Customer Reviews

You Got Screwed! Why Wall Street Tanked and How You Can Prosper

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Cramer is an easy target for criticism, but this simple book has tremendous value.

I took this book with me on a 7 day Caribbean cruise and had a great time reading it under the coconut trees of St. Maarten and Antigua. Being away from CNBC, Wall Street Week, and the constant media attention to the stock market was a welcome reprise.

And so was this book.

At first glance this book may seem a little bit light on information. It's only 117 pages long at a time when we expect about 300 pages from a typical John Wiley-type finance book. But it's not the number of pages that counts, it's the information, personal interpretations by Cramer, and solid financial wisdom that matter.

By the time I actually got around to reading this book (on those great beaches), I must say that I truly enjoyed it!

The book is divided into 3 very distinct parts.

The first part is about how the public got totally used by Enron, Worldcom, and Rhythms Net type scandals. Since all of these events were so recent it doesn't take long before you start recalling all the pieces of information that came out about these cases. Mr. Cramer does a nice job of taking us all back to those days and recapping what went wrong. Each one was revealing in its own unique way. And yes, we got used!

The second part pinpoints the other culprits in the stock market's two and a half year demise (and giant NASDAQ crash!). Cramer reminds as of the all-stocks-all-the-time mentality that came to be at the market's peak. Also the potential danger of executive options, shady accounting, too many one-way mutual funds, and always bullish brokerage firms. And by the way, these culprits are still at today!!!

And finally, there is the last section about what to do. Here is current advice and simple guidelines to avoid getting used again in the future. Some of the gems are:

1) Have some bonds for income
2) Have some cash for annual buying opportunities
3) Buy stocks in incremental "get your feet wet" amounts
4) Buy at least 5 stocks from 5 different industries
5) It's okay to sell
6) Sell some on the way up
7) Sell your losers because bad stocks may not go up at all
8) Know your stocks and how they make money so you have a feeling of their value.
9) Buy index funds for diversification and low expenses
10) Hedge funds are better than mutual funds in concept. Here's something to research more on. Mutual funds are financial products who's time has gone.

For those readers who want an enjoyable read, who watch CNBC, have an interest in tech stocks, and feel like they were used and want to avoid it in the future, here's a book for you. It's a reminder of how to keep your head when things get too crazy on either the upside or downside.

A very timely piece!

P.S.: As a fellow author I can understand Mr. Cramer's disappointment in the reviewing process. Some people think it's a sign of brilliance to degrade intellectual property when it's simply a matter of them just not getting it. My advice to these negative types is to stand aside if you're not going to be fair. Let the reader have a chance to appreciate the author's work....the content and the spirit.

I have undergone usual love-hate type feelings towards Cramer multiple times. It is really diffficult to understand him, especially when he was writing his trading diary on realmoney.

Now that the greatest bear market is (probably) over, and I lost my share of money in it, I understand what Cramer was saying back then. I mean in 2000. In March. In 2001.

This book is small, and I had missed a lot of games that wcom and enron played with unsuspecting people. I was already out of markets as I could not survive earlier waves of selling.

I went back and read Cramer's writings in March, 2000. Most people think he is just a pumper - I was surprised that he repeatedly urged people to get out of markets - "cash is king" was his mantra during the bearish cycle. And he nailed it both, the great bull ride and the bear ride, with almost correct timing.

You can hate him, he did what he had to do at his hedge fund, a lot of what may be immoral - he had to, it his job. But his writing has been on the mark - you can't deny that.
As for the plug, he mentions thestreet.com few times which is a FREE news site. I do not recall him mentioning realmoney.com ever in this book, which is paid content. At the end, he just "mentions" his own investment product "alerts", but that is only if you want to do it with him. His first choice is always a seasoned investment adviser whom you can trust.

I am not his employee, just a general trader. I would now trust Cramer more than any other Wall St analyst or a journalist who doesn't know a thing about the markets.

The title of this very short book should be "You Got Screwed By James Cramer". In this book Cramer pinpoints all the usual suspects except 1 very culpable party - James J. Cramer. No one was more bullish on ultimately worthless technology stocks at the top of the bubble than Cramer. He hyped them repeatedly to subscribers to his website including his infamous "Winners of the New World" speech that has been widely recognized as the most damaging rhetorical chicanery of the entire bubble. While there are literally hundreds of other examples of Cramer hyping tech stocks throughout the end of the bubble and during a huge portion of the decline (he hated them at the recent bottom), it is the "New World" speech that will rank in history with the old "permanent plateau of prosperity" nonsense from the 1920s.

This tome simply reeks of hypocrisy. Yes, Jack Grubman is due for some criticism. But when The Wall Street Journal attempted to subject grubman to some accountability at a time that it might have saved the little guy some money, it was Cramer who came to Grubman's defense and proclaimed him a great moneymaker through his little fiefdom at The Street.com.

That is just one example of Cramer trying to cast himself as the great savior of the individual investor while refusing to even acknowledge his own vast role in destroying the wealth of anyone who paid for his advice over the past few years. It is easy for Cramer to fault Ken Lay after the fact, but harder to confront his own repeated calls for new bull markets that never appeared. It is easy for Cramer to feign indignance over Worldcom, but much harder to admit that his own model portfolios have probably cost people millions. It is easy for Cramer to cast aspersions on the behavior of institutions during the bubble, but harder to face the fact that people who bought his IPO on the first day near $70 might now still be siting with a $3 stock.

This book is 117 pages of after-the-fact finger pointing by a man who has as much to be sorry for as anyone who was in the Wall Street game in the last few years. But to be Cramer is to never say you are sorry, to sublimate your own role in the financial destruction of the individual investor in a fury of cynical indignation and obnoxious bluster.

This is a short book describing some of the reasons why the tech bubble burst, the stock market tanked and how many companies lied, cheated and stole. It is a totally worthless book for any that are already seasoned in the business, however, for the neophyte or unlearned investor that has money on the line already, this book could prove priceless.

Some time back I reviewed a book called "Net Zero", also a book describing how the bubble burst. I wrote in my review that the problem with the book was that it was much to technical for the beginner, i.e. the guy that really needs to read it. So the simple fact that this book is short, basic and too the point, shouldn't be considered a negative unless you already know the information.

If you're considering putting money into the market for the first time, and you don't already understand why the market tanked and how certain parts of the industry are stinking thieves, then you'd be foolish to pass on reading it. It could save you a fortune.

There are quite a few terrible reviews for this book, mainly along the lines of "Gee, we already know this, duh!" But for those of us not watching the MSNBC ticker and dont bet our life savings on whether a share rises or falls, its quite informative.

He details not only the fall of Enron, but how and why the telecoms rose so high and burned out so brightly. He exposes the inner machinations of mutual funds and how the analysts really make their money. He even offers a bit of good advice on not falling into bad companies and avoiding risky investments.

I admit I wish there was more, and, yes, he did reference thestreet.com (his website) a bit more than is prudent but it was all in the spirit of getting the information out. All in all, the promises he made with the title and back cover of the book, he delivered upon. If you are expecting anything more than to know why your portfolio fell apart and a little advice on sewing it back together, check out another book. Otherwise, its worth the read.

Jim Cramer advice and insight can literally lose you your money within a matter of months. I've never seen anyone, in the history of the stock market, and in part thanks to the internet, with the ability to lose money as quickly as Jim Cramer can. Cramer builds portfolio's then walks away from them after they lose enormous amounts of money. In 2001, Jim Cramer's Action Alert Portfolio lost over 25% within a matter of a few months. Cramer had told his followers that this was the only mid to long term investment portfolio they would EVER need to follow. He walked away from it. He is a charlatan, a snakeoil salesman, and a con artist extraordinaire.

Mr. Cramer's writing, both in this short book and on his Web site, TheStreet.com, is such a textbook example of denial and projection that it ought to be used as such in college psychology courses.

At the very top of the technology bubble, Mr. Cramer loudly and repeatedly proclaimed his love of tech stocks that had no earnings and no book value. He urged investors to buy them and forget them.

As the bubble popped, Mr. Cramer repeatedly called stock market bottom after stock market bottom, publicly maligning one analyst who had the foresight to predict that the Nasdaq would one day hit 1,500.

Mr. Cramer's own record as a stock picker speaks for itself. He doesn't make his Action Alert portfolio performance public for a reason: It badly trails many mutual funds. One of his earlier personal portfolios that he touted on his Web site simply disappeared after suffering abismal performance.

Mr. Cramer makes some cogent points in his book. But self-righteousness combined with hypocricy is a toxic mix indeed.

...if you paid for this book, that is. It serves up a lot of dirt on some of the principal culprits in the debacles at Enron, Worldcom etc. and blasts the SEC for its dereliction of duty. Moderately interesting but ancient history, and not germane to the question of how you can rebuild your finances. That question isn't addressed until the last chapter of this slim volume, and then Cramer just rehashes the kind of advice you get in any decent book on investing for beginners. He does make a good point in stressing the importance of when to sell, which is often overlooked in other books. On the whole though, this is a slight and insubstantial book, quite disappointing and not worth the asking price.

The author has been responsible for more capital incineration than other other journalist in the history of Wall Street. I concur that the level of hypocrisy in this book is unmatched.

It is amazing at the level of intellectual dishonesty that Cramer maintains. He claims to be looking out for the little guy and rails about accountability yet he has none. His portfolios speak volumes about his expertise as they are all massively red and hidden from public view. He has started others and then abandoned them when losses were so great they represented a major embarassment to himself and his organization.

The book itself is a poor attempt to generate publicity and at 110 pages lacks any kind of "rigor" as Cramer likes to say.

Highly recommend not buying it or even bothering to check it out at the library.

This book is yet another example of an author cashing in on his own failures. Cramer points the finger at everyone but himself when discussing the market crash of the past few years. His own terrible record of stock picking and recommendations is well documented.

Of particular amusement are the glowing 5 star book reviews he receives from employees of his own company.