That's a really interesting site. In the talk at http://www.deepcapturethemovie.com/ he has a graph showing how "naked short-selling" can be used to create an illusory over-supply of a stock and drive the actual stock price into oblivion.
I don't know how much of it is true, but it's both (a) a clever trick, and (b) hopefully completely illegal.
I'm calling bullshit. The whole article sounds like it came out of the NY Daily Post. There are what maybe 10-15 hedge funds that have enough capital to make something like this stick?
On the other hand, fake internal memos cause APPL to fly all over the place...
I can't speak to the specific claims the linked article makes, but if you watch the Daily Show interview it's pretty clear that Cramer is at best an asshat[1].
Specific to the headline, Cramer (in clips shown on the show) talks about how easy it is to spread Apple rumors leading up to MacWorld because "the people who write about Apple want that story" and "you can claim that it's credible (...) because Apple wont' comment" (to deny it).
[1] Name calling, perhaps, but it's short hand for saying "an irresponsible person who spews nonsense for the sake of viewers, which would generally be expected except that he is TELLING PEOPLE WHAT TO DO WITH THEIR MONEY, which makes it abhorrent".
Heaven forbid anyone grow a brain and do their due diligence before shoving their money into a stock or company! Do you people really take financial advice from ANYONE and just invest away? Give me a frikkin' break, people are not the victims here.
First of all, "mad money" is the money you have left over to play with after making solid investments, so the show hardly counts as a serious investment show. Secondly, people are not idiotic pawns and are fully capable of weighing their own investment decisions independent of what Jim Cramer is telling them to do.
It's completely unfair to blame Cramer and call him an "asshat" when the show is clearly for entertainment purposes. Anyone naive enough to think it's dispensing serious financial advice should not be putting their money in the market in the first place.
FTR, I like Cramer ... but I disagree with your take.
CNBC bills itself as a financial news network and Cramer's show is on 2 or 3 times a day.
Yes, his show is wacky and entertaining–but half of every episode is people calling in for stock advice. How can you say there's no serious investment angle to this?
>> Heaven forbid anyone grow a brain and do their due diligence before shoving their money into a stock or company! Do you people really take financial advice from ANYONE and just invest away?
For many people, his show is part of the due diligence process. And he's not just anyone–obviously his resume, network, books, and popularity put him in a position where people trust him. You make it sound like he's a 19 year old in a basement twittering penny stock tips.
Again, I like Cramer and yes–calling him an "asshat" isn't really constructive. But I also think he has put himself in a position of responsibility/accountability.
Well, yeah, but if he hadn't run his own hedge fund he wouldn't have a TV show about the stock market.
Saying Jim Cramer doesn't make his living telling people what to do with their money is like saying Julia Child didn't make her living telling people how to cook. Nobody watches Mad Money for the antics, they watch it for the stock advice, the antics just keeps them awake.
You're confusing why people watch with how he makes his money. And you're confused about why they actually watch.
The vast majority of folks who watch Cramer don't do more than one or two trades based on his statements.
Yes, I know about how Cramer's recommendations "move markets". The size of those moves proves my point. He's got enough of an audience that if a significant fraction of them did anything, the changes would be enormous. They're actually on the edge of statistical insignificance.
Julia Child is a great example. People watched to "learn" but nothing much changed. Yes, they bought some equipment and cookbooks, but she really just changed how people talked.
