Jim Cramer Is Too Busy To Think
Submitted by Douglas Litowitz via HVST.com,
Jim Cramer of CNBC has a “vicious” schedule that allows only four hours of sleep, according to his recent interview with Business Insider.
He gets up at 3:45am. By 4:45am he has exercised (with a trainer), twittered, eaten, and starts working on a memo, then he goes to CNBC, meets with a CEO at 7:00am, then meets with his charitable trust, then is on television at 8:20am, doing conference calls at 10:10am, working on memos with his writers and setting up guests and segments, doing his actual show 4:00pm to 6:15pm, then he gets driven home at 6:30pm, where he allows himself an hour to eat supper and watch television, after which he works on his overnight memo till 11:00pm, and gets in bed by 11:30pm, only to start the next day at 3:45am. This schedule is pretty close to what he told Business Insider three years ago, when they reported that he worked “every single minute” from 2:47am to 11:00pm, losing weight during earnings season because he had no time for supper. Oh, he also owns an Inn and a bar. His description can be found here: http://hvst.co/1IY3gG1
Impressed? I’m not.
He has allotted himself zero time for deep contemplation of the type necessary for true insight. He is busy, busy, busy – as if busyness itself were a virtue.
I took one look at Cramer’s schedule and realized that it is anathema to producing any profound ideas. All of the great thinkers spend a lot of time doing nothing – at least from the outside perspective. Doing ‘nothing’ is what gives them space to generate ideas, that is, to think.
A few examples are in order.
Bodhidharma (the father of Chinese Buddhism) arrived at the Shaolin Temple and spent eight years staring at a wall. Every day, alone, staring at a wall. Jesus went alone into the wilderness for forty days. Einstein spent his afternoons staring out the window, imagining how gravity would feel to a worker falling off the building.
Deep thinkers are rarely media darlings and friends of the establishment. Socrates was sentenced to death; Rousseau was kicked around Europe and ended up alone on an island; Spinoza was excommunicated by the Jews and hounded by the Christians; Godel – perhaps the greatest logician since Aristotle – died of paranoid starvation after escaping from the Nazis and landing in Princeton, where he interrupted his immigration hearing to tell the judge there was a logical error in the U.S. Constitution.
Isn’t this a central message of The Big Short? That it takes outsiders, misfits, and contrarians to see the deeper trends in the markets, because they have no stake in perpetuating the party line.
This is my problem with Cramer: he has no time to think. He is so imbricated within the strictures of CNBC, so enamored of his guests, so genuflective and collegial that he has no critical distance to see the flaws of the very system of which he is a part.
People like Cramer who are so invested (literally and figuratively) in the current financial system are loathe to realize that it is farcical, that it is built on toothpicks, that the corporate and government numbers are cooked, that the ‘recovery’ is a joke, that the ‘markets’ are rigged by central banks, that wrongdoing is epidemic, that there are no longer any rational connections between prices and fundamentals, that we have passed beyond reality into fantasyland.
It would cost Cramer his job to admit this carnivalesque madness, to have the courage of several recent hedge fund managers who returned money to their clients and admitted that the financial system is no longer a ‘market’ in any meaningful sense.
And so there he sits, an indefatigable lighthouse, imperious and self-righteous in his conviction that everything is still rational.
Cramer is the embodiment of a society awash in information but starved in meaning. Busy, busy, busy, spouting out figures, reciting numbers, giving opinions on consumer products, oil, geopolitics, central banking, fundamentals, technicals -- but to what end?
Cramer’s function is symbolic: he embodies the Horatio Alger Myth that a balding everyman trading out of a rec room full of tchotchkes can be a ‘winner’ with some good old-fashioned elbow grease and four hours of sleep. And why does he do it? Because he wants you – dear reader and dear watcher – to get rich!
People rarely ask themselves why a fortuneteller lives in trailer park instead of living in a mansion by getting rich betting on sporting events. Similarly, most people who watch CNBC don’t ask why Cramer eschews being a billionaire trader so he can be a guidance counselor to day traders.
Busyness doesn’t make Cramer great; on the contrary, it’s what prevents him from being great.
(23 votes)
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Not until 1973.
Wow. Thanx for this enlightening article on the trusted, beloved, and well respected Jim Cramer. I had no idea.
some of my friends see that as a big problem of managers in the globalized economy in general, and some reply: consultants provide the deep thoughts for a fee
confidence. it's an intangible resource. linked to our past, our genetic risk assesment "suite" and to our sexuality
It's a mistake to think Cramer believes in the markets. He knows exactly what he is doing. All you have to do is watch him and listen closely as he stumbles over his words and tries to explain how there 'is still value left' in stocks and you just know that he knows the game is up.
I'd like to see an audit of his finances, personally. If he really believes what he is telling other people and he is actually putting his money where his mouth is then I'm sad for him because he's fucked.
he knows everything about every S&P company and every industry... how can he possibly sleep?
....meaning that he really knows nothing about anything that matters, but he is an excellent diversion toy for the oligarchy, same as all the rest: Popes/priests, news readers, sports/entertainment stars, political puppets, govt scientists/educators et al.... how many of them are even capable of understanding their role in this drama/farce as "authoritarian followers". See if any of these quotes ring a bell:
Drugs, drugs and more drugs
About a decade ago was the best CNBC spot I ever saw,they interviewed a contrarian investor live from his superyacht in Monaco,the interviewer was trying to make this self made man look stupid and unknowledgeable by going against the herd mentality,quoting stats and Harvard axioms the interviewer thought he was so smart.Then the interviewee said to this guy,íf your so freakin smart why aren't you on the superyacht next to mine?
so my question is where's your superyacht Mr Cramer?
No, the question (and this one dates back to the 1920's) should always be "Where are the customers' yachts?"
Jim Cramer makes more money touting stocks than trading stocks.
This is an excellent analysis of Cramer. The author is correct that without making an effort at contemplating the larger world, a man can be very busy but on the wrong path. In Cramer's case, he's not very good at recommending stocks with any accuracy beyond chance (or less). His work isn't very useful for the viewers but he sure works hard at it. I've met many people who are busy at tasks while getting the organization's real needs all wrong. They don't want to talk about that "esoteric stuff". Get two CEO guys like this in a row and companies go broke. Sort of like the guy who works hard all day and every day to have a comfortable nestegg but never contemplates why his wife is often away with only a vague explanation.
Here former Goldman Sachs trader Jim Cramer explains how he would make stocks go up and down with only $5 million in capital: https://vimeo.com/41149661
Just think about future generations to be also in a position to think
A very small man with small ideas and small goals (only to be popular). He is quite frankly a simpleton
Simpleton? No, not hardly. Harvard grad and post grad. Small ideas? Nope. Let's be real. Current est. net worth, 9 figures and still stacking. Patently evil fooker? Uh, you'll get no argument there.
If you measure genius by dollars acquired and schools attended you are correct. I don't
What's the old saying? Never confuse activity with accomplishment
Wow, I totally didn't nail this one. From the opening blurb on the front page I thought this would be Kunstler. Here we have Kunstler 2.0!
Cramer is the WWF rassler of the financial world.
Loud, stupid, fake, but there are still muppets out there that think he is the Prophet of Profit.
Dumbasses.
What was the purpose of this story? Just to work up the blood pressure of the ZH community? ;)
Cramer spends a lot of time thinking when he takes dumps! That is when he comes up with BS
Four hours sleep per night did wonders for Bud Fox. Oh wait, he went to jail. But he did get to boink Darien , so there's that.
KKKramer hates everyone not invested in the rigged markets!
"I picture myself sitting behind the desk on the set of CNBC (on the air) and when Cramer speaks for the very first time - I lunge at him putting my fist into his wind pipe..." "Now we'll go to commercial"...
Some editing;
He gets out of his crypt at 3:45am. By 4:45am he has picked his nose, farted, twittered, eaten, shat some more and starts working on a dildo, which he inserts in his rectum and leaves it there, then he goes to CNBC by hovercraft, meets with a bookie at 7:00am, then meets with the inept lackeys at his charitable trust, then is on television spewing all sorts of bullshit at 8:20am, doing conference calls with hookers at 10:10am, working on dislodging the aforementioned dildo with his writers and setting up asinine cnbc horseshit, coking up, hoovering up white powder (with a trainer), then doing his actual show 4:00pm to 6:15pm, then he gets driven home at 6:30pm, dildo still lodged, where he allows himself an hour to eat supper and watch his ass on asscam finally pooping out the dildo at 9pm, after which he works on his overnight malarkey till 11:00pm, and gets back in his crypt by 11:30pm, only to start the next day at 3:45am.
Jamaica speaketh the truth.
Oh NO! He IS thinking and very subversively too. Just as any good anti-goy kike would be.
He is a wolf-kike leading the goy sheeple astray and right into the slaughterhouse.
He did it prior to sept. 2008 and is doing it again.
They are the masters of fraud and misdirection. You have to study them to know their ways.
Fuck the kikes!
For those who can't tell the differnce between "entertainment" and investment advice, we hope you enjoyed your time in the casino. Come back soon!
He's so busy just moving,
that he missed the groove.
No, he is just a run of the mill idiot.
"Busyness doesn’t make Cramer great; on the contrary, it’s what prevents him from being great."
That, and being a Douche Bag.
The kind of vampire douchebag that likes to feed on ignorant people.
Useful idiot for the 1%
You said FANG was bulletproof for my portfolio......you hear me...you said bulletproof!
All these "busy" types are really doing is temporarily masking deep neuroses.
I spent more time looking up the fuked up words in this article than Litowitz spent thinking about it. Fuk off.*
*Can't get the "c" in by my spell check - so go imbricate yourself if that makes more sense to you and that twat Cramer.**
**Also, I have no "investments" but please send your prospectus anyway.
Is i true that Shkreli calls Cramer Poppa?
Cramer is a whore who got run out of the Hedge fund business. If it wasn't for his wife trading, he wouldn't have made squat for investors. Anyone else remember his top 10 picks for 2000?
He's nothing more than a modern Dan Dorfman
Jim Cramer's still alive?
This is a good rant. Very well-written and full of passion and imagery. It doesn't matter if Cramer is what you say he he is and describe him to be. He is an icon of the values and temperament that you are attacking. Jonathan (Liebowitz) Stewart was more devastating in the way he used Cramer; but you were just as much on the mark. Well done!