The best one I've ever had was Jensen. When the stock was two, 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.

I go all over the country, and I see how confused the dog was.

The star dog was an idiot.

I yelled, 'Stay!'

Yeah, I always had to have steak in your hand with him.

I did.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.

I'm Joe Weisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.

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, and they say, 'Don't try to beat the market.'

That's right.

Index, index, indexed.

And actually, indexing is great because 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 doing the exact opposite of everything.

And we see the most extreme form of, you know, day trading and trading and Robinhood individual names, meme stocks, options.

It's like the public has revolted against this message that it's been inundated with for years.

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 institutionalized. And you saw that big professional volume follow on.

So it feels like retail is a really important part of the market now.

Yeah, catch up with retail.

Understand what retail is doing.

Yeah, I totally feel like, and again, like I'm not, I, I love an index fund and I don't like having—

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

I'm like an image guy. Yeah, I love it.

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.

Yeah, against what all.

And then is like myself sometimes I tell you before 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, they're 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.

I'm of course, speaking of, we are going to be speaking with Jim Cramer.

He is the host of Mad Money and some network called CNBC.

Never heard of it.

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 lot.

First of all, that intro, what you're talking about. Yes. Is that the fundament of what I'm talking about?

But I want to spend a second talking about the person to my left.

So Joey's my wife.

Know my wife.

My wife was a talk show in bookstore, and she goes, 'Okay, you got today's show and you got Joe.'

And Joe is someone who's going to get it going for you and wake up, and he's going to probably know the book, he's going to know your stuff.

And I tell you when you do, these things are pretty soulless.

So when you get something like, you guys, I mean, I just laugh.

I, you know, my dad sold corrugated.

That was his job when I was a hedge fund manager.

I just went exclusively with him.

Let me reference to last week's show.

But I do want to talk totally much, really, about what you're talking about.

I wrote this book.

Well, I just want to say the first line of the book is congratulations.

Congratulations.

You've just bought the most radical book about investing ever in a classic Cramer model.

Sure, because I think Cramer understands it.

Love that.

But it's true that everyone's been taught these days. You can't pick stocks and you just have to be an 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 he's 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, is that I know that people want to speculate.

So look, I say own an index fund for half your money.

You've got to be saving constantly and then take five slots.

Five try to find four really good stocks in the spec.

You're one you want to go do nuclear power.

You want to go to Bloom Energy for high. You know hydrogen fuel cells.

Yeah I'm not going to stop it.

Provided that you try to find the next fang and I'm fortunate enough to to created 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 long term own stocks.

Okay.

Use the term compounding.

How do you compound if you're 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, 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 100 years 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 hold Philip Morris, you made the most money, and he stock Philip Morris.

Oh, yeah.

You didn't need to beat.

He broke that company up.

Is one of the greatest break ups ever.

But I don't like to talk.

But I lost my father in order to, you know, get cancer from smoking.

Wanted a cigaret on his deathbed.

You know, that kind of nonsense.

So I feel like that long term is good, provided you 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.

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&P 500 is kind of boring, right?

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 to.

I actually want investing.

I was a hedge fund manager, right, 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 store and buy micron and you don't know anything about micron to a standing start.'

Yeah.

Why not pick a great stock that's down because 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 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?

No, no it's okay.

They can't look to your argument.

They can't win day trading, but they can win. When picking stocks and holdings.

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 you can find out perplexity. You can find out more than you.

Yeah.

I mean, I was watching within five minutes.

They have everything.

Yeah.

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 think that I show that 1 or 2, 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 every kind of schematic I did, the index fund didn't do as well.

And yet we what?

We Revere the index fund, but we get one really good one.

You have seven good ones.

And for 93 bad, well, that's what you and that's not my style.

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,

Then you're more you're more revolutionary, though I.

Yeah.

Oh, I think I think you saw it during the, the meme stock or GameStop.

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?

Yes.

But 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 is it's a 6:00 show.

And what happens, it's all about what the individuals trying to do and what I'm trying to explain.

Let's I'll give you examples tonight.

Give me a little preview.

I'm going to talk about the multiple and why I won't talk about the multiple because that's the secret sauce.

And yet people don't understand.

I'm. And I invoked my mom in the book.

My mom is a person who you met.

We were talking earlier about Indra Nooyi.

My mom is someone who says Pepsi was at 140 right now. Coca Cola is 67.

I've got to buy Coke.

It should never be as cheap as Pepsi.

You know, it's ever everybody's.

Pepsi should be double.

I mean, Coke should be double.

And like I would say mom, no, it that is artifice.

It's a price thing, which is.

Jimi, listen to me.

It's ridiculous that Pepsi is at 140 period.

End of story.

And she didn't know that it was a ratio.

And she would call in at 930 when I was at Goldman and buy I want to buy three shares of Giant food.

And that was not why I was a Goldman that just not to do the three three.

Sure.

But I am incredibly cognizant in the book that people don't know how to read about you.

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, I mean, they were like, well, you know, hey.

And I said, 'No, no, I got to go there.'

If I'm telling people to own individual stocks, I had 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.

You mentioned, meme stocks.

You know, as someone who has spent a career advocating this, I for this idea that the individual can trade.

Did you ever, like now in 2025, like, what do you think about that specific time?

I mean, arguably it's like multiplied since then.

But we have what 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's just like,

Do you ever have misgivings about the degree of public participation?

Absolutely.

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

And when I started, this was during GameStop mania.

Well, GameStop was about 100 when I started, and,

I was when I came to basically and stop using the whatever kind of heroin that they give you these days.

It was a Thursday and GameStop had quadruple.

I had a cap.

Catherine, did you think you were hallucinating?

Well, I had yes, yes,

I thought that maybe you have a Sharpie or something in the midnight guy slip you something,

but I had, Catherine, me and I couldn't reach the TV.

It was driving me crazy.

I finally just pulled the catheter out, which is really not a good experience.

You really.

I could be more of a pro.

And I called in to Carl and David, called Catena and David Faber and said, 'This is ridiculous.'

Everybody has to sell.

After that, it was it was 24 seven bodyguard because I destroyed the chain letter.

Well, GameStop shouldn't have been at 400.

We all know that now is an industry 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.

She got death threats and stuff like that.

Oh, I've had a lot of my shit.

I'm sure I'm not supposed to talk about it.

Maybe over.

Maybe we'll talk a little bit about both of us.

We need to learn a little bit more about how to handle public.

But.

Yeah.

Well, look, you've always been. You've been straight.

And we know that you're fearless.

And fearless means we are.

When you're with your guards, you say, 'Listen, you got to stop being feels.'

Oh, I owned a restaurant.

Yeah.

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 I smoke.

I own, the restaurant I like to go into.

It's Wednesday said, 'Okay, you got to vary the day and you got to go, no and no time after or after seven.'

I said, 'Well, it doesn't open till seven.'

We have to be a little more cognizant, especially in this year, this horrible year that we're seeing.

Joe, do you still dream of owning a restaurant?

Didn't you talk about doing this like a diner?

Yes.

My one day.

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.

You also on the mescal business, which we should do.

Yeah, that's that's why we had to switch to that.

Because we saw the people buying mescal like mad.

So we split.

We pivoted.

Wow.

You really?

Well, I, of course, you know, we did, but you're not knowledgeable.

Chase, I'm not worked with you.

I 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 once this has been published?

Yes.

It's true, we do.

Do we do just get to talk, which is very nice.

Wait.

Okay.

Serious question.

We've been serious the whole way, right?

Haven't we?

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 IPO ING less information available.

Well, this has been a great soul searching moment because having run, a public company,

the street and the quarterly filings cost us a fortune,

we didn't have that much money.

It was like our whole profit was went to the auditors,

and they were real pain in the butt because we didn't know how to do it.

And CFO at the huddle, we lose that person for 20 days.

But as an investor, I want all the information possible.

So I kind of feel I proposed the multiple.

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 the non sec, make us understand why we should be paying X for you.

Again, the price to respond because that's 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.

Yeah, I'm sure they complain about it.

Oh, yeah.

Because, look, one of the things that I hated about that being a public company is the conference call.

What are we going to say or do we do?

Well, what are what are you going to predict?

Are the margins going up?

I mean, they and I just said we can't give a forecast.

No.

If we don't do forecasts then they won't like us.

And but if we do the forecast we're missing forecasts.

And these kind of so we discussions they're really silly.

And I think that they I think they're a shame because they should take a lot of time and they're very, very misleading.

You said something in your book.

You watched you read the book, I read it, you are something I read.

A good excuse is one reason my wife, my wife said, 'I bet you read it.'

I bet she read it.

And this is something I wondered about in April when the stock market plunged after, Liberation Day.

Yeah, we were looking back,

But you talked about the fact that, like politicians, by and large, they don't.

Actually, Trump is a little different than most politicians,

but they don't typically run on the stock market.

And they also like 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 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, etc..

Why don't people talk about the shareholder class?

I saw Dr. Chris on the floor yesterday and you know, I used to go around the country with him talking about the shareholder class and ownership.

You 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 company 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 on some stocks.

And, you know, that's that's a totally fraught situation.

You don't want to offer him, you know, Alcoa.

So I always just said listen utilities.

And he said good, good.

This is what I want.

Yeah.

Because utilities frankly you know you're not blowing your head off with a with clutch power.

But he didn't pride himself in not knowing stocks.

He wish he had more time to learn stocks.

I think that he this 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 around, he thought that the Dow you like it down one yesterday the Dow determined it was the great really was the the 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.

But he liked the Dow.

Well he like yes he liked there was like the Nielsen's.

And I have to tell you the doing the apprentice quite a quite enjoyable event.

Wait tell his stories.

I want to hear the behind the scenes gossip.

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 nondisclosure.

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.

And 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 two people were doing it and one was doing nothing and or didn't show.

There were some of those instances, but in the end, they used my, 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 they did did conflict with mine quite often.

Here's a question.

It's sort of a media navel gazing question, but also a serious one.

So you've been doing the show for 20 years, which is phenomenal.

Thank you.

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

Well, 315, 315, the extra 15 minutes.

I always put them repetitive.

Guy I always said I get up earliest so that I beat everybody else, but that's losing its charm, frankly.

How do you benchmark your own performance?

I thought you guys had a wide bench because I, you know, I used to.

I was doing 250 initially.

I'm sorry.

How do I benchmark my own performance, your own performance when it comes to stock picking?

Because frankly, like 20 years of content, multiple stock picks.

Like, I can't remember the episodes we did two weeks ago.

Well, okay.

I mean, I have a child because he look at it, you can't really comp him.

If you sell, you have to give the profits away in the divisions of even way.

But it's all pretty public.

But I would gauge me by what I talk about endlessly.

And now this is not a people think that's anecdotal a 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 that's farcical.

I was with Tim Cook last Friday, in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

And he introduced me to someone is Jim Owen.

Don't trade Apple Cramer.

And that's how I feel.

And the best one I've ever had was Jensen.

Jensen wrong. When the stock was two I said we're done trading.

Please stop trading.

And then I renamed my dog.

He was Everest and I named him Nvidia.

And I go all over the country and I see how confused was the dog.

The start dog was an idiot.

I yelled stay! Yeah,

I always had to have steak in your hand.

Well, I did it.

I use a half foot pitbull half who knows what.

But I do think that when you look at the number of Nvidia millionaires.

Yeah.

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 blue energy last night and versus what you said about Apple.

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.

You mentioned, you get up at 315.

Yeah.

I used to get up at 4 a.m. every day, and people still think I do.

So they think I have this crazy work, think I'm going to sleep again a long time?

No, but 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 315.

Yeah.

Like, you read and work like crazy.

Give us a little. Yeah. Prep that goes into your eyes.

Okay.

Here's a wild one.

Yeah.

I start with the F2. Okay.

Because the FTX is one breaking news story every day.

Just one.

But it's great.

And today was the you know, what time do you read it?

Well I mean you're up at 315.

I do have to I mean I have a 4:00 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, dot com, Bloomberg, a New York Times, Wall street Journal

I spend a little more time on the Wall Street Journal mistake 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 emails. It's a series of PDFs.

How many emails do you get a day?

700.

Wow.

I look through the PDF.

Yeah.

And I look and read all the cell side research.

I read everything I think is relevant.

Oh, and I'm looking for something to say.

I have a memo that comes out, ten things I'm looking at.

I have to put that in 730.

And then after that, I have to do squawk on the street, and then I start again.

I start right writing the show.

And I've been running the show with my sister's kid since he was in high school.

He's now with me for 20 years.

Confirmation.

He's a genius, and he's come in.

The guy can just.

He.

I think he is two pieces going all at once and he's remarkable.

And we have a really good time doing Mad Money.

Anyway.

What time is this hour that you're.

Oh, this is beginning.

This is beginning at 1005.

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

Because you really are one of the things, you know, details of the calls and 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 read I had read this morning was General Mills.

Okay.

And I will read more of that because they talked about how the consumer is hurting.

And, you know, if you're hurting, maybe because Blue Buffalo actually was plus six.

But if you look at some of the brands, proprietary brands, they can be knocked off.

It's not like, when Costco could knock off Coca Cola.

Their stuff is you.

There's just more fungible, there's more elastic.

But I, I spend, you know, I'm a couple hours a day on

and now I'm finally making an after hours earnings.

So then like Apple reports earnings and then you do the work.

Yeah I have a great marriage

I, I put that out first because I record every day.

I finish the show at quarter six taped red tape.

I come home, I have a bite to eat.

I mean, I had to go out to dinner last night.

I hate it.

And then I say good night to my wife.

Wait.

What time do you go to bed?

I go to bed at 11.

She goes to bed at like a normal time.

So that's when I really break the marriage.

That's not the plan.

I 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 has a season because coverage feels like it goes on forever, doesn't it?

It's kind of perma.

But when we have that week where JPMorgan starts and Wells does, that weekend is just miserable.

Unfortunately, during the summer I garden, but my weekends are just filled with this.

I love gardening, we should talk all the time.

Are you vegetable big gardener?

Decorative flower garden age.

But I need one.

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?

Oh.

Oh, okay.

Hey, I had a radio show.

This this show.

And you know where that radio show, if you're Bloomberg greatest radio network in the world.

Bloomberg.

Oh, and the mayor run it ran it twice a day because he thought it was. It was a lot of it was educational.

Mike loves radio.

Oh, he really does.

Here's my big you know, I think if I say he was my biggest backer, that sounds like a joker.

But he, 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, why don't you leave?

Is he's not as supportive, but what can I say?

I mean, this is Bloomberg, and we should try to reintroduce sound effects on radio.

He loved it.

Yeah, because he wanted people to listen.

And that's what, you know, bull bears.

Yeah.

She sounds imagine incorrect buzzer and but a guillotine for they they had to cut the numbers in that kind of thing.

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

We'd have to leave it, use it, or you just say we're going to have producers insert the monopsony klaxon that I work for Bloomberg.

Very proud, a proud fellow where you know what I mean?

One of the 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.

No.

What do you actually do?

You think of yourself more as an educator versus a stock picker?

Yes.

This is really like, let's say, last night show.

I tried to explain that what matters today with the fed is will the curve what what will the curve change?

Will we will interest rates start going up on the long end or down long end down is the big win.

Long and up is what happened last year.

We we had the stutter step and then we had the December crash when 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 every Sydney Homer, we can mention the curve.

You can get inside the yield curve by Sydney home prices.

Read a lot of Homer.

It's five months.

No no no no no no.

Yeah yeah yeah.

Tracy's read Sydney I have I love that book.

Also most of the binge book about it, but most of it is charts.

That's what people don't understand.

It goes by really fast.

It's all charts.

She's a hitter.

Yeah, yeah.

But I listen you kind of, you know, you're a hitter.

This shows in this election it's okay to sell like this.

Yeah.

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

See these people that I've worked with here.

Yeah.

And I will Don, I just and these are the cream of the crop I mean I was it the street everybody who was good.

Oh yeah I, 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 work here.

Yeah.

And that's what the essence was.

Many, many great street alum have come through.

Okay.

I was going to 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, no, don't bring up, we're going to talk about a complete, surprise.

Were you a college age spa assist or Trotsky?

I like, tell us about you.

You mentioned it once, I think, in a video.

But then the video you also online.

Well, you've also tweeted about your Uncle Vlad about 100 times, with whom you do bear a passing resemblance.

Give us. What's the real story?

What's the real story?

I used to be stopped by it as Uncle Vlad all the time.

Yeah, no, but, Okay.

Mine was Sparta assist because I believe they were.

They were they Trotsky?

I'm. Yes, yes.

Yes, yes.

The workers united should never be defeated because we're about the.

We're about the workers owning the means of production.

So therefore we should own the company.

Yeah.

And now Trotsky, obviously gravely misunderstood.

Including the ice pick.

The ice pick.

Very bad.

Yeah, that was a very up and suboptimal day, the ice pick.

But I just think that that made a lot of sense.

And I went that way when you were at Harvard.

Yeah.

Okay.

We had pretty, pretty big following.

There were not that many Leninist.

I mean, you know, Trotsky is pretty good writer.

Yeah.

And Lennon was he wrote what is to be done, his version number two, what is to be done.

And that's a good read.

But Trotsky really was very thoughtful guy and also a great army general.

And people forget that his train must have hit the train.

The train man, only the money train to the Armenian money train and shield.

And that train really worked.

Yeah, well, I guess the fugitive train crash was a good train crash.

Anyway, I like Union Pacific here.

Oh, I like my transfer.

Seamless, I like seamless.

Well, I just can't help it.

Yeah.

I was a labor.

I was, but I also talk about you once did a Wildcat.

I ran a wildcat strike at the Phillies where I felt that we should have stuff.

We're doing all the work here.

I talk to these guys.

We're doing all the work here.

And yet everyone else, the 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.

That old chocolate you had to give that one third of your money, went back to the guy.

So you didn't get strawberry ice cream because you can't sell strawberry.

Nobody wants strawberry.

That was a big threat.

Hey, listen.

Shut up.

Quit.

We're going to get strawberry.

But.

But I had a 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 and a long time ago probably don't know.

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 led the wildcat 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.

So when did you see the light, though, from you?

Okay.

Actually, really great question.

The light was when I helped, I helped strike J.P. Stevens

and J.P. Stevens was a terrific towel company, linen company, with J.P. Stevens being a great Princeton alum,

and we knew where he lived, and we targeted the management.

We 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 I that was when I had a change of heart because I said, 'Wait a second, I just helped take away the livelihood, the 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 partnership thing, more focus on the the matter at hand, which is covering homicide.'

But I really felt awful about what we did.

We closed the company.

That was not the intent.

There is this tension, though, between, like, workers having jobs and shares actually going up, right.

Like, you have companies like the easy way to boost your share prices, to cut costs, which means laying off workers.

How do you square that?

Well, I think that you guys did a piece I think was you, Joe, about how that you've been thinking a lot about the billionaires, thinking a lot about this.

Yeah.

And I think that the way I square that is, is that if I go back to President Reagan, he was disgusted by how much the CEOs made and the difference in how the CEOs did never had to pay the price in the workers had to pay the prices.

This was this you talking about Reagan and I.

It's funny that Elizabeth Warren reminded me about this when I saw.

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 after the 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 going to run with it.

And nothing ever happened.

The president was a President Clinton, Oakland.

Well, they all said they didn't matter which president.

Nobody ever did.

But I said President Biden was hilarious.

Meet him on that train.

And he said 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, I'm going to take him a minus five.

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.

Wait, will you rank, presidential knowledge, Mark?

Well, first I would take Andrew Johnson because he was insider trade.

No, I, I don't know.

I mean, did you read any these books about Jacob?

No.

And what he did.

But I don't think this grant.

Oh, my God, he found out the call.

You know where they were on the gold standard?

Decomp.

Come on.

There were there were many, many stories about about presidents, I think helping by mistake.

So I have to give those guys.

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 Truscott.

I don't think he is.

No he's not.

What do you make? Yeah.

What do you make of this?

Are we in a like are we had a revolutionary moment?

Are the conditions of past revolutions present here in the United States?

No, they're not, because we have great job growth.

And the revolutions have typically been, preceded by famine.

Okay, well, then how scary is 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 Democrat,

I think different shade of liberal.

I mean, I remember, Occupy Wall Street and I you used to go to it every, you know, see what's going on, interview people.

And they were, 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 communists or leftist when a tear down Wall Street, they just I mean, they were just sleeping in a cold and a cold stone and saying, listen, we're unhappy.

And their ethos was zero.

I think that the mayoral race, I mean, look, I, I care about defunding police versus police because they care about public safety.

Sure.

And I saw what happened in San Francisco.

Zoran has changed.

I mean, he's changed his mind about that or he has.

That's why I don't think that we're going to be San Francisco.

I also think, by the way, we went to trains on time.

We went public safety.

I don't think that that's a I don't think they're in play.

I just really don't know.

I'm a new Jersey citizen.

I to love the governor of new Jersey.

He was my boss at Goldman Sachs.

But, I 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 devolve 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 on my show, but it was I saw Guy pull a knife.

I was in front.

I was behind him at Walgreens, get all the money.

And then the cops arrested him outside and they released him.

And I said, 'What are you doing?'

He said, 'Well, we are you a hunter?'

I said, 'I'm a fisherman.'

He said, 'Well, we do the same thing.'

We catch and release.

Oh, okay.

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

I don't believe that.

Seriously, I, I, you know, we're going to bring you down.

Oh, my God, I want a selfie.

It's never did use you.

I know you left the company.

He wants to see it.

I left the company, but it was not on.

It wasn't my idea.

I didn't want to leave the company, too.

It's 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.

Fun.

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 is.

It's so, 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 up in the Brooklyn Bridge Park, but it.

Yeah, yeah, this city's been redone, and a lot of it is that Mr. Mayor?

He's Mr. mayor.

Back to finance for a second.

Were you ever tempted to, recommend the inverse Kramer ETF?

Okay, so that guy got crushed.

Yeah, he did just annihilate.

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

Oh my God.

Right.

What a cool idea.

Yeah, I didn't want it.

You miss one of those things.

This is, you know, you go through and your wife says I don't want you acknowledge him.

I said, 'Well, that guy's a total joker.'

It's just 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, what what's right, because everyone has got an agenda at work.

But my my wife's agendas. Me.

Me.

So I always knew that she was just like a good lawyer.

There's, you know, journey client privilege.

There's there's what? Spousal privilege.

Yeah.

That must be feel so good.

I'm looking at the ticker now.

They click it.

It did terrible.

And then they liquidated it in February 2020.

Yeah.

How do you look.

You know I don't we don't get a fraction of it, but we get a little bit.

Do you ever like for your mental health like public abuse or public.

What do you how do you ever like do have any tips?

Okay.

Sure.

I mean, there were some of those people make fun of my voice in the Apple notes.

CNBC told me to be on Jon Stewart, and I didn't know the show and I didn't.

Oh yeah,

I would I didn't know he would be unfair and I didn't explain.

They were telling me basically that he was 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 later, right?

Yeah.

You did 16 years now.

And I meet younger people and they've never heard of it.

But those people never realize that the New York Giants were good football team kind of happens like, 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 me, I would say.

Like I would assume she goes she.

The whole time she was thinking about Joe.

So I know she was saying, but you know, you're not a mind reader.

Take people face value.

He was very mean person.

And that's a word that my daughter used in fifth grade.

But I don't know how 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 life was, as I mentioned with JP Stevens, is a terrible thing.

So I and I didn't deserve it.

But that's you know, it's like it's like the movie Unforgiven.

It's got nothing to do with.

Speaking of the financial crisis, though, you did have a series of like, memorable moments, let's just say in 2007, 2008, including the rant about Bear Stearns.

Incredible.

Yeah.

It's so.

Well, yeah.

Well, the 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.

Yeah.

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 Erin 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, which who really, I think did no, 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, I am I used to being demeaned.

It doesn't bother me.

It doesn't bother me that he used to, but I do say that that rant holds up and, Does.

Yeah.

Oh, and then I did that other thing where I went, if you if you on the today show, if you need your money any time the next five years and the market fell 40% after this, that you should take it out now because I didn't when people it took by the way, took five years to get the market back to it was I was worried about people on a fixed income.

Would you fix them?

Me in 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 the show.

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?

Yeah.

And and, you know, I knew it was right, but no, I had such, angst.

Even though I was right.

I was attacked by so many people.

But, yeah, of course it's a dish.

Best taste.

It's a very.

How long you got to do this for?

Like 315, like I don't again, I don't really know, but I like, feel like my health is I have the even the years where I got up super early all the time like they remember used to.

I remember that all the time.

Yeah.

God, I love it so much.

I do and I mean less.

I was doing something last night at dinner. I really wanted to get home because I wanted to formulate a thesis on dreams.

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 at 12 of these.

So I don't know one.

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.

Mmhm.

Offered six weeks I take four, but I it's because I love it.

It is because I love it.

It's not a sickness.

It really isn't.

So how has your research process changed over the years?

Because again, you've been in the game for decades.

So I go out to dinner with Jensen one and he says, 'I know you spend all your time reading these reports.'

I just urge you to ChatGPT the advanced and get the and get the concise version and then see if it's one you want to do.

And that has changed my life, because they'll be ten and they'll be.

It turns out that Pulte home was important not because of Bill Pawlenty'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, great for me because it allowed me during the real earnings season to have 15, reports and just say, 'Okay, I'm really going to do Cat and Procter.'

Yeah,

I think Tracy and I have both found like, there are a lot of things that, charging PD 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 a, it's very.

Have you tried perplexity finance?

I used perplexity maybe ten times this morning.

It is shorter, quicker.

George, search for me on.

I think it's impressive.

Yeah, it is very impressive.

I wanted Apple to buy him.

I was pushing that dream 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 judge made a decision.

It's possible someone could pay them.

We talk about China a lot on the show.

Are they, are this the kind of I.

Wow.

No, I got this.

I was rooting for you.

I never heard that.

Yeah, well, the Eighth Army is the Eighth Army's famously.

You're out of it.

Yeah, well, what is this?

I only saw that because I was reading through all your old tweets.

Oh, what is this?

The kind of, like, movement?

And what does it have to do with contemporary China?

What's the guy who won the award for?

For shoveling the most coal for steel.

And Stalin loved him.

Communist obsessed with steel.

Yeah.

I always wondered why they always work every plan.

The five year for China was was the same.

You know, they they're long a lot of steel.

They're, China's direct the steel market presidents.

Ted right on the trans shipments by old buddy Peter Navarro's right on the transcripts.

It's wild that that he's my old buddy, but he's probably,

And he went to jail bed, not Yale jail because he went to Tufts.

But I, I do think that when you look at China, sometimes I'm very harsh about them.

Okay.

But, my friend, that's because my father worked for Saint Regis and climaxed Union camp.

He worked for a 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 in the closing because the Chinese targeted the gift wrapped industry.

If you go to Costco, all you have is Chinese gift wrap.

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 of restaurants and suggested they use doggy bags that are have their own name.

And he had a drawstring doggy bag that that the Chinese made for two bucks.

He sold it for, and he then had the run of his lifetime from 70 to 92.

He worked until the till the month he died.

He actually had a good last month.

And what's incredible is the Chinese treat him like kings.

And when he died, they gave me the proceeds for three straight years.

And and they were the best bosses in the world.

They had no idea of you.

You call it China, the greatest capitalist nation of all.

It is.

They just crush it.

Guy.

He really, really close.

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

No, no, I it is very funny because I do think that the biggest threat I mean what they're doing in video when you grow up, I do want a video to be the platform.

But I haven't been to China.

So, second, Dali, my son went to China for, to, camel surf and he broke his, 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 horse, but no, no, no, no, my wife foom over for Zhang.'

I came back.

But the Chinese are a conundrum for us because they work harder than we do.

But we may be.

We may have them here.

I know the exports.

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 it.

But the mills close.

You know, the mills, the mills, the mills.

I mean, now you can't bring back the pirates mill as good pizza by George Packer in the Atlantic about that.

But I know we're really rambling here, I shouldn't ramble.

Let me ask one cliche question.

Lots of times like this show lots of talk about market valuations at the moment.

Froth in the market.

We're recording this.

I should have said on Thursday, September 17th.

Do you do you see froth?

Do you see a bubble?

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 those who want to speculate could do Palantir, because Karp is, you know, Karp is one of the greatest.

He just his ontology work is incredible.

It's better than Scientology ontology.

But I want people to stop.

I can 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 lose everything.

And then I would.

Anything I tried to do would be wrong.

It's like when I was in college, he scored the racetrack.

And then there was a guy like Andy Buyer 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, well, we know that that really is Einstein did not call it the eighth wonder of the world,

but we know that that is a much better way to make money.

Much better.

I have one last question is very closely related to this, but one of them, why are you wearing a button then?

Why aren't you wearing a French collar?

I don't know.

That's my.

It was.

It was not wrinkly.

All right, you got wrinkly.

Yeah.

I going to have Kramer on today's.

No, I like that you you don't have to press that because it has some sort of weird to you.

Did you buy that?

And tell me, where did I get that?

I got it, you in a clothes So.

All right.

I'm pretty sure that was an insult.

Yeah.

No no no no I yeah.

Because I, you know, I, I'm very much

I would have said Sheehan if I went in.

So I bought my, I bought my wife some lingerie on she and it was thank God we used you know, match light.

Don't have to have to put gasoline on the, you know, one last question.

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 the like, oh, you know, it's like a few a couple of years ago, though, like some rap c3 AI is like booming.

This is oh my God, that should be crazy.

I knew Tom, right.

And things like that, or like, oh, this, you know, this meme stock went up.

Dogecoin is rallying.

We must be in a bubble.

Okay.

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.

So you've got to there's a simple solution.

You take out over time your cost basis, and then you play with the houses money.

And then I'm okay because I'm a first do no harm guy.

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.

And or some people feel that Google ad invidious.

I mean, I worked enough on video to know that people were on Google Bubble in 2005, 2006.

Well, I mean, look, I recommended Google at 88.

And I was investigated by the CNBC General Council for why I used 88.

It's so it's so big.

And I said because I didn't use 300.

300 was way low.

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

I was short, I went I