Cramer Article Today Amateurish

While this article is fundamentally accurate, it subtly demeans Jim Cramer and disregards the true value of the calls of Jim Cramer. One must watch Jim closely to see the extreme and deep correctness of his calls. Since he will not recommend a short sale, when he makes his "five year" statement it should be parsed and studied carefully. Because he does not want to say what he is saying! He is speaking from his soul.

One cannot take just one day's statements and assume that remained his position, even for more than one day. He has exposed the "buy and hold" crowd, while making (I am convinced, although I have not been a trader for a number of years) lots of money with his buys and, more subtle, sells.

Thus, I say Carr's article is amateurish.



The Media Equation
Jim Cramer Retreats Along With the Dow

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new_york_times:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/20/business/media/20carr.html

By DAVID CARR
Published: October 19, 2008
Last Friday afternoon, Jim Cramer, CNBC’s star stock-picker, took time before taping his hourlong show, “Mad Money,” to talk to a visitor in the cable network’s headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Turning to the TV for Explanations and Answers (September 29, 2008)
Times Topics: James J. Cramer
After weeks of dreadful performance, it looked as if the Dow was finally giving investors a chance to exhale, up some 200 points during the day, though it later ended down 127 points. He chatted for a few minutes about how the market’s volatility was testing everyone, then he happened to glance at the computer screen in his office.
“We’re now down a hundred just since we started talking,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Wow, what a terrible market.”
So terrible that Jim Cramer, the happy warrior who cheered the Dow on his cable show surrounded by his menagerie of stuffed animals, sound effects and bobble-heads has traded the pom-poms for a votive candle, praying that the market finds a way to right itself — and maybe restore some of the luster to his chosen profession.
After years of selling the stock market as a reliable path to riches, Mr. Cramer came in for some brutal criticism recently from viewers and competitors.
In March, he said Bear Stearns “is not in trouble.” After Bear Stearns tipped over, he wrote in his New York magazine column that the bottom had finally come. “I feel the bear has been tamed, and the worst of the clawing is over,” he said. And on Sept. 15, he hosted his friend Robert Steel, chief executive of Wachovia, and suggested that its $10.71 share price was a bargain. Two weeks later, it was at $1.84.
On Oct. 6, he went on the “Today” show on NBC (which, like CNBC, is owned by NBC Universal) and said, “Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out of the stock market. Right now. This week,” he told a surprised Ann Curry. “I do not believe that you should risk those assets in the stock markets.”

The Dow dropped 18 percent in the week that followed. In a follow-up visit to “Today,” one of the viewers wrote in to accuse him of shouting fire in a crowded building. (His reply: “But what happens if there is a fire in the building?”) When the Dow zoomed up 936 points on the following Monday, he was accused of leaving his loyal viewers standing on the sidelines.
He says he has tried to make amends for Bear Stearns and Wachovia.
“I apologized to my viewers,” he said. “I apologized on the ‘Today’ show. It is a completely humbling market.” But he won’t apologize for his five-year comment.

“It was one of the greatest calls of my life,” he said, “and I’ve been pilloried for it.”

At a time when people are looking for heads to roll, the man who likes to tear the noggins off bobble-heads is a pretty ripe target.
Even with all the finger-pointing and funeral crepe, however, Jim Cramer still loves running his show and his mouth about the market, even if the market is not loving him back. But the game plan has changed along with the context.
Now a show that promises to “make you some money” spends time talking about defensive investing, capital preservation and — this really hurts — trying to find value in dividends, normally the refuge of conservative investors minding their purse strings.
He concedes that “when you don’t have a lot of things going right, the show becomes a different exercise.” So “Mad Money,” a loud, dirty pleasure for some of us during the run-up, has become like watching ESPN’s “SportsCenter” with every team stuck on a losing streak.
“I’m a home team guy and my home team is the bulls in my audience,” he said, the wear and tear of the past few weeks evident in his voice. “Right now, my team is losing.”
Oddly, however, Mr. Cramer isn’t. The brutal gyrations of the market have been good for ratings. Since Sept. 15, when Lehman Brothers tanked, Merrill Lynch was sold for parts and A.I.G. teetered, “Mad Money” has averaged 427,000 viewers, nearly double its average of 222,000 for the prior four weeks.
Because of his job as a television picker, Mr. Cramer, a former hedge fund savant with lots of money, has minimal exposure to this huge downside. (He owns stock in General Electric, the parent company of CNBC, and in TheStreet.com, but nothing else in order to avoid conflicts.)

But the market is a terrible place to be and it happens to be the place where Mr. Cramer day trades on his persona. He still appears on television screens at a camera-ready desk that is decorated by a herd of animal figurines. The bulls still outnumber the bears by two to one — there are a few pigs thrown in for good measure — but the man who sits behind it and rants knows better. He is not predicting that the bottom has arrived or will be here any time soon.

“Can we have the recession first before we decide that we’ve found the bottom?” he said. “I want to see the things that typically happen in a recession before we say it’s the bottom, and then I will be more positive.”
On Friday’s show, one of his featured stocks was Watsco, a heating and ventilation company that was paying out decent dividends as its stock sunk along with the rest of the market.
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E-mail: carr@nytimes.com