No matter how many times he talks about the same stocks I am amazed with his influence . Tonight he recommended taking profits in GOOG and it drops 4.4, says SHLD has bottomed and it jumps 2.5.
Man, I can't remember the exact dates. It was when he first started the AA Portfolio. My dad followed his calls on some of his money and was down about 20% for the year. The thing that really got me peaved at Cramer was that he injected money into his portfolio whenever he pleased - i.e., he never told you his limit on the amount of money he would control in the portfolio. People who followed him didn't have the luxury of pulling money out of their butts whenever they felt like it.
First, someone else followed his calls? Did he follow all of Cramer's picks exactly, just some of them? Did he comingle these calls with the rest of his portfolio? Second, ya gotta have cash to play the game. Why would one choose to follow someone's calls and then become fully invested and unable to participate part way through?
I saw the results of my father and I saw the results myself. Cramer's portfolio bled its first year. Second, a portfolio should be based on some concrete starting capital so you can mimic that portfolio with your own capital. If Cramer injects capital anytime he feels like it (like when he underperforms), then it certainly makes following the portfolio tougher than if everyone was on the same page. Sorry this is so hard for you to understand that Cramer lost a person a decent amount of cash. Maybe by following Mad Money you have done well, but in the past following his AA portfolio picks were a losing proposition (when I cared to follow them). Not sure why you are defending him in this instance when I am just providing a real world experience. But if you want to be a jerk about it, please continue.
This is what bothers me...He's causing alot of his not-so-educated listeners to over-trade based on what he says. He said goog was a buy on an earnings play at around 190. That was a great call. Then it was at 210 and he said it would hit 250 within 4 days (a good call -- even though goog didn't hit 250 at after 4 days, he said to keep it and it eventually did). Then it hit 260 or so and he said to sell it and buy back at 250. He made a mistake here, I knew it was a mistake at the time (I wasn't going to trade my shares during a big upswing), and it hasn't hit 250 since. He then admitted on tv he made a mistake. He wrote a realmoney article saying goog is an investment, not a swing trade. Now whats he do -- since its already 20 off its high, he's telling ppl to sell? For a stock which he thinks is gonna hit 420 telling (un-elite-trader audience) people to sell for the possibility of a 10 pt profit is the same mistake he made earlier. I personally see goog moving nowhere from here/perhaps slightly down (trading in a 270 - 285 range) until the next earnings call. And maybe he sees something similar too, but he's over-estimating his audience's ability to capture profits in that range. Either that or he's helping creat downward pressure to so that his buddies could cover their shorts.
I'm not defending, I'm asking questions. I haven't committed an opinion one way or the other because I don't have concrete information that Cramer's picks were good or bad. All I have is, "I saw the results..." without any qualification as to how the advice was followed. Further, I asked the time period to see how difficult that market was to pick.
Your tone makes you come off as ridiculing what I am saying and also ridiculing my father's intellect (i.e., only lesser investors would not save cash for further purchases in a portfolio). I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, however. I guess you'll just have to trust me on this one. My father's account that was reserved for following Cramer's portfolio took a hit during the time that he did it. It was during the inception of his AA portfolio. I was a RealMoney and AA subscriber at the time but I did not follow the AA portfolio religiously. My father took all the trades. However, by receiving the AA updates, I got a sense of how Cramer was doing and it wasn't pretty. He might be doing better now though. I can't remember when he started it. It was the first year of his AA portfolio. The thing is, he started his portfolio with a set amount of cash (let's say $1,000,000). Then he used parts of that $1,000,000 to buy stock. And the AA portfolio in its summary would have this cash total along with the stocks in it. But then there were days where Cramer didn't have much cash and he wanted to buy stuff so he would just inject another say $250,000 into the portfolio. From then on the portfolio would be working with $1,250,000. But you see, it would make sense to think that the first $1,000,000 was all he was going to use for his transactions since it was sort of implied in the daily statements. It just seemed slimy to me how that was handled. It is not like he took any cash out of the portfolio (at least not when I was following it). After he did this a few times I suggested that my dad just cancel his subscription which he did.
as of today. Total Average Return 16.19 % The Total Average Return figures reflect changes since 1/1/2002. 2005 YTD Return 2.35 %