On friday's show they list cramer's good picks of the week as well as his bad picks of the week, so this comment is incorrect, sorry. Look this is the first week, we are profitable, so let it run for 6-12 months and we'll measure the results, if he makes money, then all you cramer haters, which are abundant on this site can shut up.
Cramer may make money on his calls, but that doesn't mean others following him will. Very hard to make $$ by following what others say.... mythology in the slightest variation will effect profits. Also....its all about where you get in and get off... you can go broke trading long a stock even if its in an uptrend. What bothers me about Cramer is that he keeps stocks that keep going down and down....or even tells you to "mo- back" as it sinks lower. He keeps stocks waayyyy to long after they been falling....look at intel for instance...."house of pain...house of pain" There is nothing wrong with that if you're an investor...but there is no way a trader can follow these methods...Plus, theres also the problem that he has a TV show...and must give out some stock picks even when markets are in bear mode..."theres always a bull market somewhere..." When markets are bearish, traders short....not look for that needle in a haystack that might be on a bull mode. Cramer is the Master for trades based on news and sector analysis.....but as a general trader overall.......sorry, no way.
========== Like him myself, not just the humor, but; M Masters Marlin fund /Schwager [not an advertisement] likes him, also like his comments on Investor Business Daily. Also one has to watch Cramer with discretion, because he invests some like a mutual fund , like recommending MSFT longs , as that Cash links & TV watching shows, reguardless of MSFT downtrends,downtrends. And while your link Cash, shows a negative % for XOM, in fairness to Cramer , Cramer also called it right; said not oil derivitives but oil stocks, but his deep ITM option oil stock comment was too unclear to mean much, looks like that big oil seller is through in OCT. [paraphrase includes his street.com writings] As Option coach questioned/hinted his long term record ; is closer to a well managed mutual fund.
The problem I have with Cramer is twofold, he purports to be an active trader (not investor for the long term seeking value ala Buffett) yet he eschews TA and relies on fundamental analysis. Do I really need to point out how assenine this is? Two, he is an attention whore who is interested in getting as much publicity as possible. He will do anything, say anything if it will garner him positive marginal attention. His disasterous calls before earnings are a clear example of this. Any newbie who thinks that he's trying to teach them anything should have their head examined just based on those calls. Having said that, I don't have a problem with someone intelligently trying to ride the waves of angst and euphoria his lemmings create. Another website for tracking his comments is: http://wizard.ozsoft.com/newshist/gwsjcsymb.asp Plug in a symbol and it'll tell you what/when Cramer said. For example, put in GTRC and you'll see my first point illustrated perfectly. In late April '05 ($52) he said sell - when every TA was screaming oversold with a high probability of snap back rally. And in late July '05 he said buy ($64 appx) when every TA tool was screaming overbought and high probability of a top. You can see the same pattern play out over and over again. Plug in AAPL for example and you'll see he said buy in March '05 (just before it dipped) and then a sell in April and May '05 (at a swing bottom).
Cramerholic: Nothing against the system that is working for you but your calculation seems a little off. If you use $55000 to trade the ES say with $5000 margin per contract, you could have bought 11 ES contracts. That will give a total profit of : 11 x (1216-1207) X 50 = 4950 which will be a return of 9%. If this system is working for you, stay with it. At least it is making you money which is way better than losing money. Good Luck.
Finally a system for the masses !!! Step aboard all trading newbies, this one should actually work because it's scalable and easy to follow. Nice thread thanks for sharing it I wish I had an easy one like this 3 years ago.
I think that you're comparing apples and oranges. You cannot compare the % change in the index to % change in dollars. These are two different things. Here it how it works. With $55000, you could have bought $55000/120.58(opening price on Nov 1st) = 456 SPY. If you sell that on Nov. 4th at 122.11(the closing price) your gain would be $697.68. So this way Cramer's picks (combined with your rules) outperform the index by 193% on those four days, which is pretty impressive but nothing like the 528% that you mentioned.
Ok, whatever, I won't calculate the return on the S&P anymore then, we'll just have a rate of return on the portfolio I have, and everyone can see if the return is good enough to trade with. I don't know why I need to please you people, just let me have a journal with this system and see if it works out. Too many complainers on this site. From now on PM your comments to me because they are clogging up this thread.