• Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Don’t Listen to Jim Cramer on Mad Money

September 21, 2015 By Nagesh Belludi 3 Comments

If you ever tune in to CNBC’s popular Mad Money show, you’ll notice that host Jim Cramer speaks about the financial markets with unabashed certainty. Behind the goofy sound effects and the onscreen antics lies his particular brand of stock market punditry.

Cramer’s energy and confidence are most evident in the lightning round where his devotees hail “Booyah” and ask for his take on a barrage of stocks. In response, Cramer presents quick statistics and declares, “Same-store sales in China rose 12% last quarter. It’s a screaming buy; they’re doing great. BUY! BUY! BUY!” Or, he blurts out, “This company is involved with deep water rigs, the deep water market has not come back at all. If it does go up at all, SELL, SELL, SELL!”

What’s most notable about Mad Money is that Cramer is seemingly equipped to answer questions about any listed company with all the gusto he can muster. How could he possibly know the ins and outs of every company: their products, finances, cash flow, competitive positions, market prospects, and current valuation? He may know of many companies cursorily, but how could he have intimate knowledge of every ticker symbol that his fans throw at him? You’ll never hear him say, “Sorry, never heard of them,” or “Gee … truth be told, I’m not familiar with their new products or how they compare to the competitor’s products. I really couldn’t tell you.” He’s loud. He’s boisterous. And, he’s got to have an opinion on every stock—if he doesn’t, there is no show.

Jim Cramer, the best entertainer in the financial media

'Jim Cramer's Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich' by Jim Cramer (ISBN 1416537902) Jim Cramer’s credentials are impressive: Harvard, Goldman Sachs, hedge fund management, and TheStreet.com. He is the author of many investment-advice books with titles as appealing as “Get Rich Carefully”, “Sane Investing in an Insane World”, “Confessions of a Street Addict”, “Watch TV Get Rich”. He is experienced. He has extensive knowledge of the markets. He is passionate. He is smart.

Nonetheless, do not let Cramer’s credentials fool you about Mad Money‘s intent. His antics are entertaining. He wears silly costumes, yells at the camera, throws chairs around when angry, hits things with mallets, and chews heads off foam bears—all while producing goofy sound effects that include squealing pigs and a flushing toilet.

Jim Cramer’s opinions on Mad Money are often one-dimensional, half-baked, oversimplified, or wide of the mark. In the very first Mad Money episode I watched in 2005, a caller on the lightening round asked him about a company called PetroKazakhstan. Cramer’s response was that he did not trust the Russians. PetroKazakhstan was a Calgary-based Canadian oil company that was led by Canadian executives, did all its business in Kazakhstan, and had little to do with Russia. (The state-owned PetroChina acquired PetroKazakhstan in 2006.)

Don’t identify Cramer’s show with sound investment advice

As with other programs in the financial media that are teeming with talking heads, watching Mad Money can give you pointers as to what’s happening in the markets and in business trends. You can get ideas for what stocks to research or even speculate on. However, none of it constitutes sound investment advice.

Cramer’s job is not to make you money. He gets paid by CNBC to generate viewership and to entertain viewers with the pretext of dishing out dependable investment advice. He is not a trickster; he just is an entertainer on Mad Money, a fact that he acknowledged in a 2007 essay in the New York Magazine: “On the show, I say stupid things, yell ‘Booyah’ with alarming frequency, and occasionally wear a diaper or jump into a pile of lettuce to illustrate the finer points of investing. … God knows why, but there seems to be a market for this kind of idiocy.”

Watch Mad Money for the frenzy and personality-driven entertainment. Don’t take his speculative tips or investment advice seriously. Instead, do on your own research.

Rule #21 in Cramer’s 25 Rules of Investing states, “Be a TV critic: accept that what you hear on television is probably right, but no more than that.” Now, that’s good advice.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Eight Guiding Principles of Successful Investors
  2. Yes, Money Can Buy Happiness
  3. Book Summary of John Bogle’s ‘Little Book of Common Sense Investing’
  4. The Problem with Modern Consumer Culture
  5. Is Day Trading and Speculation for You?

Filed Under: Personal Finance Tagged With: Getting Rich, Personal Finance

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Richard Mitchem says

    March 31, 2018 at 4:07 PM

    The article is indeed right on the spot.
    Even beter, don’t watch Cramer at all. That way you won’t run the risk of being influenced by him.

  2. Michael Kormash says

    May 21, 2019 at 6:59 PM

    Hey love Cramer. On show when people are getting beat up or Cramer says House of Pain. You should use song Whipping Post by Allman Bros

  3. AZRAEL says

    May 18, 2023 at 11:56 PM

    did you watch 1 episode to write this??? He claims not to know stuff all the time, and talks about the sector and the stock he doesn’t know. do some research next time!!!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Popular Now

Anxiety Assertiveness Attitudes Balance Biases Coaching Conflict Conversations Creativity Critical Thinking Decision-Making Discipline Emotions Entrepreneurs Etiquette Feedback Getting Along Getting Things Done Goals Great Manager Leadership Leadership Lessons Likeability Mental Models Mentoring Mindfulness Motivation Networking Parables Perfectionism Performance Management Persuasion Philosophy Problem Solving Procrastination Relationships Simple Living Social Skills Stress Suffering Thinking Tools Thought Process Time Management Winning on the Job Wisdom

About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

Get Updates

Signup for emails

Subscribe via RSS

Contact Nagesh Belludi

RECOMMENDED BOOK:
Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express

Poirot: Murder on the Orient Express: Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie has her brilliant detective Hercule Poirot hunt for a killer aboard one of the world’s most famous passenger trains.

Explore

  • Announcements
  • Belief and Spirituality
  • Business Stories
  • Career Development
  • Effective Communication
  • Great Personalities
  • Health and Well-being
  • Ideas and Insights
  • Inspirational Quotations
  • Leadership
  • Leadership Reading
  • Leading Teams
  • Living the Good Life
  • Managing Business Functions
  • Managing People
  • MBA in a Nutshell
  • Mental Models
  • News Analysis
  • Personal Finance
  • Podcasts
  • Project Management
  • Proverbs & Maxims
  • Sharpening Your Skills
  • The Great Innovators

Recently,

  • Did School Turn You Into a Procrastinator?
  • Inspirational Quotations #1101
  • Luck Doesn’t Just Happen
  • The Speed Trap: How Extreme Pressure Stifles Creativity
  • Inspirational Quotations #1100
  • Airline Safety Videos: From Dull Briefings to Dynamic Ad Platforms
  • How Small Talk in Italy Changed My Perspective on Talking to Strangers

Unless otherwise stated in the individual document, the works above are © Nagesh Belludi under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. You may quote, copy and share them freely, as long as you link back to RightAttitudes.com, don't make money with them, and don't modify the content. Enjoy!