teplitsa said:there is a little blurb on thestreet.com about madmoney. It says that Cramer has recommended 2000 stocks since the show started almost a year ago. I think he is well on his way recommending every traded stock over the next few years.


Jim Cramer is food for lemmings

can the public invest in his trust?

Here is the latest Cramer analysis:

http://biz.yahoo.com/usat/060403/13486508.html

--Galabar

I watched his show a few times because a friend of mine STRONGLY recommended it. I didn't find it impressive or worth recommending.

I am not too impressed with this guy.

Anakin Skywalker

The facts are that people act on his recommendations and you can see it in the charts. I try to watch him as much as possible to make sure my stocks don't get caught up in his negative tirades that can last weeks and really drain a stock. Or if they do on the positive side, I'll know to take the quick profit.

You can also usually see a little run up before his rec, which I am guessing is due to leaks from his staff researching for him. Isn't there some sort of securities law that prohibits this? I know people can freely recommend whatever they want, but when it gets to the point that he knows his recommendations will move the stock and people take advantage of it ahead of time, that is practically insider trading. I'm sure it happens all the time internally at the research firms, but it seems bold for such a publicly televised show. As long as he schmoozes Spitzer and pals, I guess he won't be prosecuted though.

I've done pretty well with a couple of his picks, small cap co's that were in sectors I was interested in already.

I've done even better when Cramer yells "buy,buy,buy" on a stock I already own.

Bottom line, the guy knows his stuff, is intelligent, but is not perfect. He makes mistakes same as the best traders do.

Sure wish he'd lay off the crystal meth before he does a show, though.


PS - Cramer recommended in New York magazine back in January that people would be better off putting their money in a 4.5% MMA in 2006

I too was intrigued by this man and his yelling. I am a software engineer by trade, so its also a hobby. Wrote a quick application to download "the list" of stocks he has recommended since the list was started. Also downloaded historical financial data for each one of them from yahoo.

The results-you only really make money if you took a position before he recommends. Working on the next business day close, you actually are guaranteed to lose money.

I've done a bit more modeling of the data, but thats the bottom line. Also there is a great paper out of some university applying some great economic theory to his picks and the price changes we see.

You know what I realized? Cramer does this idiotic thing where he'll trash a stock, then two weeks later-with no actual changes in the fundamentals or market-he'll declare it a real winner. Thus making it impossible to say that he's horribly wrong, lol.

For example, on the 5/5 show he proclaims that he called Zoltec (ZOLT) in January...except it's funny because on December 19th he said to avoid it.

And Cramer has been trashing GM as doomed except I noticed that he decided to cover his bases and claim that he's giving it one thumb up now. Saying "I am a hairsbreadth away from BuyBuyBuy. One thumb up." That's on 5/4.
Of course the previous day he had said U.S. automakers are still "caught in the past," when consumers still liked gas-guzzling SUVs.
But Cramer said Toyota has none of those problems. Moreover, he said that "this company will hire as many Americans as the amount that GM or Ford will fire."


And on 4/7 he said:
You need to be in a stock with the growth, not one that is wondering whether "bankruptcy in on the table," he said. So, he encouraged listeners to sell Ford and GM and to buy Toyota.

So essentially-even though as far as risk goes GM is still facing the same things-risk of a Delphi strike, legacy costs, higher fuel costs-Cramer is changing his mind? Seriously though, GM has been playing the same strategy they laid out months ago, so there's really no reason for you to suddenly jump ship other than the fact that you're realizing that your call is horribly wrong.

Seriously if you're being that vague and always calling it both ways how in the world can you really ever be declared wrong. Maybe I'll go pick 3000 stocks then adjust what I say when it looks like I'm wrong.

Oh and I'm a GM stockholder who thinks they'll be back in a big way, except I did my research back in November and decided that the risk of a bankruptcy was very unlikely. And I completely called the fact that gigantic SUVs could still sell even if fuel went up, on top of which I know that fuel can only skyrocket so much because of other things that will help control fuel pricing down the line.

So I guess you could pretty much be exactly like Cramer if you just do this:
Pick a sector that's growing well, then tell people to avoid one stock in that industry. Proceed to recommend basically every other stock in the entire sector over the next few weeks. If stock you told everyone to avoid starts to rise, about face and start recommending it too. If you were horribly wrong about something rising, proceed to never mention that stock ever again on the show.

lol if Warren Buffet made his trading decisions like that...

Honestly the best thing to do is to find a company that's a real gem by yourself-before other people call it as a big winner. Or even if other people are calling it as a winner, maybe not people in the USA.

Something like China Shenhua Energy-I really didn't see any US analysts talking about it until recently-after the stock frickin' doubled since it IPOed last year. Apparently it was mentioned in an article about how the US is losing all the good IPOs to other countries lol. Of course if you had bothered to do your research last year you'd have figured out that they were in a great position-Coal to Liquid partnerships with Sasol and other companies, strong government support, growing demand for both raw coal and gasoline in China and the world, etc. Seriously if you knew about it before the IPO-even though you couldn't have been in on the IPO itself the stock was fairly cool right after IPO, giving PLENTY of time to get in on it.

Really, it's more profitable to know something is gonna be big before the analysts realize it. You can then just kinda sit around waiting for analysts to flip out.

in the last week I've seen a few stories on the morning news shows about the stock market, and they had Cramer on Today. He said the market would demolish it's past highs, it's down 2% or so today