How Does Jim Cramer Know All Stocks?
| by Jim Wang |  Print Article
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If you ever watch Jim Cramer’s Mad Money, you’ll recognize the lightning round where callers mention a whole multitude of stocks and ask Jim Cramer for his opinion of them. He’ll usually give you his opinion of the stock, its competitors, the industry its in, and a few choices sound bytes from his array of sound effects. While a lot of his antics are for show, he does have a remarkable ability to know that much about so many stocks. So, I once asked, how does he do it? That’s where CK comes in.
CK, a reader and pretty frequent commenter, send me this article from the Detroit Free Press in which Jim Cramer is asked, among other things, how he knows so much about so many stocks:
Q: How do you have prior knowledge of so many stocks when people call in?
A: There’s a trick to it. …You can’t call me about something that is below $2 a share and you can’t call me about something that is under $250 million in market cap. People don’t realize that that eliminates thousands of stocks. It does still make it possible that there’s, like, a thousand stocks. I’ve made it my mission over many years to know as many companies as possible. It’s easy to stump me when you pick a company that’s gone public in the last six months and I haven’t focused on it. (A call screener makes sure callers meet the limit requirements he mentioned.)
There you have it, from the horse’s mouth. Incidentally, using Yahoo! Finance’s basic HTML screener, there are still 3,552 companies that trade for more than $2/shr with a market cap. greater than $250M (link).
Read the article if you have a moment because it has some other interesting questions and answers in it such as his off camera behavior (which matches the anecdotes from Trading With The Enemy: Seduction and Betrayal on Jim Cramer’s Wall Street by Nicholas Maier [my review]).
Thanks for the link CK.
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Mar 08, 2006 | Read more in Investing
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Good info, I have often wondered about this as well. It is still pretty impressive.
Ever notice how the sounds aren’t exactly synchronized with him mushing those big red buttons? It seems like it’s all done by the backcrew. I’m sure he has some help on those computer screens that viewers can’t see either.
It is impressive. Say what you want about Cramer, he’s obnoxious, a know-it-all, brazen, he is well informed and very sharp. I haven’t picked up the latest book that you reviewed, but I borrowed, “Confessions of a Street Addict” from the library on CD, and listened to it a couple of times. He’s compelling.
I’ve heard a lot about Cramer but I’ve never watched his show or read his book. I’d like to watch it a few times so I can get an idea of what he’s about. This is not very surprising that he has a call screener or requirements about what he answers. Every show like this has that mechanism built in. Great article.
I recently read an article that looked at Cramer’s recommendations and calculated that you would actually lose money relative to the market. So much for pundits.