Britannica Money (2024)

Jim Cramer (born February 10, 1955, Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is an American television personality known for his investment advice show Mad Money (2005– ).

Cramer first became interested in the stock market as a child; he memorized corporate stock symbols and organized an imaginary portfolio. In 1977 he graduated from Harvard University, where he had served as editor in chief of the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, during his senior year. After graduation, Cramer worked as a journalist for a number of publications, including Florida’s Tallahassee Democrat and The American Lawyer.

After enrolling (1981) in Harvard Law School, he discovered a renewed interest in stocks, became enthralled with the nascent 24-hour cable-television business news channels, and sought to try his hand at investment counseling. His first client—Harvard Law faculty member and The New Republic editor and owner Martin Peretz—gave him $500,000 to invest. Cramer’s success with Peretz’s account led to a job with investment bank Goldman Sachs in 1984, shortly after he had earned a law degree from Harvard. Cramer left Goldman in 1987 to open a hedge fund, Cramer Levy Partners.

Cramer and Peretz founded TheStreet.com, a financial analysis website, in 1996. In 2000 Cramer left the hedge fund, which regularly earned him more than $10 million annually, and the following year he began hosting a syndicated radio show, Jim Cramer’s RealMoney. Mad Money debuted in 2005. The program featured most of the standard finance show elements—market analysis, stock advice, and interviews with business reporters—but what gave it crossover appeal was the frenetic Cramer, who roamed the TV studio with his shirtsleeves rolled up, yelling at the camera and using a variety of odd props to demonstrate his points. His idiosyncratic approach quickly propelled his star beyond the usual altitude of cable news and led to his making appearances in films and on other television shows. In 2009, at a time when many financial gurus were criticized for having failed to give the public a proper warning of how dire the economic climate actually would become before the worldwide recession, Cramer entered into a number of notable public squabbles with figures such as comedian and host of The Daily Show Jon Stewart, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, and New York University professor Nouriel Roubini. Controversy failed to dent his popularity as a stock analyst, however. In 2019 Cramer and Peretz sold TheStreet.com for about $16.5 million. Two years later Cramer launched CNBC Investing Club, a website designed “to help all investors build long-term wealth.”

Cramer wrote several books on investment strategy, including You Got Screwed! Why Wall Street Tanked and How You Can Prosper (2002), Getting Back to Even (2009), and Get Rich Carefully (2013).