March 14, 2009 9:25 AM PDT

Jim Cramer's full explanation of stock market manipulation

by Dave Rosenberg
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"Daily Show" host Jon Stewart ran a clip of stock commentator Jim Cramer, in which Cramer explained how to manipulate the markets, including Apple's shares.

Stewart showed the clip on Thursday during the now-infamous interview of Cramer. Here is the full clip for your enjoyment/depression/entertainment.

Dave Rosenberg dishes up "Software, Interrupted" with nearly 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to multiple start-up IPOs to open-source enterprise software companies. He is co-founder of MuleSource and currently serves as the general manager of Hardy Way. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can contact Dave via e-mail at softwareinterrupted@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @daveofdoom.
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by professionaladventurer March 14, 2009 3:09 PM PDT
That interview with Stewart was great. Cramer got pummeled and beat and pummeled and left for dead, it was GREAT!
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by Norseman March 14, 2009 3:22 PM PDT
I sincerely hope that the recent Stewart/Cramer interview and clips like this wake people up to what a weasel this jerk Cramer is! It's obvious he's having "fun" playing with the savings and retirement funds of the average investor. Let's hope his career as a financial "entertainer" will soon be over!
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by bojennett March 14, 2009 3:27 PM PDT
What a slug Cramer is. But unfortunately for him, he was the slug who decided to stick his neck out. All these hedge fund day-trading stock-pimping guys and gals do this. I hope the focus doesn't stay on Cramer and instead moves into the system, because it's the system that created guys like Cramer to begin with. If we let him be the fall guy, it would seem "satisfying", but there are hundreds more just like him, waiting to take his place. It's the system that needs to change, and the industry isn't going to change it themselves. Yes, government has to get in there. Government may screw it up, and go too far the other way, but can anybody honestly argue the system is "working" for the average American NOW?!?!?!
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by websterphreaky March 14, 2009 3:36 PM PDT
Jim Crammit, can cram it! He is so full of sh it. Four years ago he told everyone on Bill Handel's show (KFI) to buy buy buy Lucent (he was holding thousands of shares), so the price went up for a week or so and then CRASHED; ultimately losing 80% of it's value over the next 6 months based on some REAL BAD financial,s that I'll bet the A Hole Crammit knew about!

The jerk is a total fraud! If he's worth so much money as he always claims, then WHY is this **** doing a low paying Cable show??? WHY isn't he making BILLIONS on the stock market if he's so damn smart??

Because Jim Crammit is full of SH IT, not wisdom.
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by unruhly March 14, 2009 5:46 PM PDT
You know why Webster - he suffers from megalomania AND he is still manipulating the market. Probably more than when he had 5 Million to toss around. A lot more. He needs to be investigated by the SEC.
by aka_tripleB March 15, 2009 2:00 PM PDT
He's on a low paying cable show trying to brainwash a bunch of morons who watch his show into manipulating the stock market for him. Obviously, there aren't enough people that are being conned for his scheme to work.
by FruitSpikeAndMoon March 16, 2009 8:32 PM PDT
Cramer is two-faced, but he isn't a liar.

He was a dirtbag hedge fund manager for a decade and a half. He probably pulled basically every trick in the book, even though he consistently claims that he never resorted to the very most horribly blatantly illegal of tactics that some hedge funds use. Maybe this is even true; nonetheless, it is a sure bet that he did many things that were blatantly illegal nonetheless.

Since retiring from the hedge fund business, he's actually done quite a bit of good. His books are chock full of legitimate, useful educational information for an investor. His segments on his shows unrelated to stock picks are insightful. He does, after all, know exactly how best to play the market both legally and illegally.

Anyone could pick apart his stock picks, but to do so is to expect him to be superhuman. He, GASP, gets picks wrong, contradicts himself at times, and sometimes makes really, really, really bad calls like Bear Stearns. At the same time, there is nothing to suggest that these aren't legimate mistakes, made because he's only human. He is VERY transparent with his picks and his own portfolio - he literally broadcasts his own trades to the world BEFORE he makes them and all of his picks on the show are tracked online. If he wasn't so transparent and up front, it would be more than just ranters in online threads that would be attacking him for pumping up his own holdings.




What Stewart did in this interview wasn't to discredit Cramer as a lying airbag, but to expose that he puts the kid gloves on when talking to ordinary people. He doesn't lie, but rather, he omits almost all of the bad stuff, which the despicably casual, even encouraging, nature of the 2006 interview shows he knows full well occurs on an everyday basis. His show achieves its stated purposes, but, BY GOD, on what planet does it meet journalistic standards for Cramer to simply act like everything he knows about financial dishonesty doesn't exist.

Stewart's thrust: rather than running a slightly informative stock-picking show that acts surprised when a CEO lies, Cramer should be using his high profile to publicly call out all the crap that happens on Wall Street. Anything less shows an utter lack of journalistic integrity.



I believe that a two-faced Cramer still offers more than most of the pundits on CNBC, but Stewart is absolutely right: we deserve a financial media wherein we would get a one-faced Cramer who would expose rather than cover up wall-street. When a two-faced Cramer is one of the best we have, the financial media is fundamentally broken (as in far, far, far beyond the brokeness of media at large).
by gshealey March 14, 2009 6:21 PM PDT
Lets all call for the firing of JIM Cramer! He has caused thousands of people to lose their life savings and act like he didnt know what was going on. Join me and Call:
1-877-251-5685 ask for his firing or we will refuse to spend money with their sponsors. And send it to your friends too
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by Dylan_Wisor March 14, 2009 7:41 PM PDT
No.
by Dylan_Wisor March 14, 2009 7:42 PM PDT
I almost felt bad watching Cramer get thrashed by Jon Stewart, particularly when he turned deathly pale after each clip.
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by retrosteve March 14, 2009 7:57 PM PDT
If Cramer loses his job after this, as Tucker Carlson did after Stewart laid into him, Stewart may have to drop the comedy at some point and just become a hard-hitting journalist. Or maybe he can continue to do both ! It's nice to be able to retreat, as he did on Crossfire, to the "I'm just a comedian" defense.
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by jpatrick5 March 14, 2009 8:20 PM PDT
I have to agree with bojennet. It's satisfying to get Cramer fired, but he is truly only the tip of the iceberg. If somebody with as ordinary an intelligence as Cramer can do it, think of all the hedge fund managers out there who are doing it even better: not just manipulating, but controlling the market.
It's happening systemically because of the ridiculous margins allowed to these hedge funds and unethical jerks (35 to 1... as Cramer says, it really doesn't take much money to have a huge impact.). That's why gas "futures" went up to ridiculous heights even though there was plenty of gas, that's why commodities are no longer related to actual agriculture or horticulture. it's why the market does its thing ? often completely counterintuitive. Stewart was right: it's not about Cramer. It's a system that is designed to pat the "little investor" on the head, while manipulating the market to make millions on completely unethical behaviors.
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by surfinburfin March 14, 2009 8:22 PM PDT
Stewart and the rest of yous crack me up. Do you really believe that whoever handles Stewart's dough does anything different than what Cramer does? It's legal, it's a game, and if you don't like it, and you don't know anything about economics, don't play. Give us a break. This "holier than thou" victim mentality is getting really old. If you feel bad because you made a few bad calls in your stocks, you only have yourself to blame.
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by catbutt5 March 15, 2009 5:05 AM PDT
It's not legal. It may not yet be illegal but there's no law making this legal. What John Cramer is describing is outright fraud. It's manipulation of the markets for nothing more than short-term personal gain with absolutely no regard for the consequences. This is the kind of s**t the SEC is supposed to be preventing but weasels have a way of getting around any regulations put in place.
If you were manipulating bets in Vegas by throwing rocks at the horse race after you've place your bet, you'd soon find yourself in the desert possibly digging your own grave at gunpoint.
Frankly, if you think this is the proper way to play the game, go kick your parents in the ass and tell them what failures they are for not teaching you anything about ethics.
by asongfirst March 14, 2009 9:41 PM PDT
His style of delivery is intended to have a disgusting effect, because what's happening IS DISGUSTING, isn't it? That's how the big boys play, and how he once worked it. The interview was given to be of help to the small investor and to government regulators who should wake up to what's happening. He delivers it in a flippant, cold hearted, "who gives a damn, especially since it's legal, and the fools who should be watching out for you aren't!"

Cramer's show is a blessing to anyone interested in investing and by the way, that interview does not come from his show. Read his books and watch his show and you'll find that he has changed sides, since his days of working for Goldman Sachs and being a hedge fund manager.

He's trying to educate, be of help, and to do so, he believes he needs to entertain, which is why he delivered that message, as if he pulled a curtain back, so you could hear from an actual hedge fund manager, which he knew once upon a time, all too well!

Bottom line, Cramer's been one of the good guys now, for quite some time, albeit you might not be able to realize that, having come to know of him thru Jon Stewart!
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by Dylan_Wisor March 15, 2009 5:31 PM PDT
Are you kidding me? People have been calling Jim Cramer out for YEARS. Before, people thought he was stupid and knew nothing about investing, but it turned out he did and was playing those who didn't.
by AJBillups March 15, 2009 7:06 AM PDT
I reviewed the entire tape from which John Stewart took his clips. I have concluded that Jim Cramer is a despicable character for market manipulation via disinformation, and I have suggsted that CNBC fire him immediately.
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by PutTrader March 15, 2009 8:34 AM PDT
I'm a retired Wall Street upper level manager--not somebody who just stumbled on this thread.

Cramer is an asset to our the industry in that he attempts to educate his audience. Compared to previous hucksters on CNBC he is remarkably honest--there has never been a whiff of suggestiong that he was "on the take" for shilling stocks.

Stewart was a dishonest sleazeball for cherry picking through the thousands of comments Cramer has made on the air--it's a shame that Cramer didn't have the cojones to shut him down by pointing that out.

Cramer had the temerity to suggest what any reasonable American knows. The Obama administration is a disaster for our economy now--and will be for generations to come. We need him as the president like we need a cold sore.
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by Norseman March 16, 2009 7:45 AM PDT
Cramer is the most "remarkably honest" that CNBC has to offer??? God help us!!!!! No wonder the markets are in shambles.
by PutTrader March 16, 2009 1:45 PM PDT
Did I say that Cramer was "the most remarkably hontest that CNBC has to offer?"
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by kingtrae79 March 18, 2009 2:49 PM PDT
no, but you did say "Compared to previous hucksters on CNBC he is remarkably honest" , and that's basically the same thing. If you're going to try and play jedi mind tricks with words, at least gain some aptitude in it first.. but be forewarned, we're not the corporate lackeys that you're used to managing that just agree with everything you say thinking they're going to get a leg up. you're just not equipped. --I can smell you from here-- you produced nothing as a wall street manager, and you're still producing just that-- nothing. quit while you're ahead
by kingtrae79 March 18, 2009 2:59 PM PDT
--oh You're already retired, well stay that way and do it quietly if you don't mind. you already rode your golden parachute on out before the crap hit the fan, so go enjoy the money that you made off the toil and production of others
by 123spuds March 17, 2009 5:49 PM PDT
Cramer is a sleazbag scuzzball.Just like the rest of the manipulators on Wallstreet. Purely lowlife.
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by 123spuds March 17, 2009 5:50 PM PDT
I think the INDUSTRY should be imprisoned actually.Greatest thieves ever.
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by kingtrae79 March 18, 2009 2:52 PM PDT
and of course Rupert Murdoch and the get fresh crew would pull the video from YouTube when the heat is on. Yeah I'm sure TheStreet.com really called that one in.. give me a break
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About Software, Interrupted

In "Software, Interrupted," Dave Rosenberg discusses disruption in the software market, as well as the products and services that keep business technology norms in perpetual flux.

With nearly 15 years of technology and marketing experience spanning from Bell Labs to multiple start-up IPOs, Dave co-founded open-source software company MuleSource and now serves as general manager of Hardy Way. He also happens to be a U.S. patent holder and a workaholic. Technology is his best friend and mortal enemy.

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