While I was starting to get into dividend investing, I also read a few books by Jim Cramer that I checked out from the library. I read Real Money, Stay Mad For Life, and Getting Back to Even. I did not start watching his show until I had gotten through those three books. I found out later you can download it for free from the Mad Money RSS feed.
I used to post the feed entry if there were any typos. I might get back to doing that.
He is known for making some bad calls (Bear Sterns, Lenny Dykstra). He did some questionable stuff at his hedge fund. His show certainly has a lot of energy. Some would say too much.
But having read his books before watching his show, I think Cramer is worth listening to. In his books he talks about dividend investing. He talks about how to look at companies and value stocks. He talks about how to read financial statements. He tells people that they should study companies they want to invest in.
And between the yelling and the throwing stuff, he says the same things on his show.
I know a guy who was a trader on the floor of the stock exchange in the late 1980s-early 1990s. He says a lot of the same things Cramer does. One favorite: Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs and sheep get slaughtered.
One criticism I have is that he tends to have a lot of the same CEOs on: AGN, HAIN, PVH, SAP. SAP is pretty big. The others, not so much. Although I do like hearing from the CEOs of NAT, ETN and HON. He doesn’t always ask them the hard questions, especially with oil and gas companies that engage in fracking. “Could you tell our audience how safe fracking is?” Seriously, what do you think the CEO of a driller will say to that? Once he asked the CEO of Pepsi about the safety of tap water, and she recommended that people just drink Aquafina, and he let it pass. Going with bottled water would be expensive. People don’t just drink water. People cook and clean with it as well.
And the talks with CRM are always a real love fest. You’re so great, Marc, really!!! XOXO
He is a bit wacky. He does make a lot of recommendations. But he tells you to make your own decisions and teaches you how to look at companies and what to look for. I think he does advocate a lot of good ideas: Looking at financial statements and listening to conference calls, diversification, and investing (and reinvesting) in dividend stocks.
I wish he would do a segment every now and then on dividend growth stocks and talk about some of the lists of dividend growth stocks that are out there. Perhaps he could have David Fish or David Van Knapp on his show to talk about the Dividend Champions or Dividend Aristocrats.