Mad Money 06/23/26 | Audio Only

My mission is simple: to make you money. I'm here to level the playing field for all investors. There's always a bull market somewhere, and I promise to help you find it. Mad Money starts now.

Hey, I'm Cramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Cramerica. I want to make friends. I'm just trying to make you some money. My job is not just to entertain, but to educate and teach you. So call me at 1-800-743-CBC or tweet me at Jim Cramer. Whenever you're listening to anyone's investing advice, you need to consider the source. And ideally, you want to know where that person's coming from. That's why tonight I'm going to tell you exactly who I am and how I got here. No, not the standard introduction. I'm Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money, co-host of the Street, chief of the CNBC Investing Club. What I want to do tonight, in an extremely special show by even by wacky standards, is trace the arc that brought me to Mad Money. Not for some autobiographical ego trip, but to kind of to give you some money-making lessons from the phases of my various careers and explain, of course, how you can pop the phone. Remember, in the end, this is Cramerica and everything we do here is about trying to help you make money. In short, I'm giving you the invested Cramer guidebook. Call that the skinny on how I learned to be a good investor and how I continue to learn every day so I can help you become better than I ever. I want you to be better than I ever want to be. By the way, that's our mission in the investing club, too. Let's start real early. My love of stocks didn't begin after law school or college or even high school. No, my love for stocks started back in fourth grade. That's right, fourth grade. You see, my dad would bring home the old Philadelphia Bulletin. Boy, that brings a long time ago that was at that point. The Philadelphia Bulletin was one of the largest newspapers in the country. He'd have it when he came back from work every night and give it to me. I wanted the comics and the sports. I was a ridiculous Phillies fan back then and I still am. Uh, it's a lifelong affliction, I guess. Although I have pivoted hardcore to the Eagles. I was also a curious kid. Curiosity's always been both a blessing and a curse for me. Not unlike the proverbial cat that's always probing, looking, occasionally jumping on some hot stoves. Anyway, there was always this solid chunk of the paper that seemed impenetrable to me: the business section. It was impenetrable because it had these giant lists and names of an AGOT type that seemed to go on forever. There were the other tables, different from the batting averages tables and box scores I scrutinized with regularity. When I read them from left to right, they made no sense to me whatsoever. Open, range, close. I mean, what what what's open? What range? What closed? What were these strange things? Why do they matter? I asked my dad, who I knew dabbled in the stock market because occasionally I hear him get mad when he heard prices that were mentioned on the radio. In particular, he always seemed to get angry when I I heard something called National Video and how it went out. I don't know what Video did other than go out and why it went out. I don't know if Pop did either, though, but I know it made him furious. I wanted to know why. So, he sat me down one day and explained that each of those lines represented the performance of a stock at a company on a different day. The open was where the stock opened in the morning. The range was how low and high it traded during the day. And the close was what it was worth at the end of the day. That fascinated me. I mean, how could there be so many companies and why the heck did they trade in ranges? He told me that each day people tried very hard to figure out which stocks would go up in value and they wanted to buy them so they could make money from those moves. Frankly, this struck me as downright silly. I told him that when I looked at the baseball tables, I was always trying to figure out who was hot, who'd go up on average, who'd go down, and what it meant for the teams I liked, specifically, of course, the Phillies. He said it was pretty much the same thing with stocks. You studied the companies like you studied the players. Some players were doing just okay. Some were hot as a pistol. And of course, others were just plain duds.

I told him I wanted to figure out the stock market, too. I wanted to figure out which stocks would go higher, just like everybody else. I wanted to know if I could learn something from just following the ranges and reading the tables. He said, "Why don't you try?" It seemed in my house the radio was always on until Pop put the TV on in time for dinner. We always watched the news while eating, even as I admit I hated it because most of the news was about the war, and that meant the Vietnam War, and it rarely seemed to be going well at all. But right after the world news on the radio or TV, they always mentioned the Dow Jones Industrial Average. And they either talked about or showed the most active stocks, then the ones that had done best or worst. National Video, Pop was off from the worst list. And that's why, I guess, my dad was so angry. So what I did was write down the names that I heard and I tracked them, kept them in a ledger I still have. What a terrific game it was. Trying to figure out the next move of a stock, not a player. Even as all I really knew was the name. Most of them were defense stocks and they went up a lot in tandem with the war. After a year, I decided that was such a cool game that I wanted to introduce it to my fifth grade class. And so I did, going in show and tell with the Philadelphia Bulletin, showing them the ledger, inviting them to play to see who could find stocks that went up the most during the week. Needless to say, not everyone was into it. But the darndest thing happened not long after. My dad's company at the time, National Gift Wrap and Box Company, represented 3M, then known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, in the Philadelphia area. He sold tape and sasheen, that was a fancy ribbon that bowed easily. Remember, there was a time when you had to make your own bows. TripleM, as we called it, was always innovating, coming up with new product lines, which it still does. These days, it's also plagued, unfortunately, by major litigation issues. Right about fifth grade, Pop came home with a new line of 3M products. He was selling games. That's right. They got into what was known as 3M bookshelf games. He said, "Perhaps I might want to learn more about the stock market." And he he had two games that he was selling well about business. One was a game about takeovers and the other was Stocks and Bonds. I always cry when a good friend bought me this recently. I love that game so much. And at one point I even asked the old CEO of 3M to bring the games back. Apparently I don't own the rights anymore. But the point of mentioning all this, from my own makeshift stock game to Stocks and Bonds, is that stocks are fascinating enough to get your kids started on them right now. And I am urging you to do just that. It's easier than ever. Pick some stocks, maybe some stocks and companies that your kids are familiar with, and have them track those and guess which will do best over time. So here's the bottom line. The bottom line, at least of my childhood stock market obsession: get them started early and they may play for life because, alas, the stock market, it's a long-term contest. The earlier you get in, the more you can potentially win over the long haul. Let's go to Dave in California, please. Dave.

Of course. What's up, Dave?

I want you to stay short. Uh, no reason to go out in the long end. Uh, and you can just keep reinvesting like that. But I also want—I'm not sure of your age—but I always want people to remember that I think you don't want to bet against yourself and put too much money in bonds because stocks still represent the greatest opportunity. And don't forget utility stocks. They can play a role too. They could have multiple years of goodness. Let's go to Philip in Michigan, please. Philip.

What's up, Philip?

Oh, fantastic. Thank you for that. Thank you.

No, I am a huge dividend reinvestment plan person. That's that's, as a matter of fact, I wish there weren't weren't an alternative, but for my chap trust I have to send the dividends out and it has really hurt my long-term performance. You can't—you've got to reinvest them. That's where some big money can be made. Right. One of the biggest things I learned from getting interested in the stock market early is that it is a long-term contest. The earlier you get in, the more you can potentially win over the long haul. Well, Money Tonight I'm giving you an inside look at how I got to where I am today, from growing up to Goldman Sachs. Along the way, you'll learn the best practices I learned about the market and how you can incorporate these life lessons yourself. So stay with Cramer.

Welcome back to a bizarrely special Mad Money where I'm teaching you life lessons in investing from um my life. While I'm not a dollar sign represented by a man or a stock symbol for that matter, ticker JIM, I've stumbled around the stock market long enough to learn a thing or two. So tonight you're getting some of the wisdom from the school of hard knocks that I've enrolled in and passed. Don't you always love it at the beginning of a pro football game where they have the player say his name and school, and some say school of hard knocks? Well, that's what I attended when it comes to stocks and you are getting the made-for-TV version right here, right now. For law school, I went to Harvard, though. We covered how I first got involved in the market, my fourth-grade obsession with keeping a ledger to track stocks, and then ultimately learned how they trade through the greatest game on earth. No, not Monopoly, but Stocks and Bonds with its little certificates, its game board, its cards about news that would set a stock higher or lower. I love that game. I left the stock market games behind by the time I got to middle school, which we called junior high back then, where my obsession became sports. I was the second fastest guy in the school forever. So, I ran track and then, of course, girls, uh, who my teenage self found more mystifying than the market. Maybe still do. Anyway, but that's the subject of a different show entirely. However, my father did ingrain in me the desire to save money. Early on, I learned that even in high school, I saved this. I bussed tables at the old Block and Cleaver, which of course we called the Block and Clever because we were really funny and we were at the height of adolescent humor. I stayed more working as a vendor at the old Veterans Stadium, selling first cold soda, then ice cold. That's how I did it. Hey, ice cold, I got ice cold soda, then only graduating just selling ice cream. Hey, I got ice cream, vanilla and chocolate. Very quickly, I learned the value of market power, specifically cornering the market. And I paid people to give me the exclusive right to sell ice cream. Hey, ice cream here on the 600 and then on the 700th level, which I owned by keeping everybody out out of it. Can you imagine how much money could be made if you had the only franchise, the whole upper deck? Well, at least it's the upper upper deck. Even for a team of horrible Phillies, which won almost no games, I made fortunes except the one time they gave me strawberry ice cream. Talk about having to run from a customer after they sold you sold him that stuff. Or when Steve Carlton pitched because Lefty was on the mound. He got pured out so fast that I got stuck unsold ice cream. I had all the strawberry. You can't take it home real bad. You had to buy it from the company before selling it. So I take a beating whenever Carl was on the mound. That's a business lesson. Talk about learning how business really works. The shelf life of ice cream on a hot July night after the ninth inning is about as short as short can be. By the way, during the lightning round, I might jest with you about your name, calling you, hey skipper. Hey Captain, how you doing? Chief. I learned these names at the ballpark. It's what people called me to get my attention to buy ice cream. Hey, chief. And frankly, I loved it and its bizarre intimacy and I never forgot the monikers. Bud, I mean partner. And that's why I use those terms when we have money. Anyway, I made a ton of money at the advice of my father. I opened an account at Fidelity with the Magellan Fund. I contribute a little every week. It was the top performing mutual fund of its time run by the great Peter Lynch who's written two investment books, One Up on Wall Street and Beating the Street. Still available on Amazon. They are fabulous. Get them. I didn't save enough when I got to college. The money paid was work study anyway and it went toward my tuition, room, board. But when I got out of college and after multiple attempts to get a job in the newspaper business, I was rejected by 57 papers. I still have the rejections. I saved every one of them. I hate everybody who rejected me. And never mind, I landed a position as a general assignment reporter at the Democrat, making 150 bucks a week. 150 bucks a week was not a lot to really kind of—well, anyway, I still got a tattered pay stub. I've got it in an old wallet to remind me of how hard it was when I got started. Nevertheless, you know what? I still saved. I put a few dollars away when I could. A few dollars. I mean, like maybe $4. Not that long after that, I applied and got a job at the now-defunct Los Angeles Examiner. That was a horrible job, paying $179 a week, but as you can imagine, Los Angeles more expensive than Tallahassee. Soon after my sojourn began in Los Angeles, I found this terrific bungalow apartment in what was known as the Fairfax District, right near Canoga. Pretty sketchy, around the corner from a Pioneer Chicken, which was way too expensive for me to go to. Few weeks later, I was stalked. My place was broken into repeatedly, something the cops were helpless to stop. At the same time, I was assigned a story in San Diego, a horrible shooting. Uh, and when I returned, everything was gone. Everything Everything I had, including my checkbook, of which of course was cleaned out. So, it began my terrible but thrilling six months of living in my car, basically trying to get by. While my ultimate goal was to save enough to get an apartment, I was living hand to mouth. And people would take me in now and then so I could get a shower. That's really—it's really important when you live in a car to get that shower or maybe even a good night's sleep. But you know what? I never quit saving. I remember cashing my paycheck every other week and then writing a check, yes, to Fidelity Fund for what I could afford. You only have your gasoline, car insurance, and food expense if you're living in your car. T saving on homeowners insurance, by the way, which was very expensive back then. Needless to say, it was unsustainable. When I only came down with mononucleosis and then the attendant jaundice, a sliver yellow spot about the size of Greenland, you know, those Mercator projections on my stomach. I had no healthcare. The HMO my newspaper belonged to had no branch where I was at at last station when the company mercifully put me on the road so I could at least submit some expenses for my day-to-day. So I had to go to a migrant farmworkers clinic to get fixed up and and I still put money away even then, even as I was making like weekly trips to the doctor. It was one of the best I've ever had. But the upshot of investing is I—this is a challenge. The whole story is a challenge and this is what it is. If I was living in my car and I invested, I never went to hear that you didn't see never. That's why I went through this amazing with the Magellan Fund back then. I was giving money to the best stock picker of all time. Fast forward 35 years later, I had enough to take advantage of one of the greatest bull markets in history. Magellan money ultimately amounted to a fund well into the six figures. Not because of my additional contributions, which remember only just a few dollars a month, but purely from capital appreciation and the power of compounding. I never touched it. Still haven't. I just let it build. I think the takeaway here is that I want you to save no matter what the excuse. Obviously, the earlier the better through thick and thin. Listen, when CNBC has those all-star managers on, keep your ear open. If you don't have enough money or handle or handle the the time to own stock portfolio, you can only own one or two stocks, send the money in as little as money as you can to an index fund, to one to one of these big mutual funds. If you need help managing your own portfolio, join the investing club. I think that's the best way to go. And here's the real bottom line. If I could still send those checks to the Fidelity Magellan Fund when I was living in my car, sleeping in the back, Jack Daniels and a hatchet, and then ultimately a yes pistol, sick as a dog, jaundice. Then what's your excuse for not getting started? You can put some money away, too. That's the way I was living. They have money back everywhere. Coming up, take a trip down memory lane. The hair is gone, but the wisdom tolls on. Stick with Cramer.

I want to make people better investors. If they make money, fantastic. Let's go to work.

We're riding the magical money mystery tour tonight and I'm giving you the life lessons I've learned the hard way through decades of investing. Right now I want to tell you how I got started in individual stock picking. Something you know I love and still believe in even after multiple periods of pain, chaos and chicanery. Presumably you believe too or else you wouldn't be watching. If you're picking stocks, playing with real money, not just with a ledger or with a game of Stocks and Bonds, you need to open an account. When I got started in 1979, there was no such thing as an online account. I have my money with Fidelity, courtesy of my Magellan Fund account. So, I chose to put my individual stock account there, too. When I first began, I didn't know where to look for ideas, so I turned to a magazine I like, Forbes. Now, people of Forbes, please don't take this personally, but I read a nifty article about American Agronomics, a terrific orange grower in Florida. It seemed so compelling that I bought 10 shares of it for nine bucks. Week later, frost hit, wiped out the crop, and my investment was more than cut in half. Like the plot of Trading Places, an all-time great Eddie Murphy movie if you've ever seen it. Well, what can I say? Pretty similar. I was devastated but not defeated. I sold it out, took the capital, and bought seven shares of Bobby Brooks, a clothing outfit I had heard of, which again, Forbes said could be a terrific buy. Almost the company reported quarter my money have. Fortunately, I had a decent job at a magazine called American Lawyer, which had just started. I was making 20 G's and living in a less than swank studio on 44th Street between 1st and 2nd near the United Nations. The cheap $40 a month rent allowed me to replenish my stock offers pretty quickly. I was on the road quite a bit back then and after a particularly hard night on the town researching a story in Kentucky, I fell in love with the breakfast at Bob Evans Farms. Finding out that it was publicly traded when I went back, I I visited that huge fabulous Midtown Manhattan New York public library, the ones with the big lines in front of it, and devoured everything I could find about Bob Evans. They had magazines with articles, microfiche of four-month-old financials, investment publications with write-ups that allowed me to compare Bob Evans with other companies in the industry, which is what you have to do. I knew I had a good one. So, I bought 20 shares. Stock went up immediately on a good quarter. A stock split and I figured out the first good component of investing: know what you own. What did I know about growing oranges with American Agronomics? I mean, who who knew I know any about woman's fashion? I mean, certainly not me. But a good plate of scrambled eggs and sausage after a hard night on the town, that served an attractive setting, good service, nice enough growth plan, a big plan to expand in the Midwest. That was for me. Next up, SPS Technologies. That's the old Standard Pressed Steel and Alpha from my old hometown that made fasteners for airplanes. Something that Howmet now dominates. Why SPS? Because a buddy of mine from high school catching up with me told me that they were hiring like mad if I was looking for a job, paying good money. Well, I already had a job, but back to the library for more research. Solid company, no debt, but nothing in print about his hiring push. Wow, ripe for a trade. SPS doubled not long after and I caught the bug for good. 23 years later, it would be acquired by Precision Castparts, the preeminent supplier to aircraft builders around the globe before PCP went on to sell itself to Berkshire Hathaway in 2016. Good bloodlines. So now I'm figuring it out. The best investment ideas come from what you know, melded with information gleaned from public sources, even if they're as late and as hard to access as taking a surreptitious trip to the New York Public Library when I was supposed to be working. I didn't like the random way I was making money. A friend from home's lucky call about jobs available at SPS Technologies. A hearty breakfast at Bob Evans Farms. I mean, I figured that'd be a more rigorous approach, right? Then it hit me. Look around at work, stupid. At the time, I was covering mergers and acquisitions. Uh, but looking at the lawyers who do the deals, profiling some following the deals they were on. It seemed like every other deal was in the oil patch. One after another, small to mid-size oil companies were being acquired, and all I was doing was standing around writing about them. So I went back to the library, took out some editions of a thing called Value Line, Stock Research Magazine, and checked out the pages devoted to oil companies. Then I cross-referenced them with other research, find out which ones could be acquired without problems, either because they were publicly traded without a family owning them or because they seem to be fit the size, the parameters of so many other deals. So I set this thing called the Thomas, an oil company with a real gusher in Indonesia. Oh, I didn't have long to wait. Kerr-McGee struck, bought them. Almost double my money. Another lesson learned. Want to buy takeovers, buy companies that would do well on their own. NTOUS was, but it was undermanaged, which was the the consensus I found by reading the articles about the oil enterprise. That meant another oil company with bigger scale could do more with theus, which was cheaper than it should be if it simply got rid of the existing management. As much as I had hit some winners, though, I was distraught that I'd given up the ghost in those first few trades. At the time, I've been hanging around the track on weekends, mostly Aqueduct nearby. And I learned how to handicap by reading the books of Andy Beyer, the legendary horse uh horse racing writer. He is something. Okay. Beyer's Picking Winners is among the best investing books ever written. Even as it's betting on the ponies, it teaches discipline. How to identify the best thoroughbreds to bet on. How to find the best long shots. Going to the out-of-the-way tracks for information was less well-known. Not betting will really knowing on every horse in each race. Find the ones where the payoff was more sure and bet big. Cut your losses if you're having a bad run. Every one of these lessons could be applied to the stock market, right? I mean, you think you'd swing when you know what you're doing, particularly when others don't on a less well-known stock, out-of-the-way track. Don't just gamble on stocks for the excitement of it. That is foolish. Most important, be disciplined. Don't let your losses pile up. After five years of professional journalism, I decided to hang it up and go back to law school.

The good news, I saved enough money to pay for my first year all in the stock market, as I never would have had enough money to cover the cost if I just kept my money in a savings account. So, here's the bottom line: you want to get started, go small. Invest what you know. Research intensely. Just research, research, research. Back then, I got old data from the public library. Now, it's as simple as a keystroke and the information is free, including up-to-the-minute financials, analyst presentations, brokerage research, and of course the conference calls that I tell you are a must if you want to actually know what you're doing. Simple? No. Lucrative? You bet it is. Let's go to Michael in California, please. Michael.

Okay, I think that an S&P 500 fund and the total return funds are both really good for that kind of situation. Vanguard's total return. The one thing I would caution is, as much as I like Warren Buffett, I just think that you have to have a kind of a basket if you do one stock. But if you do the ones that I just mentioned, you don't need a basket and you don't have to keep track of them every minute. By the way, if they're young enough, maybe you give them something that they actually want to spend some time learning about. And that could be good, too, to keep them invested and interested in their money. But thank you for those kind questions. And let's go to Loyal in Arkansas. Loyal.