Monday, August 06, 2007
Cramer, Considered
So Cramer's lost it. What else is new?
A word about Mr. Cramer: In February of 2000, just days before the Naz peak and a month or so after the S&P 500 had started to fall (companies that were actually profitable were falling out of favor with the dumb money well before that), Cramer had this to say:
"Internet-related companies are the only ones worth owning right now..." These "winners of the new world...are the only ones that are going higher consistently in good days and bad."
And get this: Here's Cramer again: "You have to throw out all the matrices and formulas and texts that existed before the Web...If we used any of what Graham and Dodd teach us, we wouldn't have a dime under management."
Well, Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway did, indeed, retain a few dollars under management, and their investors got richer during the bear market.
Meanwhile, by year-end 2002, one of Cramer's top 10 picks from that time had already gone bankrupt and a $10,000 investment spread evenly among Cramer's top ten picks at that time would have left his investors with just $597.44.
The Street.com made a fortune off the craziness, and Cramer profited handsomely from the craze in income, if not in capital gains.
To be fair, I also remember seeing Cramer say "you don't love me if you're fully invested" around that time.
All in all, though, Cramer certainly did his part to feed the madness.
(Originally posted on LeeDistad, but recontextualized here.)
A word about Mr. Cramer: In February of 2000, just days before the Naz peak and a month or so after the S&P 500 had started to fall (companies that were actually profitable were falling out of favor with the dumb money well before that), Cramer had this to say:
"Internet-related companies are the only ones worth owning right now..." These "winners of the new world...are the only ones that are going higher consistently in good days and bad."
And get this: Here's Cramer again: "You have to throw out all the matrices and formulas and texts that existed before the Web...If we used any of what Graham and Dodd teach us, we wouldn't have a dime under management."
Well, Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway did, indeed, retain a few dollars under management, and their investors got richer during the bear market.
Meanwhile, by year-end 2002, one of Cramer's top 10 picks from that time had already gone bankrupt and a $10,000 investment spread evenly among Cramer's top ten picks at that time would have left his investors with just $597.44.
The Street.com made a fortune off the craziness, and Cramer profited handsomely from the craze in income, if not in capital gains.
To be fair, I also remember seeing Cramer say "you don't love me if you're fully invested" around that time.
All in all, though, Cramer certainly did his part to feed the madness.
(Originally posted on LeeDistad, but recontextualized here.)
Labels: finance, investing, Media
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