Jim Cramer on the Retail Trading Revolution

Summary

Odd Lots: Jim Cramer on the Retail Trading Revolution

Podcast: Odd Lots, Bloomberg
Hosts: Joe Weisenthal & Tracy Alloway
Guest: Jim Cramer
Date: September 22, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the ongoing "retail trading revolution" with legendary market personality Jim Cramer—host of CNBC’s Mad Money and author of the new book How to Make Money in Any Market. The hosts explore the explosive rise of individual trading, the tension with old-school index investing, institutional mimicry of retail tactics, meme stocks, information democratization, and personal stories from Cramer’s investing and media career. Cramer offers candid perspectives on stock-picking, the dangers of day trading, pop finance culture, and the responsibilities and misgivings that come with being a prominent figure in the financial world.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Retail Trading Revolution & Indexing Backlash

• Theme: Retail investors have rebelled against decades of “just buy index funds” advice, embracing direct trading, options, and speculation.

  • Joe Weisenthal (01:51): “...in the media, there is this incredible drumbeat of experts and ads…All these experts that they say don’t try to beat the market...And now though, for the last several years, [retail] is doing the exact opposite…”
  • Tracy Alloway (02:33): Institutional investors are now "copying what retail does." Retail is often leading the way on new trends like zero-day options.

• Cramer’s Approach:

  • Believes individuals always wanted to speculate.
  • Advises blending strategies: “Own an index fund for half your money…then take five slots, try to find four really good stocks and a speculative one.” (Jim Cramer, 05:00)
  • Encourages long-term compounding—something lost in pure day trading.

2. Long-Term Investing vs. Day Trading

• Cramer’s Core Message:

  • Advocates for “picking stocks and holding them.”
  • “They can’t win day trading at home.” (07:55)
  • Offers advice on analyzing businesses, not just buying because of hype.
  • Updated research methods—embraces tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity to make retail research easier (08:04, 49:22).

• Notable Examples:

  • Vulcan Materials and Philip Morris both produced outsized returns for patient, long-term holders (06:34).

3. Meme Stock Era, Public Participation, and Market Excess

• Reflecting on Meme Stock Mania:

  • Cramer recounts being out post-surgery while GameStop quadrupled overnight:
    “I finally just pulled the catheter out...and I called into Carl and David...and said, this is ridiculous. Everybody has to sell. After that, it was 24/7 bodyguard, because I destroyed the chain letter.” (Jim Cramer, 12:04)
  • Received death threats for criticizing meme stocks.

• Does Cramer Have Misgivings?

  • Yes, he sometimes worries things have “gotten out of hand.”
    “Do you ever think this has gotten out of hand?...Do you ever have misgivings about the degree of public participation in the market?” (Joe Weisenthal, 11:13)

4. Educating Retail – Tools, Balance Sheets, Compounding

• Teaching the Basics:

  • Cramer devotes parts of his book to teaching how to read financial statements:
    “I take the risk of 20 pages about how to read a balance sheet...if I’m telling people to own individual stocks, I have to help them...” (Jim Cramer, 10:09)

• Role as Educator:

  • Sees himself first as an educator, second as a stock picker (29:23).
  • Uses analogies and even "sound effects" to explain arcane finance for mass audiences.

5. Media, Public Persona, and Dealing with Critics

• Sustaining a 20-year TV Career:

  • Cramer is up at 3:15am, reads voraciously, and does relentless prep:
    “I start with the ft...look at the future. CNBC.com, Bloomberg, New York Times, Wall Street Journal...I get 700 emails a day...” (24:51–25:26)

• Enduring Public Scrutiny:

  • Recalls Jon Stewart appearance as a career low:
    “I came with my F game. And it was mortifying and terrible. And every time I looked out...I always thought people look at me as I was...” (Jim Cramer, 43:53)
  • Explains mental health strategies for handling public abuse (44:16–45:08).

• Bear Stearns Rant:

  • Famous for “They know nothing!” outburst before the crisis hit:
    “I just had to interrupt, and I said, look, they know nothing. They know nothing. And that was speaking about Ben Bernanke...” (Jim Cramer, 45:30)

6. Political & Social Angles: Shareholder Society, Workers vs. Owners

• “Shareholder Class Divide”

  • Politicians rarely champion the shareholder as a societal class, despite wide stock ownership: “Why don’t people talk about the shareholder class?” (Joe Weisenthal, 19:03)
  • Cramer: “Ownership means compounding. And compounding is a very boring word, but it is what makes you the biggest money.” (19:44)

• Tension: Layoffs Boosting Stock Prices

  • Cramer lobbied for workers to get shares when laid off, since layoffs often rally stocks (35:48). Nothing came of it, despite positive feedback from President Clinton.

• Younger Self: Leftist/Spartacist Roots

  • College-era sympathies for workers, led a wildcat strike, then became disillusioned after witnessing real-world job loss from activism (31:26–34:43).

• Ranks Presidential Market Knowledge:

  • Clinton: “very smart about the market.”
  • Bush: “not that smart.”
  • Trump: “proud of not knowing stocks,” but wanted to be in on the action (21:15–21:40).

7. Information Revolution & Technology’s Impact

• Leveled Playing Field:
  • Now, “the guy who's day trading from his basement probably has a very good finger on the pulse of the market—possibly better than some of the professionals” (Tracy Alloway, 08:51).
  • Cramer embraces ChatGPT and Perplexity for faster research (49:22).

8. Market Valuation, Bubbles, and Risk Management

• Are We in a Bubble Now?
  • “There’s two markets...there’s this [musical chairs] market...I accept that you want to speculate. Go do Palantir...But I want people to stop. Let it be one of your holdings, but don’t do all, because it will be crushed.” (Jim Cramer, 52:58)
  • Advocates always taking out your cost basis when speculation pays off:
    “You take out over time your cost basis and then you play with the house’s money...a Hippocratic oath.” (55:10)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Retail Trading:

  • “If they're going to do it, why not help them?...Maybe they do it long term own stocks....You can't beat the machines trading, but you can beat them if you compound long term in really good stocks.”
    —Jim Cramer (05:00)

• On Day Trading:

  • “They can't win day trading at home.”
    —Jim Cramer (07:55)

• On Meme Stocks & GameStop:

  • “I finally just pulled the catheter out...and called in...and said, this is ridiculous. Everybody has to sell. After that, it was 24/7 bodyguard, because I destroyed the chain letter.”
    —Jim Cramer (12:04)

• On Education:

  • “I have to help them with ChatGPT and how to analyze balance sheet and how to actually go line by line. Because I don't want to be irresponsible...”
    —Jim Cramer (10:09)

• On the Efficient Market Hypothesis:

  • “We revere the index fund. Good. We get one really good one. You have seven good ones and 493 bad. Well, that’s not my style.”
    —Jim Cramer (08:25)

• On Public Persona & Resilience:

  • “Give yourself a break. Most of them are not [thinking of your mistakes]...you're not a mind reader. Take people at face value.”
    —Jim Cramer (44:16)

• On Market Cycles:

  • “At any given moment, in a boom or a bubble...all these things feel like a top in the moment. And then you realize they were just little hills on the way to a much bigger mountain.”
    —Joe Weisenthal (55:03)

• On Compounding:

  • “Einstein did not call it the eighth wonder of the world, but we know that that is a much better way to make money.”
    —Jim Cramer (53:59)

• On Research Evolution:

  • “Jensen Huang...says, I know you spend all your time reading these reports. I just urge you to ChatGPT the advanced and get the concise version...and that has changed my life.”
    —Jim Cramer (48:32)

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Timestamps for Significant Segments

• Introduction of the Retail Revolution – 01:44–03:33
• Cramer’s Stock-Picking Philosophy – 04:00–08:51
• Day Trading vs. Compounding – 07:54–10:09
• Meme Stocks, GameStop, and Threats – 11:13–14:00
• Quarterly Reporting vs. Six-Month Reporting – 17:11–18:54
• Shareholder Class & Political Perspectives – 19:03–22:09
• Cramer's Media Career & Daily Routine – 22:17–27:52
• Sound Effects, Mad Money Production – 28:00–29:23
• Cramer’s Political Evolution & Worker vs. Shareholder Debate – 31:26–35:48
• Handling Public Criticism & Memeable Moments – 43:49–47:26
• Information Revolution & AI Tools – 49:08–49:43
• Market Valuations & Bubble Discussion – 52:44–56:07
• Risk Management: Taking Profits in Speculation – 55:03–55:40

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Closing Thoughts

Cramer’s message is that retail investors are here to stay, their role is only growing, and both their successes and mistakes are now shaping the entire market. While he acknowledges the dangers of excessive speculation, he champions smart, educated stock-picking—blending classic investment wisdom with modern tools and a touch of Mad Money showmanship. Cramer’s anecdotes underscore a career devoted equally to financial markets and public education; his life itself is a bridge between the Wall Street elite, the everyday investor, and the wider culture of American trading.

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For further Odd Lots content, visit bloomberg.com/oddlots or join their Discord to continue the conversation.

Transcript

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[Joe Weisenthal]

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Wiesenthal.

[Tracy Alloway]

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Tracy, something I think about the market these days is that in the media there is this incredible drumbeat of experts and ads that support the media, etc. All these experts that they say don't try to beat the market.

[Tracy Alloway]

That's right.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Index, index, index. And actually indexing is great because like it's cheap and indexes have performed incredible returns. And now though, for the last several years, it's like the public is becoming unshackled and, and doing the exact opposite of everything. And we see the most extreme form of, you know, day trading and trading on Robinhood individual names, zero day meme, stocks, options. It's like the public has revolted against this message that it's been inundated with for years.

[Tracy Alloway]

Well, you know what I think is really interesting is not only is retail sort of going out on its own, but Wall street and the institutional investors are kind of copying what retail does, right? Because retail was the first into something like zero day or one day options and then it became institution and you saw that big professional volume follow on. So it feels like retail is a really important Part of the market now. And rather than retail trying to do what the experts do, it's kind of the experts trying to catch up. Yeah. Catch up with retail.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Understand what retail is doing. And again, like, I love an index fund and I don't like having.

[Tracy Alloway]

You're an EMH guy. I'm just going to remind you.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I'm like an EMH guy. Yeah, I love it. But, like, I do feel like there's this huge tension and it only feels like it's accelerating because now there's more and more things to bet on and there's crypto. And pretty soon on your Robinhood app, you're going to be able to, like, bet on a prediction market on what the Fed is going to do. So we live in this world of trading against what all the ninnies, like myself sometimes on tv, say, what's the four pros? Yeah. Well, anyway, we really do have the perfect guest. Someone I've wanted to speak to literally for years. Someone who has long been preaching in public that the individual can pick stocks, that picking stocks is a good thing, that you don't have to accept the idea of just being boring and being average and getting the average return. We are going to be speaking with Jim Cramer. He is the host of Mad Money on some network called cnbc.

[Tracy Alloway]

Never heard of it.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And he is the author of a new book, how to Make Money in Any Market. So, Jim, thrilled to have you on the odd lots.

[Jim Cramer]

First of all, that intro, what you're talking about, justice, is the fundament of what I'm talking about. But I want to spend a second talking about the person to my left. Joey. My wife. No, my wife was looking at the book door. She's looking at the book door and she goes, okay, you got today's show and you got Joe. And Joe is someone who's gonna get it going for you and wake up, and he's gonna probably know the book and he's gonna know your stuff. And Tracy, I tell you, when you do these things, they're pretty soulless. So when you get something like you guys, I mean, I just laugh. You know, my dad sold Corrugated. That was his job. When I was a hedge fund manager. I just went exclusively with him. I mean, reference to last week's show. But I do want to talk totally much, truly about what you're talking about. I wrote this book.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Well, I just never supposed to say. The first line of the book is, congratulations, you've just bought the most radical book about investing ever written. Classic Kramer modesty.

[Jim Cramer]

Sure.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Because classic Kramer, understand?

[Jim Cramer]

But it's true that everyone's been taught these days you can't pick stocks and you just have to be in index funds. Thank you Warren Buffett for that too. Although his stock was the one you should have picked. And what bothers me is people are going to do it. And you talked about zero day and things like that. They're going to do it. If they're going to do it, why not help them? I mean one of the premises of the book is that I know that people want to speculate. So look, I say own an index fund for half your money, got to be saving constantly and then take five slots, try to find four really good stocks and a speculative one. You want to go do nuclear power, you want to go do Bloom Energy for hydrogen fuel cells. I'm not going to stop you provided that you try to find the next fang. And I'm fortunate enough to create a fang because it was just something that seemed funny. But you know, I do that too. But what I'm trying to do is accept the fact people want to do this, do it right. And if they do it right, maybe they do it long term own stocks. Like I use the term compounding. How do you compound if you're a day trader? Yeah, you can't, you can't. So I mean I look at this show and this show is about trends and about long term trends. Like I find that most things that I read about are about trading and you can't beat the machines trading, but you can beat them if you compound long term in really good stocks. And I mentioned it's crazy, but I went over a hundred years, there was a study about over 100 years. And if you held Vulcan Materials rocks, you made a fortune. I don't really emphasize it, but if you held Philip Morris, you made the most money. And he stuck. Philip Morris.

[Tracy Alloway]

Oh yeah, we have a whole episode on that.

[Jim Cramer]

Denny devitri broke that company up as one of the greatest breakups ever. But I don't like to talk about, I lost my father in law to cancer from smoking, wanted the cigarette on his deathbed, you know, that kind of nonsense. So I feel like that long term is good provider, do it right and I let people pick stocks because they want to. And by the way, there have been 600,000 millionaires created by individual stocks in the last year. And I want the people who read it to be the next ones.

[Tracy Alloway]

I think it's fair to say whatever you think about overall performance and the efficient market hypothesis, just putting your Money in the s and P500 is kind of boring, right?

[Jim Cramer]

Well, that's it. You see, people, they want some. They're jonesing. I have to keep them from jonesing on the wrong thing because I don't even want jonesing. I actually want investing. I was on a show the other day and the guy said, why do you encourage day traders? I was a hedge fund manager for many, many years. And when I quit, I said, you know what? I have got to change this. Because people keep thinking they can come in standing start and buy Micron, and you don't know anything about Micron to a standing start. Why not pick a great stock that's down and it's got a good yield and you can own it for a long time? You see the big secular trend. And if I can do that and get people to stop day trading, that's the win. They can't. Do you guys think that they can win day trading at home?

[Joe Weisenthal]

No.

[Jim Cramer]

No is correct. They can't.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So your argument, they can't win day trading, but they can win picking stocks and holding them?

[Jim Cramer]

Yeah. Well, I think that things have changed from when I got in the business. I used to go to the New York Commercial Library and read microfiche that was a couple months old. Couldn't get any reports. It wasn't available. Now everything's available. And I do recommend look chatgpt Perplexity. You can find out more than you get. I mean, I was watching. Within five minutes they have everything.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Jim Cramer]

And I just think that if someone wants to do it right, they can do it right. They got four slots away from the speculative. I show that one or two, if they hit, can make up for all the losses. I accept the fact that they're going to have losses because nobody's that good. But in every kind of schematic I did, the index fund didn't do as well. And yet we. We revere the index fund. Good. We get one really good one. You have seven good ones and 493 bad. Well, that's what, you know, that's not my style. Hmm.

[Tracy Alloway]

It is true. I am kind of partial to the argument that because so much of the debate and the story is online now that the guy who's like day trading from his basement probably has a very good, like, finger on the pulse of the market and possibly better than some of the professionals nowadays, then you're more.

[Jim Cramer]

You'Re more revolutionary than I am.

[Tracy Alloway]

I think. I think you saw it during the. The meme stock era. Exactly. Is it weird to go from a professional hedge fund guy, a legit hedge fund guy, to the sort of poster boy for retail day traders.

[Jim Cramer]

Yes. When I was a hedge fund manager, everything was to try to figure out the patterns that now the machines do. Because that was pre machine. And now I'm kind of a spokesman for the individual investor who is completely not the professional. And that's because the show Mad Money has been for 20 years. It's a six o' clock show. And what happens, it's all about what the individual's trying to do and what I'm trying to explain. Let's give an example tonight, give you a little preview. I'm going to talk about the multiple and why I want to talk about the multiple because that's the secret sauce. And yet people don't understand. And I invoke my mom in the book. My mom is a person who you meant. We were talking earlier about ingenuity. My mom is someone who says Pepsi was at 140 right now Coca Cola is 67. I have got to buy Coke. It should never be as cheap as Pepsi. Coke should be double. And like I would say mom, no, that has artifice. It's a price during which she's Jimmy, listen to me. It's ridiculous that Pepsi's at 140, period, end of story. And she didn't know that it was a ratio. And she would call in at 9:30 when I was at Goldman and buy, I want to buy three shares of Giant Food. And that was not why I was at Goldman. That was not to do the three shares. But I am incredibly cognizant in the book that people don't know how to read a balance sheet. So I actually take the risk of 20 pages about how to read a balance sheet. I take it now when I, when I did the book, they were like, whoa, you know, hey. And I said no, no, I gotta go there. If I'm telling people to own individual stocks, I have to help them with ChatGPT and how to analyze balance sheet and how to actually go line by line. Because I don't want to be irresponsible and say what you ought to do is say, you know what? Coca Cola is pretty good here. You've got to understand why. And that's a big part of the book.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You mentioned meme stocks. As someone who has spent a career advocating this for this idea that the individual can trade like now in 2025, like what do you think about that specific time? I mean arguably it's like multiplied since then but have you ever. Do you ever stop and think, like, do you ever think this has gotten out of hand? Do you ever think this is a monster that has gone beyond where it should? Like, do you ever have misgivings about the degree of public participation in the market?

[Jim Cramer]

Absolutely. I had a moment where I had had some serious back surgery. So I was out, heavily medicated, for three days.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And when I started this was during GameStop mania.

[Jim Cramer]

Well, GameStop was about 100 when I started. And when I came to, basically, and stopped using the. Whatever kind of heroin that they give you these days, it was a Thursday, and GameStop had quadrupled.

[Tracy Alloway]

I had a. Catherine, did you think you were hallucinating?

[Jim Cramer]

Well, I had. Yes, yes. I thought that maybe slippery something in the midnight guy slipped me something, but I had catheter in me and I couldn't reach the tv. It must drive me crazy. I finally just pulled the catheter out, which is really not a good experience. You really like to be more of a pro. And I called into Carl and David, Carl Contini and David Faber, and said, this is ridiculous. Everybody has to sell. After that, it was 247 bodyguard, because I destroyed the chain letter.

[Tracy Alloway]

Hmm.

[Jim Cramer]

GameStop shouldn't have been at 400. We all know that now, isn't it that GameStop is still fighting and they've got. You know, they've raised a lot of money by doing that at the money sale.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So you got death threats and stuff like that for.

[Jim Cramer]

Oh, I've had a lot of death.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Right.

[Jim Cramer]

I'm sure I'm supposed to talk.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Maybe we'll talk maybe over. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about. Both of us need to learn a little bit more about how to handle public.

[Jim Cramer]

But, yeah, well, look, you've always been. You've been straight, and. And we know that you're fearless. And fearless means when you're with your guards, they say, listen, you got to stop being fearless. Oh, I owned a restaurant, and one of the guards said, look, here's what we're going to do. First, you're never going to your own restaurant. That's the most vis. I said, look, I own the restaurant. I like to go in Tuesdays and Wednesdays. He said, okay, you got to vary the day, and you got to go no time after. After seven. I said, well, it doesn't open until seven. We have to be a little more cognizant. We. Especially in this era, this horrible era that we're seeing.

[Tracy Alloway]

Joe, do you still dream of owning a restaurant? Didn't you talk about doing this like a diner.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Diner 1 I still might one day.

[Jim Cramer]

Okay. I got to tell you, if you can have a mixture of alcohol, yeah, you know you can make money. Yeah, yeah, we made money just on the alcohol.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You also own a Mezcal business, which we should talk about.

[Jim Cramer]

That's why we had to switch to that because we saw the people buying Mezcal like mad. So we pivoted. Wow. You really Well, I of course you a little prep? No, but you're knowledgeable. Chase. I've not worked with you. I've listened to you and you're completely enjoyable and terrific. And this is a show I was telling Joe beforehand. What a cool thing. We haven't taken seven commercials yet. Do you realize that we might have.

[Tracy Alloway]

Once this has been published?

[Jim Cramer]

Foreign.

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[Tracy Alloway]

Wait. Okay, serious question.

[Jim Cramer]

We've been serious the whole way, right, haven't we?

[Tracy Alloway]

Sure. You touched on the information, the plethora of information, sort of leveling the field for professionals and retail. And then earlier this week we had Trump suggesting that public companies should report every six months instead of quarterly. Oh, what would that do for the retail investor? And there is also this trend towards more private markets, more companies that are not ipoing less information available.

[Jim Cramer]

Well, this has been a great soul searching moment because having run a public company the street, the quarterly filings cost us a fortune. We didn't have that much. It was like our whole profit was went to the auditors and they were real pain in the butt because we didn't know really how to do it. And CFO had to huddle. We lose that person for 20 days. But as an investor I want all the information possible. So I kind of feel like look, you can give us two reports but you've got to give us a report that would make us in the non sec, make us understand why we should be paying X for you. Again, the price turning is multiple because that's what people need to be able to make decisions. This was a harder one than I thought because the president really does speak to a lot of CEOs and this is what they talk about.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah, I'm sure they complain about it.

[Jim Cramer]

Oh yeah, because look, one of the things that I hated about the being a public company is the conference call. What are we going to say? Do we do well? What are you going to predict? Are the margins going up? Margin? I mean, and I just said we can't give a forecast. No, if we don't do forecasts then they won't like us. But if we do the forecast, we'll miss the forecast. And these kind of silly discussions, they're really silly and I think that they, I think they're ashamed because they sure take a lot of time and they're very, very misleading.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You said something in your blog, speaking of.

[Jim Cramer]

You read the damn book.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I read a good amount. I read a good.

[Jim Cramer]

No, actually, here's one reason my wife said, I bet she read it. I bet she read it.

[Joe Weisenthal]

This is something I wondered about in April when the stock market plunged after Liberation Day. But you talked about the fact that like politicians, by and large, actually, Trump is a little different than most politicians, but they don't typically run on the stock market and they also don't run about like the shareholder as a class of society that deserves to be represented. Right. As you mentioned in your book, like, Joe Biden was sort of proud of the fact that he didn't have much money. You never really hear, well, what about the shareholder class? Okay, so as an individual, and I'm curious why you think that, especially now that so many people are into stocks, it's so much part of pop culture, et cetera, why don't people talk about the shareholder class?

[Jim Cramer]

I saw Dick Grasso on the floor yesterday and you know, I used to go around the country with him and talking about the shareholder class and ownership. We just talked about ownership. That was kind of pre, the idea that everything had to be traded. When I was at Goldman, we talked about ownership. And ownership means compounding. And compounding is a very boring word, but it is what makes you the biggest money. And I think we have to encourage ownership. Now in terms of President Trump, I was a judge on the Apprentice for a very long time and before that he had been on Mad Money multiple times. And he always said, look, I don't do stocks, give me some stocks, I want to own some stocks. And that's a totally fraught situation. You don't want to offer him Alcoa. So I always just said, listen, utilities. And he said, good, good, this is what I want. Because utilities, frankly, you're not blowing your head off with a, with American Electric Power. But he didn't pride himself in not knowing stocks. He wished he had more time to learn stocks. I think that he, this time around when I spoke to him, he's not really into the stock market as a barometer of his success anymore. In the old days, when I spoke to him as president first go round, he thought that the Dow, he liked the Dow more than the sv. The Dow determined it was the great if he didn't beat, if the Dow didn't go up, then he wasn't a good president. So it was the great determinant. And I always tell him, please don't do that. It's too Hard. You're not really one for one with it.

[Tracy Alloway]

Also liked the Dow.

[Jim Cramer]

Yes, he liked that it was like the Nielsens. And I have to tell you that doing the Apprentice was quite enjoyable. I bet.

[Tracy Alloway]

Wait, tell us stories. I want to hear the behind the scenes gossip.

[Jim Cramer]

Well, I mean what would happen is, is that you had to monitor tasks. I'm not going to mention they would have a task. I'm not going to mention individual names because I have a non disclosure. But I will tell you there's some people who do the task and some people who want you to do the task, like me. I was like, no, I'm just a judge. But we would go through it and I would have to out the person who did nothing or out the person who said they were doing something and you know, maybe the two people were doing it and one was doing nothing or didn't show. There were some of those instances. But in the end they used my verdict. I'd say maybe half the time. And I wish they used it more because I spent a huge amount of time looking at it. But the president had a. He had views, he had strong views and the views did conflict with mine quite often.

[Tracy Alloway]

Hmm. Here's a question. It's sort of a media navel gazing question, but also a serious one. So. So you've been doing the show for 20 years.

[Jim Cramer]

Yeah, can you believe it?

[Tracy Alloway]

Which is phenomenal.

[Jim Cramer]

Thank you.

[Tracy Alloway]

I heard also that you get up at 3am every day to go to the gym and then do the show, which.

[Jim Cramer]

Well, 3:15.

[Tracy Alloway]

3:15. The extra 15 minutes is.

[Jim Cramer]

I always, because I'm a competitive guy. I always said I get up earliest so that I beat everybody else. But that's losing its charm, frankly.

[Tracy Alloway]

How do you benchmark your own performance?

[Jim Cramer]

I thought you could say how do I bench? Because I, you know, I was doing 250 initially. I'm sorry, how do I benchmark my own performance?

[Tracy Alloway]

Your own performance? When it comes to stock picking, because frankly, like 20 years of content, multiple stock picks, I don't even know how you keep track of all of them. Like I can't remember the episodes we did two weeks ago.

[Jim Cramer]

Well, okay. I mean I have a charitable trust, so you can look at it. You can't really compound. If you sell, you have to give the profits away and the dividends have given away. But it's all pretty public. But I would gauge me by what I talk about endlessly. And now this is not. People think that's anecdotal for 20 years. It's empirical if you talk about Apple 32 times a week and you talk about Nucor one time a week and you're graded equally Apple and Nucor, that's farcical. I was with Tim Cook last Friday in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, and he introduced me to someone as Jim Own. Don't trade Apple, Kramer. And that's how I feel. And the best one I've ever had was Jensen. Jensen Huang was when the stock was 2. I said, we're done trading it. Please stop trading it. And then I renamed my dog. He was Everest and I named him Nvidia. And I go all over the country and I see Nvidia.

[Tracy Alloway]

How confused was the dog?

[Jim Cramer]

The dog was an idiot. You always had to have stake in your hand with that idiot. He was a half pit bull, half who knows what. But I do think that when you look at the number of millionaires, that also is empirical, not anecdotal. Now there are people who want to say, Jim, I really do want to measure what you said about Bloom Energy last night and the versus what you say about Apple. And you know what I say? Knock yourself out. I mean, if it was really wrong, I would have been canceled. I mean I'm like 20 years means either that I've fooled the whole damn world every night or maybe people like it and they learn. Maybe they learn.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You mentioned you, you get up at 3:15. I used to get up at 4am every day and people still think I do. So they think I have this crazy work. I think I've been sleeping in a long time. No, but you, but you, you know a lot. And the only way to know a lot is to read a lot and to work a lot. Can you give us like a day? Like, okay, you wake up at 3:15.

[Jim Cramer]

Yeah.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Like you read and work like crazy. Give us a little the prep that goes into your show.

[Jim Cramer]

Okay, here's some wild ones. I start with the ft. Okay. Because the FT has one breaking news story every day. Just one. But it's great. And today was the end of the day.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And what time do you read it? You're up at 3:15.

[Jim Cramer]

I do have to. I mean, I have a 4:00 clock workout. Okay. That's an hour and a half. So I have a tight schedule for the first 45. I look at the future. CNBC.com, bloomberg, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. I spent a little more time on the Wall street journalistic because I feel like that they're a little more in tune with what the market's doing and then I go and I start looking at my email and the email is just a series of PDFs.

[Tracy Alloway]

How many emails do you get a day?

[Jim Cramer]

700.

[Tracy Alloway]

Wow.

[Jim Cramer]

I look through the PDF.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Jim Cramer]

And I look.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You read all the sell side research?

[Jim Cramer]

I read everything I think is relevant and I'm looking for something to say. I have a memo that comes out, 10 things I'm looking at. I have to have that in at 7:30. So that's my overlord. And then after that I have to do squawk on the street. And then I start again. I start writing the show. And I've been writing the show with, with my sister's kid since he was in high school. He's now with me for 20 years. Cliff Mason, he's a genius and he's, I mean the guy can just. I think he has two PCs going all at once and he's remarkable. And we have a really good time doing Mad Money and wait, what time.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Is this hour that you're working on?

[Jim Cramer]

Oh, this is beginning. This is beginning at 10:05.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And when are you reading like all the conference calls and earnings?

[Jim Cramer]

Cause you really.

[Joe Weisenthal]

One of the things during the day, you know, details of the calls and.

[Jim Cramer]

Earnings during the day. I spend a huge amount of time. I mean, for instance, I'm in the halcyon moment here because the only thing I had to read this point was General Mills and I'll read more of that because they talked about how the consumer is hurting. And if you're hurting, maybe because Blue Buffalo actually was plus 6, but if you look at some of their brands, proprietary brands, they can be knocked off. It's not like when Costco couldn't knock off Coca Cola. There's just more fungible, there's more elastic. But I spend, you know, I'm a couple hours a day on the book now.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Let me take after hours earnings. So then like Apple reports earnings and then you do the work.

[Jim Cramer]

Yeah, I have a great marriage. I put that out first because I wreck it every day. I finish the show at quarter six, it's taped live tape. I come home, I have a bite to eat. I mean I had to go out to dinner last night. I hate that. And then I say good night to my wife.

[Tracy Alloway]

Wait, what time do you go to bed?

[Jim Cramer]

I go to bed at 11, she goes to bed at like a normal time. So that's when I really wreck the marriage. That's not the plan. I don't set out to do that. Did that previously, bad strategy. But I just Find that I have to do that. And that's like during. When you have that rush now earnings season no longer is a season because companies.

[Tracy Alloway]

It feels like it goes on forever, doesn't it?

[Jim Cramer]

It's kind of perma. But when we have that week where JP Morgan starts and Wells does it, that weekend is just miserable. Fortunately, during the summer I garden, but my weekends are just filled with this.

[Tracy Alloway]

I love gardening. We should talk gardening sometime.

[Jim Cramer]

Are you vegetable or are you big gardener?

[Tracy Alloway]

Decorative flower gardening.

[Jim Cramer]

Hey, you should join. I need one.

[Tracy Alloway]

I used to have a vegetable patch actually, but then I moved to a new place. I need to restart one. How do you choose your sound effects?

[Jim Cramer]

Oh, okay. Hey, I had a radio show. This. This show. And you know where that radio show appear? Greatest radio network in the world. Bloomberg and the mayor run it. Ran it twice a day because he thought it was. It was a lot of. It was educational.

[Tracy Alloway]

Mike loves radio. Oh, he really does.

[Jim Cramer]

He was my biggest. You know, look, I think if I say he was my biggest backer, that sounds like a joker. But he loved what I did and the sound effects got people going and it was drive time and he was so supportive and I love him. I mean, look, once you leave, he's not as supportive. But what can I say? I mean, this is Bloomberg.

[Tracy Alloway]

We should try to reintroduce sound effects on radio.

[Jim Cramer]

The mayor loved it. Yeah, because he wanted people to listen. You know, bull bear, those things. He sounds. Imagine incorrect, a buzzer, but a guillotine for they. They had to cut the numbers and that kind of thing.

[Tracy Alloway]

We only have one, which is the monopsony klaxon, which isn't exactly that.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Do we even use it or we just say we're gonna Producers ins.

[Tracy Alloway]

Insert the monopsony crowd that I work.

[Joe Weisenthal]

To be very proud, a proud fellow alumni.

[Jim Cramer]

It's great to be substantive and great to be able to explain and educate. And no one said education doesn't work for the numbers.

[Tracy Alloway]

Do you actually. Do you think of yourself more as an educator versus a stock picker?

[Jim Cramer]

Yes. This is really like let's say last night's show. I tried to explain that what matters today with the Fed is what way will the curve change? Will interest rates start going up on the long end or down? Long end down is the big win. Long end up is what happened last year. We had the stutter step and then we had the December crash when Powell just said, listen, we're done. That's going to be the judge. But I had to use all sorts of analogies. Because the curve, you can't ever mention the curve. Like, do you ever read Sidney Homer?

[Joe Weisenthal]

We can mention the curve.

[Jim Cramer]

You can. Inside the yield Curve by Sidney Homer.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Tracy's read a lot of Homer.

[Jim Cramer]

It's five I have actually. No, no, no.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I knew you were talking about sitting Homer. Tracy's red sitting.

[Tracy Alloway]

I have. I love that book also. Most of it.

[Jim Cramer]

550 page book about it inside the.

[Tracy Alloway]

US but most of it is charts. That's what people don't understand. It goes by really fast. It's all charts.

[Jim Cramer]

She's a hitter.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Jim Cramer]

But I listen, you're kind of, you know, you're a hitter. This show's. What can I say?

[Tracy Alloway]

I like the show.

[Jim Cramer]

It's okay to say I like this.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah. No, we. We are going to use this on sizzle reels and promotion for years to come.

[Jim Cramer]

I see these people lot I've worked with here, Phil, Don, and these are the cream of the crop. I mean, when I was at the street, everybody who was good, I actually encouraged them to come here because they start. Start the street and the idea is to move up and you want to go to a place where people can be thoughtful and look, I'm not saying this to suck up. I'm saying I worked here.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Jim Cramer]

And that's what the essence was.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Many, many great street alum have come through. Okay. I was gonna like say, you know, when we were going over what we wanted to talk about and I was gonna bring this up and then you're like, nah, don't bring up what we wanna talk about. Complete a surprise. Were you a college age Spartacist or Trotskyite? Like tell us about. You mentioned it once, I think in a video. But then the video, I think you've also tweeted online. You've also tweeted about your Uncle Vlad about a hundred times. With whom you do bear a passing resemblance. Give us like, what's the real story?

[Jim Cramer]

I used to be stopped by as Uncle Vlad all the time. Okay. Mine was Spartacus, because I believe.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And who were they? Were they Trotsky?

[Jim Cramer]

Yes. The workers united should never be defeated. Because we're about the workers owning the means of production. So therefore we should own the company.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Jim Cramer]

And now Trotsky obviously gravely misunderstood. Including the ice pick. The ice pick. Very bad.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, that was.

[Jim Cramer]

He very missed on the ice pick. Suboptimal day. The ice pick. But I just think that that made a lot of sense and I went that way just when you were at Harvard. Yeah.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay.

[Jim Cramer]

We had pretty big following. There were not that many Leninists. I mean, you know, Trotsky was a pretty good writer and Lennon was. He wrote what Is To Be Done his version. There were two what is to Be Dones? And that's a good read. But Trotsky really was very thoughtful guy and also a great army general. And people forget that.

[Joe Weisenthal]

His train must have been so sick.

[Jim Cramer]

The train? The train, man. Only the money. The Armenian money train in Shield and that train really worked. Yeah, well, I guess the fugitive train crash was a good train. Cash.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Anyway, keep going.

[Jim Cramer]

I like Union Pacific here. Well, I just was.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Can't help it.

[Jim Cramer]

Yeah, I was a laborer.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Because you've also talked about. You once did a wildcat.

[Jim Cramer]

I ran a wildcat strike at the Phillies where I felt that we should have. Look, we're doing all the work here. I talk these guys out. We. We're doing all the work here. And yet everyone else. The Overlords, by the way, can I just tell you, you had to do a kickback. When you're selling ice cream. Hey, ice cream. Vanilla and chocolate. One third of your money went back to the guy. So you didn't get strawberry ice cream. Cause you can't sell strawberry. Nobody wants strawberry. That was the big threat. Hey, listen. Shut up, Kramer. You're gonna get strawberry. But I had a seventh level concession that I paid everybody. I paid everybody not to come up the seventh level. So I owned it. But we had Steve Carlton then a long time ago, probably. No, but he. He used to pitch games in an hour and a half. I was always long. A huge amount of ice cream in July. It was just dreadful. But so I let the Wildcats strike. And it was very good. They called me in and they said, you're fired. I said, well, you can't do that. Well, you're not going to get any ice cream tonight. You can come all you want to this, but you're not getting ice cream. And that was it. And that was bad.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So when did you see the light though? From.

[Jim Cramer]

Okay, actually really great question. The light was when I helped. I helped strike JP Stevens. Now, JP Stevens was a terrific towel company linen company with JP Stevens being this great Princeton alum. And we knew where he lived and we targeted the management. Really thought we had it going. And we were crushing it. And I was like coming up from the south to help work on it. And then they closed the company. Rather than deal with us, they closed it. And that was when I had a change of heart. Cause I said, wait a second. I just helped take Away the livelihood, the health care, the dinner for thousands of workers by trying to get them more money. And I really had to rethink it. And I just said, well, maybe the Spartacist thing, more focused on the matter at hand, which is covering homicide. But I really felt awful about what we did. We closed a company. That was not the intent.

[Tracy Alloway]

Wait. There is this tension, though, between, like workers having jobs and shares actually going up, right? Like, you have companies that the easy way to boost your share price is to cut costs, which means laying off workers. How do you square that?

[Jim Cramer]

Well, I think that you guys did a piece. I think it was you, Joe, about how that you've been thinking a lot about the billionaires thinking a lot about that. And I think that the way I square that is that if I go back to President Reagan, he was disgusted by how much the CEOs made and the difference and how the CEOs did. Never had to pay the price and the workers had to pay the price. And this is what you talk about, Reagan. And funny that Elizabeth Warren reminded me about this when I saw her. I just think that it's a travesty. I met with President Clinton over a plan which said, look, I think that workers should get shares if they're laid off, because typically a stock goes up if they're laid off. And what he did was he gave me a can of Coke, Diet Coke, said, this is the greatest idea in the world. We're gonna run with it. And nothing ever happened. President Clinton.

[Tracy Alloway]

Clinton.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Oh, Clinton.

[Jim Cramer]

Well, they all said it didn't matter which president. Nobody ever did. What I said President Biden was hilarious. We meet him on that train. He said, honestly, I am the poorest of the hundred. Why do I need your information? I said, you don't need it at all. I mean, am I gonna take him to minus 5? I do think that President Clinton was very smart about the market, understood that laid off workers were the tinder to get a stock higher. He was really smart about the market. President Bush, number two, not that smart.

[Tracy Alloway]

Wait, will you rank presidential knowledge of markets?

[Jim Cramer]

Okay, well, first I would take Andrew Johnson, because he just was insider trade. No, I don't know. I mean, did you read any of these books about Jay Gould?

[Tracy Alloway]

No.

[Jim Cramer]

And what he did.

[Tracy Alloway]

I don't think so.

[Jim Cramer]

With Grant. Oh, my God. He found out that gold, you know, where they were on the gold standard and he compromised. There were many, many stories about presidents, I think, helping by mistake. So I would have to give those guys.

[Joe Weisenthal]

So as a. What do you Think about, you know, there is this sort of, particularly in New York City, this very energetic, nascent leftism. They wouldn't characterize themselves as communists. I don't think Zoran is going around calling himself a trust cat. I don't think he is.

[Jim Cramer]

No, he's not. I wish he would.

[Joe Weisenthal]

What do you make, yeah, what do you make of, like, what do you make of this? Are we in a, like, are we at a revolutionary moment? Are the conditions of past revolutions present here in the United States?

[Jim Cramer]

No, they're not because we have great job growth and the revolutions have typically been preceded by famine.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Okay, well then how serious? Like when you, you know, what do you, what do you think about the DSA and so forth? Like, because I think you've said, you know, like, do you consider them to be dangerous radicals or are they like a sort of different shade of liberal Democrats?

[Jim Cramer]

I think different set of liberal Democrats. I mean, I remember Occupy Wall street and I used to go to it every, you know, and see what's going on, interview people. And they didn't know that where they were politically because they were so confused. And we all in the media kind of felt that they were communist or leftist, wanted to tear down Wall Street. They just, I mean, they were just sleeping in a cold, on a cold stone trying to, saying, listen, we're unhappy. And their ethos was zero. I think that the Merrell race, I mean, look, I, I care about defunding police versus police because I care about public safety.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Sure.

[Jim Cramer]

And I saw what happened in San Francisco.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Zoran has changed. I mean, he has changed his mind about that.

[Jim Cramer]

That's why I don't think that we're going to be San Francisco. I also think, by the way, it's. We went to trains on time. We went public safety. I don't think that that's. I don't think they're in play. I just really don't. Now I'm a New Jersey citizen. I happen to love the governor of New Jersey. He was my boss at Goldman Sachs. But look, I just want everyone to be able to recognize that the town has made a great comeback. And there's just so many great places. And I hate to see anything devolved into San Francisco, which is getting better, but was a nightmare to the point where I stopped going. I used to do four times a year, my show, but it was. I saw a guy, I pull a knife. I was in front of. I was behind him at Walgreens, got all the money and then the cops arrested him outside and they released him and I said, what are you doing? He says, well we Are you a hunter? I said, I'm a fisherman. He said, well, we do the same thing. We catch and release.

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[Tracy Alloway]

Jim, I gotta tell you we just got a message saying Mike Bloomberg wants to say hi to you after we Record the show.

[Jim Cramer]

I don't believe that. No, seriously, you.

[Tracy Alloway]

We're going to bring you down.

[Jim Cramer]

Oh, my God. I want a selfie. It's never ridiculous.

[Tracy Alloway]

Even though you left the company. He wants to see it.

[Jim Cramer]

I left the company, but it wasn't my idea. I didn't want to leave the company, to be very specific. But he became mayor, and look, I always worshiped him. What can I say? And I won't even talk about the myriad charities that he really did fund, because that's not why I did it. And I always admire that more than anything. He never wanted anyone to know. In New York, it's so. It's so predominant. You go into a building and the guy's got his name on it. Well, there's no. You know, that is not Mayor Bloomberg. Mayor Bloomberg was. I remember giving an award for what we did at the Brooklyn Bridge. I don't know if you guys have been to Brooklyn Bridge park, but this city's been redone and a lot of it is that Mr. Mayor. He's Mr. Mayor.

[Tracy Alloway]

Back to finance for a second. Were you ever tempted to recommend the inverse Kramer etf?

[Jim Cramer]

Okay, so that guy got crushed. It did. He was just annihilated.

[Tracy Alloway]

Had you recommended it, they would have had to short themselves, right?

[Jim Cramer]

Oh, my God.

[Tracy Alloway]

Right?

[Jim Cramer]

What a cool idea. Yeah, I didn't want to. It was one of those things. This is, you know, you go through it and your wife says, I don't want you to acknowledge him. I said, well, the guy's a total joker. She says, I don't want you to acknowledge him. And a lot of times what happens is you do go back to your home and you ask your wife what can do or your partner what's right. Because. Because everyone has got an agenda at work, but my wife's agenda is me. And so I always knew that she was just like a good lawyer. There's, you know, attorney client privilege. There's. There's spousal privilege.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah, that must be. Feels so good. I'm looking at the ticker now.

[Tracy Alloway]

They closed it.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It did. Terrible. And then they liquidated it in February 2020.

[Jim Cramer]

Yeah.

[Joe Weisenthal]

How do you look? You know, I don't. We don't get a fraction of it, but we get a little bit. Do have you ever, like, for your mental health, like, public abuse or public. What do you do ever, like, do you have any tips?

[Jim Cramer]

Okay, sure. I mean, there was sometimes people make.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Fun of my voice in the Apple notes comment.

[Jim Cramer]

CNBC told me to be on Jon Stewart, and I Didn't know the show, and I didn't know that he would. I didn't know he would be unfair, and I didn't expect. They were telling me basically that he would. It would be convivial. So I didn't come with my A game. I came with my F game. And it was mortifying and terrible. And every time I looked out, I mean, I always thought people look at me as I was. Now there's a whole generation of people.

[Tracy Alloway]

That I apologize for it later. Right?

[Jim Cramer]

Yeah, you did 16 years now. And I meet younger people and they've never heard of it, but those people never realized that the New York Giants were a good football team. It kind of happens like that. Yeah. My most important tip is to say they're not thinking of it when they talk to you. In other words, you're thinking of it, but give yourself a break. Most of them are not. I mean, I would say, like, I would have told him, she goes. The whole time she was thinking about Joshua. I know she was thinking about. No, you're not a mind reader. Take people at face value. He was a very mean person. And that's a word that my daughter used in fifth grade. But I don't know how else to define someone who wants to take your livelihood away. And he wanted my livelihood taken away, and I didn't want it taken away. And to take away someone's livelihood, as I mentioned with JP Stevens, is a terrible thing, and I didn't deserve it. But that's, you know, it's like. It's like the movie Unforgiven. It deserves. Got nothing to do with it.

[Tracy Alloway]

Speaking of the financial crisis, though, you did have a series of, like, memeable moments, let's just say in 2007. 2000. Including the rant about Bear Stearns. Yeah.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It stands up so well.

[Jim Cramer]

There's a nice article in the FT about it. When the actual. Not the minutes, but the actual transcript came out about how they laughed at me.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah.

[Jim Cramer]

And they actually mentioned. They said, yeah, we laughed at him. He said, oh, Kramer, he's really funny. It was about speaking to a lot of people who were saying, you got to get on the case here. You guys are just oblivious. You're acting as if it's a regular market. And my friend Aaron Burnett was going on about a regular thing, and I just had to interrupt, and I said, look, they know nothing. They know nothing. And that was speaking about Ben Bernanke, who really, I think, did know nothing during that period. And I was widely castigated. I Had to go on the Today show the next day where Matt Lauer, whatever, said you were off, you were off your meds. I want to hear more about this. Now, see, when you say that someone's off their meds, that presumes that you were on your meds. And again, I mean, like, look, am I used to being demeaned? Does it bother me? It doesn't bother me like it used to. But I do say that that rant holds up and I'm proud of that.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Jim Cramer]

And then I did that other thing where I went, if you have any on the Today show, if you need your money anytime, the next five years, the market, this fell 40% after this. They used to take it out now because I didn't want people. By the way, it took five years to get the market back to where it was. I was worried about people on a fixed income fixed up, meaning they own General Mills and they own Chevron. And I just felt like that it was just really the wrong time. And then the next day they had me back and Curry asked me, look, you said this thing on the show, do you want to take it back? And I said no. I mean, sometimes when you yell fire in a crowded theater, there's a fire. I want to get out as many people as I can. And these were moments that at the time, you'll. You'll really appreciate this. Joe. When I did these, subsequently, I was so ridiculed that I, that I would say to myself, why the hell did I ever do it? And I knew it was right. But no, I had such angst. Even though I was right, I was attacked by so many people. But now, of course, it's a dish best taste.

[Joe Weisenthal]

How long did you do this for like 3:15. Like, I don't again, I don't work nearly as much. No, but I like, feel like my health. I have even the years where I got up super early all the time. Like they took.

[Jim Cramer]

I remember. Cause you used to talk about all the time.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Jim Cramer]

God, I love it so much. I do. And I was doing something last night at dinner and I really wanted to get home because I wanted to formulate a thesis on drams. Well, there you go. But I am so fixated on this and I find the puzzle so difficult and fabulous. The Nvidia puzzle. The puzzle. This morning we have about what's going to happen. I have to. I'll write my top right after the Fed. And this is such an exciting day. You get 12 of these. So I don't know. And look It's a great question because I don't know how long you can do it. And I do want to see the world and I don't take as much vacation. I mean, I'm offered six weeks. I take four. But it's because I love. Is because I love it. It's not a sickness. It really isn't.

[Tracy Alloway]

So how has your research process changed over the years? Because again, you've been in the game for decades.

[Jim Cramer]

So I go out to dinner with Jensen Huang and he says, I know you spend all your time reading these reports. I just urge you to chatgpt the advanced and get the concise version and then see if it's one you want to do. And that has changed my life because there'll be 10. And turns out that Pulte Home was important, not because of Bill Pulte. He's not involved. And Stanley Black and Decker was important and Best Buy was that important. And then the others, I read the concise version and I could move on with my life. And that was a great break for me because it allowed me during the real earnings season to have 15 reports and just say, okay, I'm only going to do Cat and Proctor.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah. I think Tracy and I have both found, like, there are a lot of things that ChatGPT still isn't good for. But there is no question in my mind that for a research process, whether it's finding the right document, whether it's just. It's very.

[Tracy Alloway]

Have you tried Perplexity Finance?

[Jim Cramer]

I used Perplexity maybe ten times this morning. It's shorter, quicker. George Kurtz turned me on to it.

[Tracy Alloway]

I think it's impressive.

[Jim Cramer]

Yeah, it is very impressive. I wanted Apple to buy them. I was pushing that drum forever. I mean, I was talking about that with, with Tim Cook on Friday. I really think that they need something, but because of the. Of the Google decision, the judgment decision, it's possible someone could pay them.

[Joe Weisenthal]

We talk about China a lot on the show. Are they. Are they Stacconovite?

[Jim Cramer]

Wow.

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, I got that. I was reading 3 year olds. I had never heard that term.

[Jim Cramer]

Well, no, the 8th army is the 8th Army. Barbie's famous.

[Joe Weisenthal]

What is this? I only saw that because I was reading through all your old tweets. What does the Stakhanovite movement and what does it have to do with contemporary China?

[Jim Cramer]

Was the guy who won the award for shoveling the most coal for steel, and Stalin loved him.

[Tracy Alloway]

Communists obsessed with steel. I always wondered why that they always were.

[Jim Cramer]

Every plan the five year for China Was the same. They're long a lot of steel there. China's wrecked the steel market. President's dead right on the transshipments. My old buddy Peter Navarro is dead right on the trans shipments. It's wild that he's my old buddy, but he's my old buddy. And he went to jail bad, not Yale jail, because he went to Tufts. But I do think that when you look at China, sometimes I'm very harsh about them. And that's because my father worked for St. Regis and Climax Union Camp. He worked for Champion, he worked for paper company. He sold gift wrap and corrugated. And every single time he did well at one of these, they closed it. And they closed it because the Chinese targeted the gift wrapped industry. If you go to Costco, all you have is Chinese gift wrapped. So my father, at the age of 73, realized that's it. They wiped us out. He called a company that does from China, who had American wrap and said, listen, I want to work for the Chinese. And what he did was he would sketch logos, restaurants, and suggest that they use doggy bags that have their own name. And he had a drawstring doggy bag that the. That the Chinese made for two bucks. He sold it at four. And he then had the run of his lifetime from 73 to 92. He worked until the month he died. Actually had a good last month. And what's incredible is the Chinese treated him like kings. And when he died, they gave me the proceeds for three straight years. And they were the best bosses in the world, and they had no idea me.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You called China the greatest capitalist nation of all time.

[Jim Cramer]

It is. They just crush it. God. You read me close.

[Tracy Alloway]

Is the headline of this episode going to be Jim Cramer on Communism?

[Jim Cramer]

No. It is very funny because I don't think they're the biggest threat. I mean, what they're doing. Nvidia. Well, you grow. I do want Nvidia to be the platform, but I haven't been to China so secondarily. My son went to China to camel surf and he broke his. Well, he hurt his shoulder. And they were going to operate immediately. And I said, look, I got to speak to the head of the hospital. No, no, no, no. My wife flew him over for Shanghai, came back. But the Chinese are a conundrum for us because they work harder than we do, but we may have them here. I know the exports were really. The export numbers are really good for them away from us, but I think we had to take some action because there's too many fentanyl Towns. I got a fentanyl town right next to me, and I can tell you it was a great town when I was growing up. And now it's a town where. I can't believe it. I can't believe what happened. But the mills close. You know, the mills, the mills, the mills. I mean, now you can't bring back the Pyrex mill. There's good peeps by George Packer in the Atlantic about that. But I know we're really rambling here. I shouldn't ramble anymore.

[Tracy Alloway]

Let me ask one cliche question. Lots of talk. Lots of talk about market valuations at the moment. Froth in the market. We're recording this. I should have said on Fed Day, September 17th. Do you see froth? Do you see a bubble brewing?

[Jim Cramer]

Yeah. There's two markets. And that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book, because there's this market where that is a musical chair market. I make fun of. It's a Palantir market. And I accept the fact that you want to speculate. Go do Palantir. Because Carp is, you know, Carp is one of the greatest. His ontology work is incredible. It's better than Scientology ontology. But I want people to stop. Let it be one of your holdings, but don't do all, because it will be crushed. And when it happened, I do believe it. And when it happens, you'll lose everything. And then anything I tried to do would be wrong. It's like when I was at college, I used to go to the racetrack, and then there was a guy, Andy Byer, who was. He was teaching a course. He said, listen, if you're going to go speculate at the racetrack, at least know how to do it. And I never forgot that. And if you're going to speculate, I will show you how to do it. But I really want compounding. And I want compounding because what we know, that that really is. Einstein did not call it the eighth one of the world, but we know that that is a much better way to make money. Much better.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I have one last question. It's very closely related to this, but one of the.

[Jim Cramer]

Why are you wearing a button down? Why aren't you wearing French collar?

[Joe Weisenthal]

I don't know.

[Jim Cramer]

That's my kind of wear.

[Joe Weisenthal]

It was not wrinkly. All right. It's not wrinkly. Yeah, we're gonna have Kramer on today.

[Jim Cramer]

No, I like that. You don't have to press that because it has some sort of weird. Did you buy that in Temu?

[Joe Weisenthal]

I got a Uniclose.

[Jim Cramer]

So.

[Tracy Alloway]

All right, I'm pretty sure that was an insult, Joe.

[Jim Cramer]

No, no, no, I am, because I. I'm very. I would have said she in if I went inside. I bought my wife's lingerie on she. And thank God we use, you know, Match Light. Don't have any. Not to put gasoline on the.

[Joe Weisenthal]

You know. One last question. It occurs to me that, like one thing, I've thought many. I got interested in the market in the late 90s. At any given moment, in a boom or a bubble, right, There are moments that feel like the top. And then a year later you're like, oh, that was nothing. That was just this. They're like, oh, you know, it's like a few a couple years ago. They're like some rant. C3AI is like booming. This is.

[Jim Cramer]

Oh, my God, that job be crazy. Because I knew Tom, right?

[Joe Weisenthal]

And so random things like that or like, you know, this meme stock went up. Dogecoin is railing. We must be in a bubble.

[Jim Cramer]

Okay, this is true.

[Joe Weisenthal]

But all these things feel like a top in the moment. And then you realize they were just little hills on the way to a much bigger mountain.

[Jim Cramer]

So you've got to. There's a simple solution. You take out over time your cost basis and then you play with the house's money. And then I'm okay because I'm a first do no harm guy. A Hippocratic oath. And I can tell people, listen, if you want to do that for your one slot, be my guest. But as it goes up, you got to take your cost out. And then I don't care where it goes. It's fantastic. But you are so right. That's what happens. Look, some people feel that Google was at Nvidia. I mean, I worked enough on Nvidia to know that are going to have.

[Joe Weisenthal]

People work on Google bubble in 2005, 2006.

[Jim Cramer]

Well, I mean, look, I recommended Google at 88 and I was investigated by the CNBC general counsel for why I used 88. It's so, so big. And I said, because I didn't use 300. 300 was way low.

[Tracy Alloway]

Didn't you get out of the dot com bubble early as well?

[Jim Cramer]

Yes, I did. I was short. I went. I went 100% short. Dot com.

[Tracy Alloway]

What are your tips for spotting?

[Jim Cramer]

Because I owned. I owned the big. I was the biggest shareholder in the street.com and we had gone from 63 to 2. So I had kind of a premonition. I mean, when it was in 63, the New York observer said that I was 300, drew a picture of me as a pig and said the $360 million man. By the time it came out, I was 260. And then a year later, I was.

[Tracy Alloway]

2.6 as a Trotsky. The. The pig cartoon must have hurt.

[Jim Cramer]

I was overweight then. Yeah.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Jim, we could talk for a long time. Thank you so much for coming on Oddball.

[Jim Cramer]

Thanks.

[Joe Weisenthal]

We wanted to have you for a very long time.

[Jim Cramer]

We had a lot of fun. And I know that I got the exception because my book to be on.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Oh, yeah.

[Jim Cramer]

I told you that I was writing the book and I was a man of my word to come back because I always wanted to be in your show because you're just a thoughtful guy. When you were the stalwart, you were the first guy I read.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Thank you.

[Jim Cramer]

Do you know that?

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, I do.

[Jim Cramer]

I would get up and read the stalwart.

[Tracy Alloway]

High praise that.

[Joe Weisenthal]

That.

[Jim Cramer]

No, because it was the best.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Thank you so much.

[Jim Cramer]

Absolutely. Thank you guys.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I really appreciate it. Tracy, one thing I will say about Jim, and I've always felt this. I've only met him a handful of times before, but one thing I'll say is, like, that public Persona is not an actual. No, the. The Mad Money vibe is. That is Jim.

[Tracy Alloway]

No, I can believe it. He has a lot of energy.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yes.

[Tracy Alloway]

I feel like he's chaotic neutral. Maybe in D and D.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I just can't, like, I couldn't sustain getting up at 4. And that was just for a few years. And the fact that he's still up at 3:15 and he goes to sleep.

[Tracy Alloway]

The fact that he goes to sleep at 11.

[Joe Weisenthal]

11.

[Tracy Alloway]

Yeah. That's four hours of sleep.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Tracy Alloway]

And that was a fascinating discussion. And I think one thing you can say is that in some respects, Jim's been vindicated by, you know, the rise of retail trading. Everyone takes it more seriously now. That wasn't the case in, like, the 90s or the early 2000s. It's really changed.

[Joe Weisenthal]

No, it really is striking. I mean, it does seem like, you know, he talked about needing to get a bodyguard during GameStop. So it's clear that to some element, there is a part of the retail investor world which has metastasized into something sinister. When people are making threats because you don't like the stock, it's really interesting how people are just like any sort of negativity is so fought back against online when it comes to stocks these days, it's really striking. So. But also, you know, obviously, when. And then other things such as the they know nothing rant or the liquidation, which I hadn't even realized until you mentioned it, of the SGYM etf. Some good wins under his belt.

[Tracy Alloway]

Man, I really wish he had recommended that.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I know that would have been very interesting.

[Tracy Alloway]

Let's see what would happen.

[Joe Weisenthal]

The inception of okay, how do you. How do you.

[Tracy Alloway]

I don't even know if an ETF can short itself, but I guess we would find out.

[Joe Weisenthal]

I don't know how you go about that, but no, I'm glad we finally made that happen. And I read about half of his book and it's a very fun read.

[Tracy Alloway]

I'm looking forward to it.

[Joe Weisenthal]

Yeah.

[Tracy Alloway]

Shall we leave it there?

[Joe Weisenthal]

Let's leave it there.

[Tracy Alloway]

This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

[Joe Weisenthal]

And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You could follow me at the Stalwart. Follow our guest Jim Cramer. He's at Jim Cramer. Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Armand, Dashiell Bennett at dashbot and Kale Brooks at Kale Brooks. For more Odd Lots content go to bloomberg.com oddlots where the Daily newsletter on all of our episodes and you can chat about all of these topics 24. 7 in our Discord Discord, GG Odds.

[Tracy Alloway]

Lots and if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it when we have Jim Cramer on, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple podcast and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.

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[Jim Cramer]

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