Learning about the stock market

I was finishing up some numbers on the trades I had done today when Jim Cramer’s show, Mad Money, came on my CNBC feed. I don’t really watch his show much anymore but I did when I was just starting out. I would recommend it to anyone who is new to the stock market. Jim Cramer is a legend on Wall Street. He is a former hedge fund manager and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He is affable, smart and committed to making the market accessible to people. You will learn a lot of the basics, especially vocabulary and market mechanics, if you watch him regularly. The show airs every night at 6pm on CNBC.

Mr Cramer knows more about the market than most people will learn in a lifetime, and he loves to share his insights. His show is colorful and fun. Jim has had a long career on Wall Street. He has worked a well known investment bank (Goldman Sachs) and besides his current show he has side gig as a CNBC correspondent. He also still manages a charitable investment trust and works with TheStreet.com. He has also written a number of great books about investing (Get Rich Carefully is a favorite of mine) and just generally lives and breathes the market.

True, he has come under some criticism for his outlandish behavior on his show (he has buzzers and sound effects and will dress up to make a point) but he does so with a purpose. He understands the stock market can be intimidating to newbies and he wants to demystify it. Yes, he does tend to fawn on his CEO guests, but he would not coax as many onto his show if he wasn't so positive. He does get behind some stocks that don’t work out, but to his credit he admits his mistakes. In doing so, he reminds us that mistakes are part of investing - no one gets every trade right (don’t remind me about Ali Baba). But learning when to admit a mistake, when and how to take a loss (“Your first loss is your best loss”) and then moving on is part of the process of learning to invest. You just have to get more right than wrong. It’s like life.