Confessions of A Street Addict
By Jim J. Cramer
July 19, 2007
5 out 5
This is an autobiography of Jim Cramer. He recounts from his early childhood, through his growing pain of being a journalist and later Harvard Law student, to a Wall Street guru, but an amateur entrepreneur, and to the present time (of the book written) of an ex-street addict dad. As a teenage, Jim Cramer was addicted to stocks. While other kids read comics, his favorite passing time is to read the stock symbols and play them as batting “averages.” He was passionate about what he liked to do, and still is, but he was not lucky, and still is not throughout his autobiography. After getting robbed out of his entire apartment, he literally started with nothing. Since journalism was not paying well, he sought his fortune through his instinct in picking stocks. Instead of studying diligently at the Harvard Law, he juggled study and picking stocks at same time, emphasized much more on the former than the latter. His career began when he started to leave stock picks every Sunday on his answer machine, then his professor Marty took notice, and was making good money based on this stock picks. Acknowledged by his talent in stock, Marty placed his fund in Jim trust. This started Jims career as a manage for other people money. Through up and downs, downs and ups, which was more accurate, he began his success. Eventually Goldman Sach, as the only broker house, took him in and showed him the ropes. He learned and later left to start his own hedge fund. During this period, he met his wife, who was a trading goddess. She also taught him many things that probably were not on any textbooks. Later, he started thestreet.com to help others make money. A serious of misfortunes that was mainly due to his misjudgments of people, thestreet.com went through a lot of downs, and not much ups until the dot com era. Later, he was involved in TV shows to boost his website. Maybe it was more of his CEO fault, Jim was torn between allegiances among CNBC, FOX, and later CBS, stepping on people toes left and right. I should note, through out his career, his wife, Karen, who bailed him out a numerous time, and who clearly had a much better conception of the market and business instinct than him. At age of 45, after day in and day out of constant pressure from day trading, he finally throw in the towel, now he stays at home being a good dad.
My description of the book is not nearly abundant. As he took you through his life, he showed you the insides of all the business surrounding the Wall Street. He showed you the salesmanship of fund managers and traders, how the big boys operated from day to day, how to manipulate the market, he took you through his own IPO of thestreet.com, and countless telling of why he sold or brought trades.
This is a marvelous book. Not only was fun to read, but a true inside to what you would probably not learn through any textbooks. I love it. I admire him for his passion, his instinct for stocks and mostly his desire to spread the well. He is hot tempered, but I guess thats the energy he need to draw his audience. But he is no a total package. How can he be, a man repeatedly make the same mistake of pick wrong CEO to run his investment of thestree.com? This was a mirror of his earlier life. When he noted he had things missing repeatedly from his apartment, he did not take any percussions, he just let it and eventually lost everything. This was exactly what happened to his investment in the dot com. I love his wife. Given him the perfect complements, supports him and bails him out when he is in trouble, and a much better business kinship than the fundamental weaken of Jim Cramer. Shoot, I would marry her. (Duck from my girlfriend.) Why fundamental weak? Would you go into your first exam unprepared? Then fail, and play catch up for rest of your semester? He is prepared in speculative trading; I double underline the word speculative. But he is not prepared in the business side or how to judge people. The only person he decided correctly was his wife.
Anyway one more point I want to make. By my opinion, he is a speculative day trader; he invested in the stock symbols. He is not an investor. He even commented this after he went bust and after hearing Fishers comment of do not invest in things you do not know. He invested in symbol, I invest in business. He cannot invest in business, because he does not evaluate CEOs. What do Fisher and Buffet say when it comes to invest intelligently? CEO or management is a key factor to a business success. So read this book as a fun reading, admire his ability to achieve on this own and his passion in helping others, will to do good and be just, learn from his mistakes, avoid his stock techniques in investing, but consider it when speculating, gain some insights, and love him for what he is, and learn from him for what he is not.
A few things I took away from this book and I shall revisit when later I examine the speculative trading. One, it is a game of sponsorship, buy at ground up before the reviews and critics, then sell into the sponsorships. Two, when big cap growth stocks all started to go down, possible sign of market crash. Three, a game of salesmanship, buy calls or shorts, and then sell news to sponsors. Four, critics move small caps. Five, HMO and Big Health Care companies can be used as safety in event of market collapse.
Hey Jim! Let me be your next CEO, at least I am honest and transparent; I am not alcoholic, or feed by greed; I am open minded; and would never use emails as only marketing strategy. Com on show me the ropes.