A high school buddy started a hedge fund with a partner back in the 80s. Made a TON of money, sold his share to his partner, and now goofs around the world doing what he wants. Even owns a castle in Ireland. I asked him a couple years ago if there was anything he'd like to put his efforts into on a daily basis. His reply was "Yes, something different every week!". Looks like old Bills' doing exactly that. He and I were in the marching band in the mid 70s, and he's always loved music. Bill was an amazingly good drummer. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/56f97596-de...-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&nclick_check=1
Trading With The Enemy In 2002, Nicholas Maier, a former trader at Cramer's hedge fund, released the book, Trading With The Enemy, about his time at Cramer, Berkowitz & Co. In the book, Maier alleged that Cramer and the hedge fund engaged in illegal trading practices. Maier also stated that Cramer was the subject of an SEC investigation. Cramer denied the allegations and threatened to sue the publisher for libel. The publisher of the book quickly destroyed 4000 copies of the original release, and re-released it after editing out 4 pages that were possibly libelous.[12]
I am the only one that this thread pretty funny. I'm agnostic towards Cramer, but the idea that a couple of clerks on an SP box are making fun of him and his calls makes one wonder...basically I would take Cramer all day plus Sunday over a couple of bust out wanna be traders trying to quote a market by looking at the mini screen and creating "action" in the pit to keep their jobs going.
That's like saying a 7"2 basketball player is only a good player cause he's 7"2. Who cares? Cramer went from being homeless and living in a car in the early 70s to running a $400m hedge fund and bringing up his own personal net worth to $100m+. I don't give a damn what illegal or semi-legal tactics Cramer used. He cleaned up and is still laughing as he called it quits right at the top. He knew he'd burn in a bear market. 99.99% of the lemmings laughing about Cramer will never ever come close making even 1% of the money Cramer pulled out of the markets.
I read his biography a long time ago when i was stupid enough to look for inspiration from the guy. First of all, he has no ability whatsoever to read a chart. The poor guy can't even find a bottom which is looking for a simple uptrend which is class 101 TA. The next thing is that the guy is an enternal bull. He is constantly bullish on everything and is thus one sighted. He is like a hypomanic mutual fund with 100% confidence in their simple minded one strategy approach of buying a company because of it's long term fundamentals. To bad he can't understand he needs to diversify strategies and not stocks. Thirdly, the way he made money while being a hedge fund manager is actually an illegal practice today. Because even back then Cramer was the personality of wall street he could easily get any CEO in for a meeting or a conversation on the phone. Him and Jeff Berkowitz would tag team the CEO's and ask every piece of vital information which is totally illegal now. Lastly, the reason cramer quit being a hedge fund manager was because he lost around 29% during august of 1998. He regained some of that but never made it back to positive grounds. Soon after that inviting CEO's to lunch for some talk became illegal and now he has to misform the entire population that watches his show how to invest and trade in stocks. This just reaffirms my opinion that wall street is hugely based on hype. Oh well, makes it the more easier to make money in the future.
The homeless Harvard boy. I agree that Cramer is laughing all the way to the bank, but when you make statements like the one above you make yourself look very foolish. Don't take everything you read on wikipedia so literally.
I didn't say he doesn't have his charms that appeal to some very shallow people. My point was that he made his money through advantage knowledge of Bulge Bracket firm's movements which he later helped the NY AG (Spitzer) construct laws against. The guys punk on wheels. Just check his post Red FD record. edit: the above all IMO...he is a ligation smoke stack after all.
That's not what his biography said. He wrote that he was deep in the hole (contemplating suicide) in Sept/Oct 1998 but then managed to close out the year with a tiny gain (under performing the SP500).