Investing
Cramer started investing in the stock market during his time at law school. Cramer began promoting his holdings by leaving stock picks on his answering machine, impressing The New Republic owner Martin Peretz, who gave him $500,000 to invest; Cramer earned Peretz $150,000 in two years.
His track record helped Cramer obtain employment in 1984 as a stockbroker with Goldman Sachs' Private Wealth Management division. Cramer's success in this position led him to found his own hedge fund, Cramer & Co. (later Cramer, Berkowitz, & Co.), in 1987. The fund operated out of the offices of hedge fund pioneer Michael Steinhardt's Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Co., and early investors included Eliot Spitzer (a Harvard classmate, one of his oldest friends, and former Governor of New York who resigned), Brill, and Peretz.
During Cramer's tenure of the fund, from 1988–2000, he had one year of negative returns in 1998. The following year in 1999 the fund returned 47%, and in 2000 28%, beating the S&P 500 by 38 percentage points. Cramer retired from his hedge fund in 2001, finishing with a 24% average annual return over 14 years and having "routinely home $10 million a year and more." The fund was taken over by his former partner Jeff Berkowitz after Cramer's retirement. During that time, he was also an "editor at large" for Smart Money magazine, and was accused of unethically combining his investing and reporting activities when he bought more of stocks that he recommended just before the recommendation article came out, contributing to a $2 million personal gain. Today, Cramer is barred by CNBC from trading stocks with his personal funds although he makes picks and sells his recommendations.
In 1996, Cramer co-founded TheStreet.com, Inc. with The New Republic editor Martin Peretz, one of his hedge fund's original clients. Cramer is currently a market commentator and adviser to the TheStreet.com, and is its second largest shareholder. Cramer also manages a charitable trust stock portfolio which is tied to TheStreet.com through a paid subscription service called the Action Alerts PLUS Portfolio.
Cramer currently works on a new project as part of TheStreet.com called MainStreet.com. An earlier project, TheRoad.com, was not successful.
Cramer claimed to be worth $50 to $100 million in October 2005. In 2009, Cramer received earnings of $461,276 from TheStreet.com.
Read more about this topic: Jim Cramer, Biography
Famous quotes containing the word investing:
“After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)