Odd Lots - Jim Cramer on the Retail Trading Revolution

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

In recent years, retail trading of stocks has absolutely exploded. This is happening despite the fact that investors are subject to a constant stream of propaganda that individuals can't beat the market, and that the proper way to invest is through low-cost index funds that you don't pay regular attention to. More than anyone else, one man has been banging the drum (literally) for years that individuals can beat the market and are smart enough to select individual securities. That, of course, is Jim Cramer, the host of the popular TV show Mad Money on CNBC. He is also the author of the new book, How to Make Money in Any Market. We discuss his philosophy of investing, his career, his time as a young college-age radical, the time he lead a wildcat strike and got fired, his thoughts on memestock mania, and much more. Read more:US Stocks Advance to Records to Close Out Risk-On FOMC WeekIntel Soars After Nvidia Makes $5 Billion Investment Only http://Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at  bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlotsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts Radio News. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthall. And I'm Tracy Alleyway. Tracy, something I think about the market these days is that in the media, there is this incredible drumbeat of experts and ads that support the media, etc.

All these experts that they say, don't try to beat the market. That's right. Index, index, index. And actually, indexing is great because, like, it's, cheap and indexes have performed incredible returns. And now, though, for the last several years, it's like the public is becoming unshackled and doing the exact opposite of everything. And we see the most extreme form of, you know, day trading and trading on Robin Hood, individual names, zero day, meme stocks, options. It's like the public has revolted against this message that it's

been inundated with for years. Well, you know what I think is really interesting is not only is retail sort of going out on its own, but Wall Street and the institutional investors are kind of copying what retail does, right? Because retail was the first into something like zero day or one-day options. And then it became institutionalized and you saw that big professional volume follow on. So it feels like retail is a really important part of the market now. And rather than retail trying to do what the experts do, it's kind of the experts trying to catch up. Yeah, catch up with retail. Understand what retail is doing. And again, like I love an industry. next fund. And I don't like having to think about it. You're an EMH guy. I'm just going to remind you. I'm

like an EMH guy. Yeah, I love it. But like I do feel like there's this huge tension. And it only feels like it's accelerating because now there's more and more things to bet on and there's crypto. And pretty soon on your Robin Hood app, you're going to be able to like bet on a prediction market on what the Fed is going to do. So we live in this world of trading. Yeah. Against what all of the Nene is like myself sometimes on TV. Close the four pros. Yeah. Well, anyway, we really do. have the perfect guest, someone I've wanted to speak to literally for years, someone who has long been preaching in public that the individual can pick stocks, that picking stocks is a good thing,

that you don't have to accept the idea of just being boring and being average and getting the average return. We are going to be speaking with Jim Kramer. He is the host of Mad Money on some network called CNBC. Never heard of it. And he is the author of a new book, How to Make Money in any market. So Jim, thrilled to have you on the odd lots. First of all, that intro of what you're talking about, yes, this is the fundamental of what I'm talking about. But I want to spend a second talking about the person to my life. Joe, Joe, he's a dog. My wife, no, my wife, my wife was looking at the book door. She goes, okay, you got Today Show. And you got Joe. And Joe is someone who's going to get it going for you and wake up and he's going to probably know the book and he's going to know your

stuff. And Tracy, I tell you, when you do these things, things are pretty soulless. So when you get something like you guys, I mean, I'd just laugh. I mean, my dad sold corrugated. That was his job. When I was a hedge fund manager, I just went exclusively with him. I mean, reference to the last week's show. But I do want to talk totally much, really about what you're talking about. I wrote this book. Well, I just want to say, the first line of the book is, congratulations, you've just bought the most radical book about investing ever written. Classic creamer modest. Sure, because. Classic creamer understatement. I love. I love. But it's true that everyone's been taught these days.

You can't pick stocks and you just have to be an index fund. Thank you, Warren Buffett for that too, although his stock was the one you should have picked. And what bothers me is people are going to do it. And you talked about zero day and things like that. They're going to do it. If they're going to do it, why not help them? I mean, one of the premises of the book is that I know that people want to speculate. So look, I say own an index fund for half your money.

You've got to be saving constantly. And then take five slots. try to find four really good stocks and a speculative one. You want to go to nuclear power. You want to go to bloom energy for hydrogen fuel cells. I'm not going to stop yet, provided that you try to find the next fang, and I'm fortunate enough to create a fang because it was just something that seemed funny, but, you know, I do that too.

But what I'm trying to do is accept the fact people want to do this. Do it right. And if they do it right, maybe they do it long-term, own stocks. Like I used to term compounding. How do you compound if you're a day trader? You can't. You can't. So, I mean, I look at this show, and this show is about trends and about long-term trends.

Like, I find that most things that I read about are about trading. And you can't beat the machines trading. But you can beat them if you compound long-term in really good stocks. And I mentioned, it's crazy, but I went over 100 years. There was a study about over 100 years. And if you held Vulcan materials, rocks, you made a fortune. I don't really emphasize it. But if you held Philip Morris, you made the most money.

And he's stuck. Philip Morris. Oh, yeah. We have a whole episode on that. Yeah. Danny DeVitri broke that company up as one of the greatest breakups ever. But I don't like to talk about I lost my father more. That's cancer from smoking.

Wanted the cigarette on his death. But, you know, that kind of nonsense. So I feel like that long term is good, provide you do it right. And I let people pick stocks because they want to. And by the way, there have been 600,000 millionaires created by individual stocks in the last year. And I want the people who read it to be the next ones. I think it's fair to say whatever you think about overall performance and the efficient market hypothesis, just putting your money in the S&P 500 is kind of boring, right? Well, that's it.

You see people, they want some. They're Jonzing. I have to keep them from Jonzing on the wrong thing because I don't even want Jones. I actually went investing. I was going to show the other day and the guy said, why do you encourage state traders? I was a hedge fund manager for many, many years. And when I quit, I said, you know what, I have got to change this because people keep thinking they can come in standing start and buy Micron. And you don't know anything about Micron to a standing star.

Yeah. Why not pick a great stock that's down because, and it's got a good yield and you can own it for a long time. You see the big secular trend. And if I can do that and get people to stop day trading, that's the win. They can't. Do you guys think that they can win day trading at home? No. No is the correct.

Okay. They can't. So your argument, they can't win day trading, but they can win picking stocks and holding them. Yeah. Well, I think that things have changed from when I got in the business, I used to go to the New York Commercial Library and read microfeach that was a couple months old, couldn't get any reports. It wasn't available. Now everything's available.

And I do recommend, look, chat GPT, perplexity. You can find out more than you get. I mean, I was watching within five minutes, they have everything. Yeah. And I just think that if someone wants to do it right, they can do it right. They got four slots away from the speculative. I show that one or two, if they hit, can make up for all the losses. I accept the fact that they're going to have losses because nobody's that good.

But in every kind of schematic I did, the index fund didn't do as well. And yet we revere the index fund. Good. We get one really good. Well, you have seven good ones and $4.93 bad. Well, that's what you know. That's not my style. It is true.

I am kind of partial to the argument that because. so much of the debate and the story is online now that the guy who's like day trading from his basement probably has a very good like finger on the pulse of the market and possibly better than some of the professionals now. Then you're more you're more revolutionary than I am. I think I think you saw it during the the meme stock era. Yeah, exactly. Is it weird to go from a professional hedge fund guy, a legit hedge fund guy to the sort of poster boy

for retail day traders? Yes. when I was a hedge fund manager, everything was to try to figure out the patterns and now the machines do because that was pre-machine. And now I'm kind of a spokesman for the individual investor

who is completely not the professional. And that's because the show Mad Money has been for 20 years. It's a 6 o'clock show. And what happens, it's all about what the individual's trying to do and what I'm trying to explain. Let's give an example tonight.

Give you a little preview. I'm going to talk about the multiple. And why I went talk about the multiple? Because that's the secret sauce. And yet people don't understand. And I invoke my mom in the book. My mom is a person who you meant we were talking about injured newly. My mom is someone who says Pepsi's was at 140 right now.

Coca-Cola is 67. I have got to buy Coke. It should never be as cheap as Pepsi. Coke should be double. And like I would say, mom, no, that has artifice. It's a price area which is Jimmy listen to me. It's ridiculous to Pepsi's at 140, period, end of story. And she didn't know that it was a ratio.

And she would call in at 930 when I was at Goldman and buy, I want to buy three shares of giant food. And that was not the, while I was at Goldman, that was not to do the three short. But I am incredibly cognizant in the book that people don't know how to read a balance sheet. So I actually take the risk of 20 pages about how to read a balance sheet. I take it. Now, when I did the book, they were like, well, hey, and I said, no, no, I got to go there. If I'm telling people to own individual stocks, I have to help them with chat GPT and how to analyze balance sheet and how to actually go line by line because I don't want to be irresponsible and say, what you ought to do is say, you know what, Coca-Cola is pretty good here. You've got to understand why, and that's a big part of the book.

You mentioned meme stocks as someone who has spent a career advocating for this idea that the individual, can trade. Like now in 2025, like what do you think about that specific time? I mean, arguably it's like multiplied since then. But we haven't today. But have you ever, do you ever stop and think, like, do you ever think this has gotten out of hand? Do you ever think this is a monster that has gone beyond where it should? Like, do you ever have misgivings about the degree of public participation in the market? Absolutely. I had a moment where I had had some serious back surgery. So I was out, heavily medicated for three days. And when I started...

This was during GameStop Mania. Well, GameStop was about 100 when I started. And when I came to basically and stopped using the whatever kind of heroin that they give you these days, it was Thursday. And GameStop had quadruple. I had a Catherine. Did you think you were hallucinating? Well, I had...

Yes. Yes. I thought that maybe they slipped me something. And the Midnight guy slipped me something. But I had a Catherine in me and I couldn't reach the TV. It was driving me crazy. I finally just pulled the catharie out, which is really not a good experience. You really like to be more of a pro.

And I called into Carl and David, Carl continued, and David Faber and said, this is ridiculous. Everybody has to sell. After that, it was 24-7 bodyguard because I destroyed the chain letter. GameStop shouldn't have been at 400. We all know that. No, isn't it a street the GameStop is still fighting and they've got, you know, they've raised a lot of money by doing that at the money sale? She got a death threats and stuff like that for. Oh, I've had a lot of debt.

I'm not supposed to talk about. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about both of us need to learn a little bit more about how to handle public. But, yeah, keep going. You've always been. You've been straight. And we know that you're fearless. And fearless means when you're with your guards, they say, listen, you got to stop being fearless. Oh, I own a restaurant.

Yeah. And one of the guards said, look, here's what we're going to do first. You're never going to your own restaurant. That's the most visit. I said, look, I own the restaurant. I like to go in Tuesday. It's Wednesday. I said, okay, you got to vary the day.

And you got to go no time after seven. I said, well, it doesn't open until seven. We have to be a little more cognizant, especially in this era, this horrible era that we're seeing. Joe, do you still dream of owning a restaurant? Didn't you talk about doing this? Like a diner? I still might one day. Okay, I got to tell you, if you can have a mixture of alcohol, you know, you can make money.

Yeah? Yeah, we made money. Just on the alcohol? You also own a meskell business, which we should talk to at some point. That's why we had to switch to that because we saw the people buy and. Messkell like, man, so we pivoted. Wow, you really follow. Well, I, of course, you feel.

A little prep. We did some research. No, but you're not knowledgeable. Trace. I've not worked with you. I've listened to you, and you're completely enjoyable and terrific. And this is a show I was telling Joe beforehand. What a cool thing.

We haven't taken seven commercials yet. Do you realize that? We might have once this has been published. Wait, okay. Serious question. We've been serious the whole way. Right. haven't we? Sure. You touched on the information, the plethora of information sort of leveling the field for professionals and retail. And then earlier this week, we had Trump suggesting that public companies should report every six months instead of quarterly. What would that do for the retail investor? And there is also this trend towards more private markets, more companies that are not IPOing, less information available.

Well, this has been a great soul searching moment because having run a public company, the street, the quarterly fogs cost us a fortune. We didn't have that much. It was like our whole profit was, went to the auditors and they were real paying the butt because we didn't know really how to do it. And the CFO had to huddle. We lose that person for 20 days. But as an investor, I want all the information possible.

So I kind of feel like, look, you can give us two reports, but you've got to give us report that would make us, you know, in the non-SDC, make us understand why we should be paying X for you. Again, the price earnings portable because that's, that's, that's, that. That's what people need to be able to make decisions. This was a harder one than I thought because the president really does speak to a lot of CEOs. And this is what they talk about. Yeah, I'm sure they complain about it.

Oh, yeah, because look, one of the things that I hated about being a public company is the conference call. What are we going to say? Do we do too well? What are we going to predict? Are the margins going up? And I just said, we can't give a forecast. No, if we don't do a forecast, then they won't like us. But if we do the forecast, we'll miss the forecast.

And these kind of silly discussions, they're really silly. And I think that they, I think they're ashamed because they sure take a lot of time and they're very, very misleading. You said something in your book speaking of, you actually read the damn book. I read it. You are something. I read a good about it. I read it. This is one reason.

My wife said, I bet she read it. I bet she read it. This is something I wondered about in April when the stock market plunged after. Liberation Day. Yeah. But you talk about the fact that like politicians by and large, actually Trump is a little different than most politicians, but they don't typically run on the stock market. And they also like don't run about like the shareholder as a class of society that deserves to be represented.

Right. As you mentioned in your book like Joe Biden was sort of proud of the fact that he didn't have much money. You never really hear, well, what about the shareholder class? Okay. As an individual. And I'm curious why you think that especially now that so many people are into stocks, it's so much part of pop culture, et cetera. why don't people talk about the shareholder class? I sold Dick Grasso on the floor yesterday. And do you know, I used to go around the country with him talking about the shareholder class and ownership.

He just talked about ownership. That was kind of pre the idea that everything had to be traded. When I was at Goldman, we talked about ownership. And ownership means compounding. And compounding is a very boring word, but it is what makes you the biggest money. And I think we have to encourage ownership. Now, in terms of President Trump, I was a judge and the apprentice for a very long time. And before that, he had been on mad money multiple times.

And he always said, look, I don't do stocks. Give me some stocks. I want to own some stocks. And that's a totally fraught situation. You don't want to offer him, you know, Alcoa. So I always just said, listen, utilities. And he said, good, good. This is what I want.

Because utilities, frankly, you're not blowing your head off with AE with Merrill Electric Power. But he didn't pride himself in not knowing stocks. He wished he had more time to learn stocks. I think that he this time around when I spoke to him, he's not really into the stock market as a barometer of his success anymore. In the old days when I spoke to him as president, first go around, he thought that the Dow, he liked the Dow. The Dow determined it was the great, if he didn't be, if the Dow didn't go up, then he wasn't a good president. So it was the great determinant.

And I always tell him, please don't do that. It's too hard. You're not really one for one with it. Also it's the Dow. Yes. Yes, he liked it as like the Nielsen's. And I have to tell you that doing the apprentice is quite enjoyable. I bet.

Wait, tell us stories. I want to hear the behind the scenes gossip. Well, I mean, what would happen is that you had to monitor tasks. I'm not going to mention they would have a task. I'm not going to mention individual names because I've had a non-disclosure. But I will tell you, there's some people who do the task and some people who want you to do the task like me. I was like, no, I'm just a judge. But we would go through it.

And I would have to out the person who did nothing or out the person who said they were doing something. And maybe two people were doing it and one was doing nothing or didn't show. There were some of those instances. But in the end, they used my verdict. I'd say maybe half the time. And I wish they'd used it more because I spent a huge amount of time looking at it. But the president had a, he had views. He had strong views.

And they reviews did conflict with mine. quite often. Here's a question. It's sort of a media-navel-gazing question, but also a serious one. So you've been doing the show for 20 years, which is phenomenal. Thank you. I heard also that you get up at 3 a.m. every day to go to the gym and then do the show, which... Well, 315.

3.15. The extra 15 minutes is important. I always think I'm a competitive guy. I always said I get up earliest so that I beat everybody else. But that's losing its charm, frankly. How do you benchmark your own performance? I thought you could say, how do I bench? Because I was doing $2.50 initially.

I'm sorry. How do I bench barked my own performance? Your own performance when it comes to stock picking. Because, frankly, like 20 years of content, multiple stock picks, I don't even know how you keep track of all of them. Like, I can't remember the episodes we did two weeks ago. Well, okay. I mean, I have a charitable show so you can look at it. You can't really compound if you sell.

You have to give the profits away and the difference is to be given away. But it's all pretty public. but I would gauge me by what I talk about endlessly. And now this is not, people think that's anecdotal. For 20 years, it's empirical. If you talk about Apple 32 times a week and you talk about New Corps one time a week and you're graded equally Apple and New Core. That's farcical.

I was with Tim Cook last Friday in Harrisburg, Kentucky. And he introduced me to someone as Jim Own Don't Trade Apple Kramer. And that's how I feel. And the best one I've ever had was Jen. Jensen, Jensen Wong, when the stock was two, I said, we're done trading it. Please stop trading it. And then I renamed my dog when he was Everest. And I named him Invidia.

And I go all over the country and I see Envidia. How confused was the dog? The dog was an idiot. You always had to have steak in your hand with that idiot. It was half pit bull, half who knows what. But I do think that when you look at the number of Invidian millionaires, that also is empirical, not anecdotal. Now, there are people who want to say, Jim, I really do want to measure what you said about Bloom Energy last night and diverse of what you say about Apple. And you know what I say?

Knock yourself out. I mean, if it was really wrong, I would have been canceled. I mean, I'm like 20 years means either that I've fooled the whole damn world every night or maybe people like it. And then they learn. Maybe they learn. You mentioned you get up at 3.15. Yeah. I used to get up at 4 a.m. every day.

And people still think I do. so they think I have this crazy work. I think I've been sleeping in a long time. No, but you know a lot. And the only way to know a lot is to read a lot and to work a lot. Can you give us like a day? Like, okay, you wake up at 3.15. Yeah, like you read and work like crazy.

Give us a little, the prep that goes into your show. Okay, here's a while. I start with the FTA. Okay. Because the FTA has one breaking news story every day. Just one. But it's great. And today was the end of the video.

And what time do you read it? You're up at 315. I do have to, I mean, I have a 4 o'clock workout. Okay. That's an hour and a half. So I have a tight schedule for the first 45. I look at the future, CNBC.com, Bloomberg, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. I spend a little more time on the Wall Street Journal of the state because I feel like that they're a little more in tune with what the market's doing.

And then I go and I start looking at my email. And the email is just a series of PDFs. How many emails do you get a day? 700. Wow. I look through the PDF. Yeah. And I look.

You read all the sell side research. I read everything I think is relevant. And I'm looking for something to say, I have a memo that comes out, 10 things I'm looking at. I have to have that in at 7.30. So that's my overlord. And then after that, I have to do squawk on the street. And then I start again and I start writing the show. And I've been writing the show with my sister's kid since he was in high school.

He's now with me for 20 years, Cliff Mason. He's a genius. And he's, I mean, the guy can just, I think he has two PCs going all at one. and he's remarkable. And we have a really good time doing mad money. And wait, what time is this hour that you're working on the show? Oh, this is beginning at 10.05. And when are you reading like all the conference calls and earnings?

Because you really, one of the things is you know details of the calls and earnings. During the day, I spend a huge amount of time. I mean, for instance, I'm in the Halcyon moment here because the only thing I had to read this point was General Mills. And I'll read more of that because they talked about how the consumer is hurting. And, you know, if you're hurting maybe because Blue Buffalo, actually was plus six. But if you look at some of their brands, proprietary brands, they can be knocked off. It's not like when Costco couldn't knock off Coca-Cola. There's stuff more fungible.

There's more elastic. But I spend, you know, I'm a couple hours a day on the. And then after hours earning. So then like Apple reports earnings and then you do the work. I have a great marriage. I put that out first because I wreck it every day. I finished the show at quarter six. It's taped, live tape.

I come home. I have a bite to eat. I mean, I had to go out to dinner this night. I hate that. And then I say good night to my wife. Wait, what time do you go to bed? I go to bed at 11. She goes to bed at like a normal time.

So that's when I really wreck the marriage. That's not the plan. I don't set out to do that. Did that previously bad strategy. But I just find that I have to do that. And that's like during when you have that. that rush. Now earning season no longer is a season because companies are... It feels like it goes on forever. Doesn't it? It's kind of perma. But when we have that week where J.P. Morgan starts and

Wells does it. That weekend is just miserable. Fortunately, during the summer, I garden. My weekends are just filled with this. I love gardening. We should talk gardening sometimes. Are you vegetable or are you? Big gardener. Decorative flower gardening. But I used to have a vegetable patch, actually, but then I moved to a new place. I need to restart one. How do you choose your Sound effects. Oh, okay. Hey, I had a radio show. This show, and you know where that radio show?

Bloomberg. The greatest radio network in the world. Bloomberg. And the mayor run ran it twice a day because he thought it was, a lot of it was educational. Mike loves radio. Oh, he really does. He was my biggest, you know, look, I think if I say he was my biggest backer, that sounds like a joker. But he loved what I did.

And the sound effects got people going. and it was drive time and he was so supportive and I love him I mean look once you leave he's not as supportive but what can I say

I mean this is Bloomberg we should try to reintroduce sound effects on radio the mayor loved it yeah because he wanted people to listen you know bull bear those music sounds imagine incorrect a buzzer

but a guillotine for they had to cut the numbers and that kind of thing we only have one which is the monopsony claxon, which isn't exactly that catchy. Do we even use it or do we just say we're going to. Producers insert the monopsony claxon. Very proud.

A proud fellow a lot. You know, one of the alums is just great to be substantive and great to be able to explain and educate. And no one said education doesn't work for the numbers. Do you actually, do you think of yourself more as an educator versus a stock picker? Yes. This is really like, let's say last night's show. I tried to explain that what matters today with the Fed is what way will the curve change? Will interest rates start going up on the long end or down?

Long end down is the big win. Long end up is what happened last year. We had the stutter step and then we had the December crash when Powell just said, listen, we're done. That's going to be the judge. But I had to use all sorts of analogies because the curve. You can't ever mention the curve. Like did you ever reach Sydney Homer? We can mention the curve.

You can. You have reading Inside the Yoker by Sidney Homer. Tracy's read a lot of Homer. It's five months. No, you're here. I have, actually. No, no. No, no.

No, no. You were talking about Sydney Homer. Tracy's read Sydney Homer. I have. I love that book. Also, most of it. It's a 550-page book about it inside the Yommer. But most of it is charts.

That's what people don't understand. It goes by really fast. It's all charts. She's a hitter. Yeah, yeah. But I listen. You're kind of, you know, you're an hitter. The show's a hit, man.

What can I say I like the show? it's okay to say I like the show. Yeah. No, we are going to use this on sizzle reels and promotional material for years to come. Well, I see these people that I've worked with here. Phil Donne. Yeah, yeah. And these are the cream of the crop.

I mean, I was at the street. Everybody who was good. Oh, yeah. I actually encouraged them to come here because they start the street and the idea is to move up. And you want to go to a place where people can be thoughtful. And look, I'm not saying this to suck up. I'm saying I worked here. Yeah.

And that's what the essence was. Many great street alum have come through. Okay. I was going to like say, you know, when we were going over what we wanted to talk about, and I was going to bring this up. And then you're like, nah, don't bring up what we're going to talk about. It's a complete surprise. Were you a college age Spartacist or Trotskyite?

Like, tell us about, you mentioned it once, I think, in a video, but then the video, I can't find it online. You've also tweeted about your Uncle Vlad, about 100. hundred times with whom you do bear a passing resemblance. Give us, like, what's the real story here? I used to be stopped by, as Uncle Vlad and all the time. Yeah, I know. Okay, mine was Spartacist because I believe that the workers. And who were they?

Were they Trotsky-Iids or what? Yes, yes. The workers United should never be defeated because we're about the workers owning the means of production, so therefore we should own the company. Yeah. And now, Trotsky, obviously, gravely misunderstood, including the ice pick, the ice pick very bad. That was a bit.

He missed out. He missed out of the ice pick. But I just think that that made a lot of sense. And I went that way. Just when you were at Harvard. Yeah. Okay. We had pretty big following.

There were not that many Leninists. I mean, you know, Troskey was pretty good writer. Yeah. And Lenin was he wrote what is to be done. His version, there were two what is to be done. And that's a good read. But Trosky really was a very thoughtful guy. And also a great army general.

And people forget that. His train must have been so sad. The train. The train, man. Only the money train, the Armenian money train in Shield, and that train really worked. Yeah. Well, I guess the fugitive train crash was a good train catch. Anyway, keep going on.

I like Union Pacific here. That's not right. We're like talking about Transmeless. Seamless. Seamless. Well, I just was. You can't help it. I was a labor.

Talk those about. Because you've also talked about you once did a wildcat strike. I ran a wildcat strike at the Phillies where I felt that we should have, look, we're doing all the work here. I talked these guys out. We're doing all the work. here. And yet everyone else, the overlords would be, by the way, can I just tell you, you had to do a kickback. When you were selling ice cream, hey, ice cream, vanilla and chocolate, one third of your money went back to the guy. So you didn't get strawberry ice cream because you can't sell strawberry.

Nobody wants strawberry. That was the big threat. Hey, listen, shut up, Kramer. You're going to get strawberry. But I had a seventh level concession that I paid everybody. I paid everybody not to come up to the seventh level, so I owned it. But we had Steve Carlton then a long time ago, probably I know, but he used to pitch games in an hour and a half. I was always long, a huge amount of ice cream in July. It was just dreadful. So I let the Wildcat strike. And it was very good.

They called me in. And they said, you're fired. I said, well, you can't do that. Well, you're not going to get any ice cream tonight. You can come all you want to this, but you're not getting ice cream. And that was it. And that was bad. So when did you see the light, though, from, you know.

Okay, actually, really great question. The light was when I helped. I helped strike J.P. Stevens. Now, J.P. Stevens was a terrific TAL company, linen company, with J.P. Stevens being his great Princeton alum, and we knew where he lived, and we targeted the management, really thought we had it going, and we were crushing it. And I was, like, coming up from the South to help work on it. And then they closed the company rather than deal with us. They closed it. And that was when I had a change of heart, because I said, Wait a second.

I just helped take away the livelihood, the health care, the dinner for thousands of workers by trying to get them more money. And I really had to rethink it. And I just said, well, maybe the Spartacist thing more focused on the matter at hand, which is covering a homicide. But I really felt awful about what we did. We closed the company. That was not the intent. There is this tension, though, between, like, workers having jobs and shares actually going up, right? Like, you have companies that the easy way to boost your share prices to cut costs, which means laying off workers.

How do you square that? Well, I think that you guys did a piece. I think it was you, Joe, about how you've been thinking a lot about the billionaires, thinking a lot about this. And I think that the way I square that is that if I go back to President Reagan. he was disgusted by how much the CEOs made and the difference. And now the CEOs did never had to pay the price and the workers had to pay the price. And this is when you're talking about Reagan. And funny that Elizabeth Warren reminded me about this when I saw her.

I just think that it's a travesty. I met with President Clinton over a plan which said, look, I think that workers should get shares if they're laid off. Because typically a stock goes up if they're laid off. And what he did was he gave me a can of Coke, Diet Coke. said this is the greatest idea in the world. We're going to run with it and nothing ever happened. Which president was that? President Clinton.

Oh, Clinton. Well, they all said it didn't matter which president. Nobody ever did what I said. President Biden was hilarious. We meet him on that train. He said, honestly, I am the poorest of the 100. Why do I need your information? I said, you don't need it at all.

I mean, I'm going to take him a minus five. I do think that President Clinton was very smart about the market. It understood that laid off workers were. the Tinder to get a stock hire. He was really smart about the market. President Bush, number two, not that smart. Wait, will you rank presidential knowledge of markets? Oh, my God.

Okay, well, first, I would take Andrew Johnson because he just was an insider trade note. I don't know. I mean, did you read any of these books about Jay Gould? No. And what he did with Grant? Oh, my God. He found out the gold, you know, where they were on the gold standard and Ecombe. There were many, many stories about presidents, I think, helping.

by mistake. So I would have to give those guys. So as a what do you think about, you know, there is this sort of particularly in New York City this very energetic, nascent leftism. They wouldn't characterize themselves as communists. I don't think

Zoran is going around calling himself a Truscat. I don't think he is. No, he's not. I wish he were. What do you make of like, what do you make of this? Are we in a, like, are we at a revolutionary moment, are the conditions of past revolutions present here in the United States? No, they're not because we have great job growth. The revolutions have typically been preceded by famine.

Okay, well, then how serious, like, when you, you know, what do you think about the DSA and so forth? Like, because I think you've said, you know, like, do you consider them to be dangerous radicals or are they like a sort of different shade of liberal Democrat? I think different shade of liberal Democrat. I mean, I remember Occupy Wall Street. I used to go to whatever, you know, and see what's going on to interview people. And they didn't know where they were politically because they were so confused.

And we all in the media kind of felt that they were communists or leftists and wanted to tear down Wall Street. They just, I mean, they were just sleeping in a cold stone and saying, listen, we're unhappy. And their ethos was zero. I think that the mayoral race, I mean, look, I care about defunding police versus police because I care about public safety. Sure. And I saw what happened in San Francisco. Zoran has changed. I mean, he has changed his mind about that. Yeah, he has recant. That's why I don't think that we're going to be San Francisco. I also think, by the way, we went to trains on time. We want public safety.

I don't think that that's it. I don't think they're in play. I just really don't. Now, I'm a New Jersey citizen. I have to love the governor of New Jersey. He was my boss at Golden Sacks. But look, I just want everyone to be able to recognize that the town has made a great comeback. And there's just so many great places. And I hate to see anything devolved in the San Francisco, which is a getting better, but was a nightmare to the point where I stopped going. I used to do four times a year of my show. But I saw a guy, pull a knife. I was in front of, I was behind him at Walgreens, get all the money.

And then the cops arrested him outside and they released him. And I said, what are he doing? He says, well, we, are you a hunter? I said, I'm a fisherman. He said, well, we do the same thing. We catch him release. Jim, I got to tell you, we just got a mess. saying Mike Bloomberg wants to say hi to you after we record the show.

I don't believe that. No, seriously. We're going to bring you down. Oh, my God. What a selfie. It's never ridiculous. Even though you left the company. He wants to see you.

I left the company, but it wasn't my idea. I didn't want to leave the company to be very specific. But he became mayor. Look, I always worship him. What can I say? And I won't even talk about the myriad charities that he really did fun because that's not why I did it. And I always admire that more than anything.

He never wanted anyone to know. In New York, it's so, it's so predominantly going to a building and the guy's got his name on it. Well, there's no, you know, that is not Mayor Bloomberg. Mayor Bloomberg was, I remember giving an award for what we did at the Brooklyn Bridge. I don't know if you guys been to Brooklyn Bridge Park, but this city's been to be dumb. And a lot of it is that Mr. Mayor. He's Mr. Mayor. Back to finance for a second.

Were you ever tempted to recommend the inverse Kramer E.T. Okay, so that guy got crushed. It did. It was just annihilated. But had you recommended it, they would have had to short themselves, right? Oh, my God. Right. What a cool idea.

Right. I didn't want to, it was one of those things. This is, you know, you go through it. And your wife says, I don't want you acknowledge him. I said, well, the guy's a total joker. She's just, I don't want you to acknowledge him. And a lot of times what happens is you do go back to your home and you ask your wife what can do or your partner, what's right, because everyone has got an agenda at work.

But my wife's agenda is me. And so I always knew that she was like a good lawyer. There's attorney-client privilege. There's wife's spousal privilege. Yeah. That must be feel so good. I'm looking at the ticker now. They closed it.

It did terrible. And then they liquidated it in February 2020. Yeah. How do you look? You know, I don't, we don't get a fraction of it, but we get a little bit. Do you ever like, for your mental health, like public abuse or publics? What do you have, do you ever like, do you have any tips? Okay, sure.

I mean, there's just. Sometimes people make fun of my voice in the. Couple notes comment. CNBC told me to be on John Stewart. And I didn't know the show. And I didn't know that he would, I didn't know he would be unfair. And I didn't expect, they were telling me basically that he would, it would be convivial. So I didn't come with my A game.

I came with my F game. And it was mortifying and terrible. And every time I looked out, I mean, I always saw people look at me as I was, I was, I'm sure. Now there's a whole generation of people. He apologized for it later, right? Yeah, he did. It's 16 years now. And I meet younger people and they've never heard of it.

But those people never realized. that the New York Giants were a good football team. It kind of happens like that. My most important tip is to say they're not thinking of it when they talk to you. In other words, you're thinking of it. But give yourself a break. Most of them are not. I mean, I would say, like, I would have a time she was thinking about Justin.

I know she was thinking about Joe. No, you're not a mind reader. Take people face value. He was a very mean person. And that's a word that my daughter used in fifth grade. But I don't know how to define someone who wants to. to take your livelihood away. And he wanted my livelihood taken away.

And I didn't want it taken away. And to take away someone's libelage, as I mentioned with J.P. Stevens, it's a terrible thing. And I didn't deserve it. But that's, you know, it's like the movie Unforgiven. It deserves got nothing to do with it. Speaking of the financial crisis, though, you did have a series of like, memable moments, let's just say, in 2007, 2008, including the rant about Bear Stearns. It's the most incredible.

Yeah. It stands up so well, yeah. Well, there's a nice article in the FT about it when the actual, not the minutes, but the actual transcript came out about how they laughed at me. Yeah. And they actually mentioned. They said, yeah, we laughed at him. He said, oh, Kramer's, oh, he's really funny. It was about speaking to a lot of people who were saying, you got to get on the case here.

You guys are just oblivious. You're acting as if it's a regular market. And my friend, Ern Burnett was going on about a regular thing. And I just had to interrupt. And I said, look, they know nothing. They know nothing. And I was speaking about Ben Bernanke, which. who really, I think, did know nothing during that period.

And I was widely cascated. I had to go on the Today Show the next day where Matt Lauer, whatever, said, you were off your meds. I want to hear more about this. Now, see, when you say that someone's off their meds, that presumes that you were on your meds. And again, I mean, look, am I used to being demean, does it bother me? It doesn't bother me like he used to. But I do say that that ran holds up. And I'm proud of Grant.

Yeah. And then I did that other thing where I went, if you have any on the Today Show, if you need your money anytime in the next five years, the market, this fell 40% after this. They used to take it out now because I didn't want people. By the way, it took five years to get the market back to where it was. I was worried about people who want a fixed income, fixed them meaning they own General Mills and they own Chevron. And I just felt like that it was just really the wrong time. And then the next day they had me back. And Curry asked me, look, you said this thing.

on the show, do you want to take it back? And I said, no. I mean, sometimes when you yell fire in a crowded theater, there's a fire. I want to get out as many people as I can. And these were moments that at the time, you'll really appreciate this show. When I did these, subsequently I was so ridiculed

that I would say to myself, why the hell did I ever do it? And I knew it was right, but no, I had such angst, even though I was right. I was attacked by so many people. But now, of course, it's a dish best taste. It's a very... How long are you to do this for?

Like, it's 315. Like, I don't, again, I don't work nearly as much hard. No, but I, like, feel like my health, I have the, even the years where I got up super early all the time. Like, they took them tall. I remember because you talked about all the time. Yeah. God, I love it so much. I do.

And I was doing something last night at dinner, and I really wanted to get home because I wanted to formulate a thesis on D-Rams. Well, there you go. But I am so fixated on this, and I find the puzzle so difficult and fabulous, the invidia puzzle. The puzzle this morning we have about what's going to happen. I'll write my top right after the Fed. And this is such an exciting day. You get 12 of these. So I don't know.

And look, it's a great question because I don't know how long you can do it. And I do want to see the world. I don't take as much vacation. I mean, I'm off for six weeks. I take four. But it's because I love it. It is because I love it. It's not a sickness.

It really isn't. So how has your research process changed over the years? Because again, you've been in the game for decades. So I go out to dinner with Jensen Wong and he says, I know you spend all your time reading these reports. I just urge you to chat GBT, the advanced and get the concise version and then see if it's one you want to do. And that has changed my life because there'll be 10. and it turns out that Pulte home was important, not because of Bill Pulte, he's not involved.

And Stanley Black & Decker was important and Best Buy was that important. And then the others, I read the concise version and I could move on with my life. And that was a great break for me because it allowed me during the real earning season to have 15 reports and just say, okay, I'm only going to do Cat and Proctor. Yeah.

I think Tracy and I have both found, like, there are a lot of things that ChatsypG still isn't good for, but there is no question in my mind that for a research process, whether it's finding the right document, whether it's very hard. Have you tried perplexity finance? I used perplexity maybe 10 times this morning. I mean, it's shorter, quicker. Yeah.

I think it's impressive. Yeah. It is very impressive. I wanted Apple to buy them. I was pushing that jump forever. I mean, I was talking about that with Tim Koke on Friday. I really think that they need something. But because of the Google decision, the judgment decision, it's possible someone could pay them.

We talk about China a lot on the show. Are they staccanovite? Wow. No, I got that. I was reading three-year-old tweet. I had never heard that time. Yes. Well, no, the 8th Army is.

The 8th Army is famously staccanovite. What is this? I only saw that because I was reading through all-year-old tweets. What is the staccano-vite movement and what is it have to do with contemporary China? Was the guy who won the award for shoveling the most coal for steel and Stalin loved him. Communist obsessed with steel. I always wondered why that is. Yes, they always were.

Every plan. The five-year for China was. was the same. There long, a lot of steel there. China's wrecked the steel market. The president's dead right on the transshipments. My old buddy, Peter Navarro is dead right on the transshipments. It's wild that he's my old buddy, but he's my old buddy.

And he went to jail. Bad. Not Yale. Jail. Because he went to Tufts. But I do think that when you look at China, sometimes I'm very harsh about them. Okay. And that's because my father worked for St. Regis and Climax Union Camp.

He worked for a champion. He'd champion. He worked for paper companies. He sold gift wrap and corrugated. And every single time he did well at one of these, they closed it. And they closed it because the Chinese targeted the gift wrapped industry. If you go to Costco, all you have is Chinese gift wrap. So my father at the age of 73 realized that's it.

They wiped us out. He called a company that does from China, who had American rep and said, listen, I want to work for the Chinese. and what he did was he would sketch logos restaurants and suggest that they use doggy bags that have their own name and he had a drawstring doggy bag that the Chinese made for two bucks. He sold it for. And he then had the run of his lifetime from 73 to 92.

He worked until the month he died. Actually, he had a good last month. And what's incredible was the Chinese treated him like kings. And when he died, they gave me the proceeds for three straight years. And they were the best bosses in the world. They had no idea of me. You call in China the greatest capital. capitalist nation of all time. It is. They just crush it. God, you really read me close.

Is the headline of this episode going to be Jim Kramer on communism? No, no. It is very funny because I do think they're the biggest threat. I mean, what they're doing in video. Well, I do want Nvidia to be the platform. But I haven't been to China. So I'm secondarily. My son went to China to Camelsurf and he broke his, well, he hurt his shoulder. And they were going to operate immediately. And I said, look, I got to speak to the head of the hospital. No, no, no, no. My wife flew him over for Shang. I came back. But the Chinese are a conundrum for us because they work harder than we do. But we may have them here. I know the exports were really. The export numbers are really good for them away from us. But I think we had to take some action because there's too many fentanyl towns. I got a fentanyl town right next to me. And I can tell you it was a great town when I was growing up.

And now it's a town where I can't believe it. I can't believe what happened. But the mills close. You know, the mills, the mills, the mills. I mean, now you can't bring back the Pyrex Mill, I was good peeps by George Packer in the Atlantic about that. But I know we're really rambling here. I shouldn't ramble anymore.

Let me ask one cliche question. Lots of talk about market valuations at the moment, froth in the market. We're recording this, I should have said, on Fed Day, September 17th. Do you see froth? Do you see a bubble brewing? Yeah, there's two markets. And that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book because there's this market where that is a musical chair market.

I make fun of it. It's a Palantir market. And I accept the fact that you want to speculate go do Palantir because Carp is. You know, Carp is one of the greatest. His ontology work is incredible. It's better than Scientology, ontology. But I want people to stop. I can let it be one of your holdings, but don't do all because it will be crushed.

And when it happened, I do believe it. And when it happens, you'll lose everything. And then anything I tried to do would be wrong. It's like when I was at college, I used to go to the racetrack. And then there was a guy, Andy Beyer, who was a, he was teaching a course. He said, listen, if you're going to go speculate at the racetrack, at least know how to do it. And I never forgot that. And if you're going to speculate, I will show you how to do it.

But I really want compounding. And I want compounding because, but we know that that really is. Einstein did not call it the eighth one of the world. But we know that that is a much better way to make money, much better. I have one last question. It's very closely related to this. But one of the things... Why are you wearing a button down?

Why aren't you wearing French collar? That's my kind of question. It was not wrinkly. All right. It was not wrinkly. Yeah. We're going to have Kramer on today. No, I like that.

You don't have to press that because it has some sort of weird. Did you buy that in Temu? No, no, I got a unit clothes. All right. I'm pretty sure that was an insult, Joe. No, no, no, no, because I would never do that. I'm very messing with my clothes. I would have said she-in if I wanted in.

So I bought my wife's lingerie on she-in. Thank God we use, you know, match light. Don't have any. You don't have to put gasoline on the floor. You know, one last question. It occurs to me that, like, one thing I've thought many, I got interested in. the market in the late 90s. At any given moment in a boom or a bubble, there are moments that feel like the top. And then a year later, you're like, oh, that was nothing. That was just the,

oh, you know, it's like a few, a couple years ago, they're like some R-C3 AI is like booming. Oh my God, that's jumpy crazy. I knew Tom. Right. And so like weird things like that. Or like, you know, this meme stock went up. Dogecoin is railing. We must be in a bubble. Okay. But all these things feel like a top in the moment. And then you realize they were just little hills on the way to a much bigger mountain. So you've got to, there's a simple solution. You take out over time your cost basis and then you play with the house as money. And then I'm okay because I'm at first you know harm guy, a Hippocratic oath. And I can tell people, listen, if you want to do that for your one slot, be my guess. But as it goes up, you've got to

take your cost out. And then I don't care where it goes. It's fantastic. But you are so right. That's what happens. Look, some people feel that Google was at, Invidia. I mean, I worked enough from Nvidia, another terrible. People were going Google a bubble in 2005, 2006. Well, I mean, look, I recommended Google at 88, and I was investigated by the CNBC General Counsel for why I used 88. It's so big. And I said, because I didn't use 300?

Hmm. 300 was way low. Didn't you get out of the dot-com bubble early as well? Yes, I did. I was short. I went 100% short of dot com. What are your tips for spotting? Because I was the biggest shareholder on the street.com.

And we had gone from 63 to 2. So I had kind of a premonition. I mean, when it was in 63, the New York Observer said that I was 300, drew a picture of me as a pig and said the $360 million, by the time it came out, I was 260. And then a year later, I was 2.6. As a Trotsky, the pig cartoon must have hurt.

I was overweight then. Yeah. Jim, we could talk for a long time. Thank you so much for coming on. I wanted to be on your show. I wanted to have me for a very long time. Yes, and I know that I got the exception because my book to be on. I told you that I was writing the book, and I was an man of my word to come back because I always want to be in your show because you're just a thoughtful guy.

And when you were the stalwart, you were the first guy I read. Thank you. Do you know that? No, I would get up and read the stalwart. Amazing. High praise. Because it was the best. Thank you so much.

Absolutely. that you guys are really appreciate it. Tracy, one thing I will say about Jim, and I've always felt this. I've only met him a handful of times before, but one thing I'll say is like, that public persona is not an act. No. The mad money vibe is that is Jim. No, I can believe it. He has a lot of energy.

Yes. I feel like he's chaotic neutral maybe in D&D. Harlanz. I just can't, like, I couldn't sustain getting up at four, and that was just for a few years. And the fact that he's still up and third. 3.15? And he goes to sleep at 10.30 or 11? Yeah. That's four hours of sleep every night. And that was a fascinating discussion. And I think one thing you can say is that in some respects, Jim's been vindicated by, you know, the rise of retail trading. Everyone takes it more seriously

now. That wasn't the case. Yeah. In like the 90s or the early 2000s. It's really changed. No, it really is striking. I mean, it does seem like, you know, he talked about needing to get a bodyguard during GameStop. So it's clear that to some element, there is a part of the retail investor world, which has metastasized into something sinister when people are making threats because you don't like the stock.

It's really interesting. People are just like any sort of negativity is so fought back against online when it comes to stocks these days. It's really striking. But also, you know, obviously, and then other things such as, as the They Know Nothing rant or the liquidation, which I hadn't even realized until you mentioned it, of the S-Gim ETF.

Yeah. Some good wins under his belt. Man, I really wish he had recommended that. I know. Just to see what would happen. Just to see the inception of, okay, how do you handle this? I don't even know if an ETF can short itself, but I guess we would find out. I don't know how you go about that.

But no, I'm glad we finally made that happen. And I read about half of his book. And it's a very fun read. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. Shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. This has been another.

episode of the OddLots podcast. I'm Tracy Allaway. You can follow me at Tracy Allaway. And I'm Jill Wisenthall. You could follow me at The Stallwork. Follow our guest, Jim Kramer. He's at Jim Kramer. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez, at Carmen Armin, Dashel Bennett at Dashbot and Kale Brooks at Kail Brooks. For more OddLots content, go to Bloomberg.com slash OddLots. We have a daily newsletter on all of our episodes. And you can chat about all of these topics 24-7 in our Discord.org.org.g.org. slash oddlots. And if you enjoy oddlots, if you like it when we have Jim Kramer on, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes, absolutely ad-free. All you need to do is find

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