Quote from gaj:
shred - i don't knock everything about cramer. i think he's got an excellent ability to assemble quality talent around him in every field (that i know of).
that's quite admirable, as most people can't do that.
i'll have to contact someone i know who's an RM subscriber, and look over his records.
(and for smaller investors, stops are absolutely essential).
Well, I've subscribed since 99 as well. He probably averages 4 column's a day over there and in the heyday he was writing (as someone else said "thinking out loud") non-stop, he would be a ragging bull pre market, a rabid bear by lunch time and neutral by the close someday, but we all were to some extent back then.
In addition to reading RM, I also read both his book, as well as the one by Nicholas Maier that Cramer had removed from many books stores when he proved that it had several "FACTS"...i.e. trades that were incorrect.
From reading both those books, and having digested about a thousand of his columns, some worthless, some pointless, but some also pretty profound for myself at the time (his articles on hegefunds pinning the strike on options exp for example....sheesh when PMCS was 170 or whatever and he would write about all the open intereste at 175 or something at lunch....to watch some of those stocks go like a magnaet (sp?) the last hour of trading to those strikes, well it impressed me because I thought he was blowing smoke up his ass when he first starting writing about it, but then everyone in the office starting making money off of running over the bloomberg every 3rd Friday. LOL. I'm sure this game was being played everywhere but it was my first exposure to it, and with the retail daytraders largely in control of the high flyers it was certainly satifiying to understand when certain stocks were just getting ramped or creamed those days by certain MM's at the end of the day.
Anyway, this is clearly an opinion driven thread which means its destined to go on for another dozen or so pages, but like a few others, I just have to defend the guy even though I can't stand his on air persona, because as a reader I have made money off of a lot of his calls. Lost money too sometimes, his main weakness as far as I can tell on individual calls is he sometimes thinks something is "over done" only it isn't. But more often than not I think he has been right.
Its clear when you read his book atleast that his hedgefund was setup with a large portion of the fund invested into well researched ideas and then they must have kept 25% of it or so in daytrading type ideas or very short-term ideas, where they blasted in and out of stuff the same way alot of us here do.
At anyrate the bottom line is in the numbers: from the time his hedge fund was founded to the time he left, the compounded annual return was 24% compared to the s&p's 15%.
I mean it wasn't "all" him, but obviously he has more than just a loud mouth because those are real returns and when the fund just started it was 2 guys, no research staff, just two guys total.
Compare those numbers to the other know smucks that sat in on Squawk, and they are pretty damn good.
Personally I think the guy that needs to be bashed more often is permabull Kudlow. That guy has hardly ever seen an economic number that he didn't like. His answer to everything in typical supply side fashion, lower rates and more high powered money into the system.
Give me a break....:eek:
