Jim Cramer grew up in the town of Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, outside
Philadelphia. He went to Springfield Township High School in Montgomery County.
He learned the value of a dollar by selling ice cream at Veterans Stadium
during Philadelphia Phillies games. Cramer graduated magna cum laude from
Harvard College in 1977 where he was an editor and the President of the Harvard
Crimson. After college, he worked as a journalist at the Los Angeles Herald
Examiner. He went back to school to get a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law
School and, after graduating in 1984, went to work in Goldman Sachs' Sales &
Trading department.
In 1987, he started his own hedge fund company, Cramer Berkowitz, working
out of the offices of hedge fund pioneer Michael Steinhardt's Steinhardt, Fine,
Berkowitz, Co. After a stellar 2000, Cramer's fund finished up the year +36%,
compared to -11% for the S&P 500 and -6% for the Dow Industrials. But after the
tech bubble burst, Cramer retired from the hedge fund business, turning the
company over to his long-time partner, Jeff Berkowitz. While Cramer's success
in producing high returns for his fund was unmistakeable, he began to
concentrate on his passion for journalism.
He co-founded TheStreet.com and is the Markets Commentator and Advisor to
the CEO, Thomas Clarke, Jr., and went on to work at CNBC, where he was a host
on America Now and Kudlow & Cramer with Lawrence Kudlow. He now has a radio
show called RealMoney Radio and his own television show focused on stocks, Mad
Money with Jim Cramer. He exhibits his encyclopedic knowledge of equity
securities during the Lightning Round segment on Mad Money where he quickly
analyzes stocks suggested by callers. One of the popular catchphrases on the
Mad Money is "Booyah," which seems to have taken the form of a greeting as well
as an enthusiastic celebration. Also popular is his ritual of throwing his
chair across the studio before the Lightning Round, as well as throwing his
book -- Jim Cramer's Real Money--Sane Investing in an Insane World --
whenever a caller mentions it on air. Thanks to his energetic rhetoric, his
insightful analysis of stocks, and his off-the-wall antics, Mad Money has
become CNBC's most popular show.
In 1988, Cramer married his wife, Karen, whom he refers to as the "Trading
Goddess" (Karen was a professional trader herself; Cramer claims that she
earned the nickname before the two met). Karen stopped trading full-time after
the birth of their first child in July 1991. They currently live in Summit, New
Jersey, with their two daughters.
Having already made a fortune in the market, he now uses his show, book, and
website to help the "common man" become wealthy. He eschews Wall Street
orthodoxy and recommends that people devote 20% of their portfolio to pure
speculation because, in the long run, that one "lottery ticket" stock will
greatly outweigh the losses. He also strongly encourages viewers to do research
before and after investing in stock selections; he is not a fan of the "Cramer
bounce" (the phenomenon in after-hours trading where his stock selections
suddenly increase in price solely on his recommendation) as he feels those
listeners have not "done their homework".
