]


SEC Subpoena
In February 2006, an SEC investigation into allegations of collusion between short-sellers and a stock research firm led to the serving of subpoenas to TheStreet.com and Cramer, as well as journalists for Dow Jones and Marketwatch.com. Cramer disclosed the subpoena on his Mad Money television show, holding it up to the camera with the word "Bull" handwritten on it.[16] Both Cramer and TheStreet.com refused to comply with the SEC's demands for communications between journalists and their sources, and First Amendment advocates publicly criticized the SEC move. Soon after, the SEC later stated it would not enforce the subpoena, and the investigation of the stock research firm was dropped a year later. In April 2006, the SEC announced a new policy on subpoenaing journalists, saying it would avoid issuing subpoenas "that might impair the news gathering and reporting functions." Any subpoena issued to a journalist must now be approved by the SEC's enforcement director.[17]

The allegations had been raised publicly and in a lawsuit against Gradient by Overstock.com chief executive Patrick M. Byrne. In May 2007, it was revealed that the SEC had subpoenaed Byrne in May 2006, in connection with an investigation of the company.[18]


Market Manipulation: TheStreet.com Interview
In March 2007, a December 2006 interview from TheStreet.com's "Wall Street Confidential" webcast stirred controversy after it appeared on YouTube.com. In the video, Cramer described activities used by hedge fund managers to manipulate stock prices; some illegal and some debatably legal.[19] He described how he could push stocks higher or lower with as little as $5 million in capital when he was running his hedge fund. Cramer said, "A lot of times when I was short, I would create a level of activity beforehand that would drive the futures." He also encouraged hedge funds to engage in this type of activity because it is "a very quick way to make money." Cramer claimed that everything he did was legal, but that illegal activity is common in the hedge fund industry. He also stated that some hedge fund managers spread false rumors to drive a stock down: " ...it's important to create a new truth, to develop a fiction."[20] Cramer said one strategy to keep a stock price down is to spread negative rumors to reporters he described as "the Pisanis of the world". "You have to use these guys," said Cramer. He also discussed getting "the bozo reporter from The Wall Street Journal" to publish a negative article.[21] Cramer said this practice, although illegal, is easy to do "because the SEC doesn't understand it."[22] [23]


Criticism
In January 2006, Joseph Nocera opined that the "people who are watching [Mad Money] and following [Cramer's] advice are fools." [2]
In February 2007, Henry Blodget -- himself indicted for civil securities fraud in 2002 and banned for life from the securities industry -- criticized Cramer for overstating his abilities as a market forecaster, noting that in 2006 Cramer's suggested portfolio lost money "despite nearly every major equity market on earth being up between about 15 percent and 30 percent." [24]
In March 2007, a review by CXO Advisory showed that Cramer's stock picks have done worse than the market averages.[25]
In March 2007, Joseph Parnes, a noted short seller featured in Barron's, refuted positions by Cramer on CNBC, and has shown to his audience in his publication, Shortex, that using positions contrary to Cramer's recommendations is actually more advantageous.
In April 2007, Credit Bubble Stocks criticized Cramer because of a speech he gave on February 29, 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble, recommending a number of speculative stocks that ultimately fell in value substantially with some even becoming worthless. [26]
In August 2007, Cramer called for the Federal Reserve to support hedge funds that were losing money in the Subprime mortgage financial crisis, prompting Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator for the Financial Times, to accuse Cramer of advocating an offensive and catastrophic "socialism for capitalists". [27] However, within weeks the Fed had lowered the short term interest discount rate by 0.5% as Cramer had requested on his Stop Trading segment.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/22114444 Please watch the video from 3:00 minute.

Bibliography
Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer) ISBN 978-1416558859
Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich ISBN 1-4165-3790-2
Jim Cramer's Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World ISBN 0-7432-2489-2
Confessions of a Street Addict ISBN 0-7432-2487-6
You Got Screwed! Why Wall Street Tanked and How You Can Prosper ISBN 0-7432-4690-X

References
^ http://www.seekingalpha.com/article/54345-jim-cramer-s-stop-trading-11-14-07-don-t-nix-nyx
^ http://www.seekingalpha.com/article/54345-jim-cramer-s-stop-trading-11-14-07-don-t-nix-nyx
^ Feinberg, Andrew. "Cover Boy Cramer", The Money Monster Web Log, The Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc., 2005-10-24. Retrieved on [[2007-06-14]].
^ Tim Russert Show, July 14, 2007.
^ Tim Russert Show, July 14, 2007.
^ Cramer, James J. (2002). Confessions of a Street Addict. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, pp. 4-6. ISBN 0-7432-2487-6.
^ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE3D71E3AF937A15750C0A96F948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
^ Tim Russert Show, July 14, 2007.
^ Tim Russert Show, July 14, 2007.
^ "Archives: James J. Cramer". nymag.com. Retrieved on 2007-04-13.
^ "Archives: James J. Cramer". time.com. Retrieved on 2007-04-17.
^ The Fortune Tellers, p.146, Howard Kurtz, 2000, The Free Press books
^ Cramer, James J.. Cramer vs. Cramer. New York Magazine. New York Magazine Holdings LLC. Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
^ Associated Press/USA Today (December 4, 2000). Jim Cramer Quits Hedge Fund.
^ Joyce, Erin. "TheStreet.com's Cramer vs. Maier, Round II", internetnews.com, Jupitermedia Corporation, 2002-05-13. Retrieved on 2007-02-18.
^ Matthew Goldstein, TheStreet.com (February 27, 2006). TheStreet.com, Cramer Get Subpoenas in Gradient Probe.
^ Marcy Gordon, Associated Press (February 14, 2007). SEC Ends Probe of Gradient.
^ New York Post (May 11,2007). Company Byrne-d on Probe Report.
^ Henry Bloget, Slate (March 22, 2007). Cramer vs. Cramer: Will his crazy confession destroy his career?.
^ Thomas Kostigen, MarketWatch.com (March 23, 2007). Jim Cramer's big mouth: His revelations only confirm what dupes average investors are.
^ Roddy Boyd, The New York Post (March 21, 2007). Cramer's Big Mouth: Clip Could Run Afoul of CNBC.
^ Matt Krantz, USA Today (March 24,2007). CNBC's Cramer boasts of manipulating markets.
^ Hamilton, Dane (2007-03-20). Jim Cramer draws fire over manipulation comments. Retrieved on 2007-03-20.
^ Blodget, Henry (2007-01-29). Pay No Attention to That Crazy Man on TV. Slate. The Washington Post Company. Retrieved on 2007-02-18.
^ LeCompte, Steve (2007-03-17). Jim Cramer Deconstructed. Retrieved on 2007-03-17.
^ James J Cramer, Mad Money Indeed. Retrieved on 2007-10-04.
^ Wolf, Martin (2007-08-17). Fear makes a welcome return. Retrieved on 2007-8-17.
Kurtz, Howard [September 2000]. The Fortune Tellers: Inside Wall Street's Game of Money, Media, and Manipulation. New York NY: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0684-86879-2.
Jim Cramer biography on CNBC.com
In the Money, continued, Balance Sheet, article about Cramer and other law alumni, from the online Harvard Law Bulletin
"Cramer Reveals a Bit Too Much", Roddy Boyd, New York Post, March 20, 2007

External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
James CramerTheStreet.com, Cramer's investment website.
Beat The Street, Cramer's stock market game site.
Jim Cramer at the Internet Movie Database
Track Mad Money Recommendations
Betting on the Market - PBS Frontline interview with Jim Cramer
The New Yorker New Yorker critic's article by Nancy Franklin
Mad Money TV Show site
To The Moon
Maxim: Ask Jim Cramer, Maxim's interview with Cramer, and Top 2 Chinese Stocks Right Now
Jim Cramer on The Colbert Report,

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Cramer"
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This page was last modified 05:32, 15 December 2007.
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Sat Dec 15, 2007 1:29 pm


doug



Joined: 22 Nov 2002
Posts: 12427
Location: chapel hill, n.c. Extra1/5/2007 4:55 PM ET
Jim Cramer: Worth the boo-yah?
Ignore the on-air antics; the market maven's magazine columns offer authentic advice investors can take to the bank.

On CNBC, he is cable television's Mr. Hyde, a shrill, hyperactive tsunami of opinions about stocks. A June MarketWatch column critical of his shenanigans sparked a blizzard of responses, with reader e-mail fairly evenly divided, underscoring the notion that people, quite clearly, love or hate Cramer.

In his Jekyll incarnation, Cramer is the restrained, informative author of "The Bottom Line" column that runs in New York magazine. When you read one of his pieces on investing, the word that jumps out is "authentic." He sure knows his stuff.

The difference between him and a lot of the so-called media experts -- many of whom regularly chat on CNBC, by the way -- is that he offers a rare, practical perspective.

Any schnook can go on TV and crow about his occasional stock-market victories. What's more instructive for viewers is hearing the war stories of an investor who has rebounded after losing money. It's similar to a boxer who gets knocked down but comes back and heroically wins a bout. Cramer can take a punch.

Cramer, a Philadelphia native who graduated from Harvard in 1977, started his career as a newspaper journalist. He subsequently joined Goldman Sachs (GS, news, msgs) in 1984 and left three years later to launch a hedge fund.

"It was to be the beginning of a shrewd career on Wall Street where he compounded at (a) 24% return after all fees for the next 15 years," as Cramer's New York magazine biography points out.

His wealthy clients got their money's worth: Cramer said in a 2005 interview that he got to the office by 4 a.m. Further, he sometimes made as many as 250 trades a day.

Cramer went on to co-found TheStreet.com (TSCM, news, msgs) and continues to write for the Web site. But likely because those stories are geared for an online audience, they tend not to have the same long-term view as his mostly monthly pieces in New York.

Among magazine business journalists, perhaps only Allan Sloan of Newsweek can rival Cramer. On that score, it's a mystery why Time, which has been fortifying its columnist ranks, hasn't poached Cramer already. (Or perhaps it's simply that Cramer's allegiance is an example of the loyalty that New York writers reserve for its editor, Adam Moss).

An advocate for individual investors
In his magazine writing, Cramer plays the role of an advocate for the individual investor and isn't reluctant to offer advice.

He predicts, for instance, in his Jan. 8 magazine piece that such companies as U.S. Steel (X, news, msgs), Alcoa (AA, news, msgs), Colgate-Palmolive (CL, news, msgs) and Yahoo (YHOO, news, msgs) could be taken over this year "by overseas entities taking advantage of a declining greenback."

In the same column, he urged his readers to "take the shotgun approach and buy your favorites among the above candidates for acquisition. But I think even better is the rifle approach. Pick, to extend the metaphor, the original arms merchants for all of these deals: the investment banks." The teams at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley (MS, news, msgs) and other companies, he wrote, "will all get fat vigs from these deals."

Video on MSN: Cramer's CEOs who must go
The host of CNBC's "Mad Money" updates his Hall of Shame list of executives who he says could benefit their companies and shareholders by walking out the door. Watch the video.
He doesn't shy away from expressing strong opinions about powerful institutions.

Last April, he wrote of The New York Times (NYT, news, msgs): "One could be tempted to write off the whole New York Times as a similar dinosaur. If all we care about is what we want to customize, who needs all the other filler? Why not preselect everything we need from the Times via Google (GOOG, news, msgs) and be done with the paper entirely?"

Nobody is safe from Cramer's acidic perspective.

In February 2006, Cramer opined: "Some businesses are so reprehensible, so impossibly exploitative that they simply must be bought. Okay, that may not sound like sage investment advice, but given the Bush administration's wanton embrace of corporate interests, investing in a portfolio of companies you couldn't stand to work for without having a camp-guard mentality, a collection of stocks so motley in morals on the face of it, might be a solid bet right now. In a country where the top 1% of households controls 57.5% of corporate wealth, if you aren't thinking about ways to profit from our squeezed middle class, if you are still stuck in the mindless chasm of politically correct investing, you could be leaving fortunes on the table."

Yes, Cramer's "Mad Money" TV show is a monster hit. But he doesn't need the shows' bells and whistles to make a point as a magazine columnist. He's sharp enough when he sticks to using words alone.

That's the real bottom line about Jim Cramer.

This article was reported and written by Jon Friedman for MarketWatch.

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