It seems to me that Jim Cramer has a hell of deal with his action alerts plus. He buys/sells a stock, tells his subscribers to do the same, then the subscribers move the stock in Cramers favor. I myself am not a subscriber and can't imagine why anyone else would be either. Does anyone here subscribe? What are your thoughts?
his AA record is abysmal. it was posted on the yahoo thread by people who subscribed...basically, you're looking at down 25% / annually, i believe, the past few years. his 'off the cuff' remarks have been considerably worse...IBM at 120? AOL way higher, TYC all the way down, etc. but those weren't AA picks, because of his restrictions. besides, he doesn't have that much influence on hugely liquid stocks; he has influence on killing certain individual's portfolios, but not on the longterm stock price (he has to hold AA stocks for a while before he can sell them).
i did the free trial a couple of times. cramer doesnt front run his picks. he pretty honest about giving out picks in advance on his website. that said it wouldnt matter because so few of the picks go his way. cramers method is to buy falling knives and ride them out until they bounce or the news becomes so bad he dumps at a huge loss. when i did the trial he was carrying a few stocks at a 50 - 70% loss. he likes to say there is always a bull market somewhere and its his job to find it. this causes him to see a sector that is running and if it pulls back a couple of points he buys it but most times doing that in a bear market gets you in at the beginning of a huge drop.