>> 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 make you find it. "mad money" starts now. hey, i'm cramer. welcome to "mad money" welcome to cramerica. other people make friends, i want to make you money. i'm teaching and educating so call will me at 800 help 743-cnbc. things i have been keeping from you. tonight i'll do something about it. tonight, i'll tell you who i am and how i got here.

no, not i am jim cramer of "mad money" founder of the street. i want you to know more than that. although it did take me two years to learn "avatar" was a movie and a hash tag wasn't a number sign. i want to show you, by my own whacky standards is trace the arc that brought me to "mad money." not for some ego trip, but give you money making lessons from the phases of my career and how you are profit. in the end, this is cramerica! in short, i am going to give you the invest to cramer guide book and how i continue to learn every day to help you become better with the ultimate goal of mad money.

let's start early in the back of the time machine. my love of stocks did not begin in high school or college. my love of stocks started in fourth grade. my dad would bring back the old philadelphia bulletin. the largest paper in the country. i went through the comics and sports. i was a phillies fan then. i would make it so i would be a yankees fan. we were 80 miles of new york. i was a curious kid. curiosity is a blessing and curse. not only that of a cat that is probing and jumping on hot stoves. there is a solid chunk of the paper that was impenetrable to me. the business section. they were the other tables. different from the batting

average tables and box scores. when you read them from left to right, they made no sense. open, range, close. what open? what range? what closed? what were the strange things? i asked my dad, who i know, dabbled in the stock market. he would occasionally get mad with prices on the radio. in particular, he always seemed angry when i heard something called national video. and how national video went out. i didn't know what national video did or if it went out. i know it made him furious. i wanted to find out what made him react with such fury. he sat me down and said the lines are the performance of the stock on a given day. the open is where the stock opened in the morning with the opening bell. the range was how low or high it traded during the day and the close is how much it was worth when trading finished at the

closing bell. it fast kncinated me. why did they trade in ranges and what did it mean to close? he described to me that people tried to figure out each day which stocks would go up at the close and wanted to buy them to make money from the increase during the range from the open to the close. this struck me as silly. i told him that when i looked at the baseball tables, i tried to figure out who was hot and who would go up and down specifically for the teams i like. he said it was the same for the stocks. you studied the stocks like you study the players. some were hot as a pistol and some were duds. i wanted to figure out which would go higher. i wanted to know if i could learn something from following the ranges and reading the tables. he said why don't you try. it seemed the radio was always on until pop put the tv on for dinner. we watched the news while eating.

i hated it. most of the news was about the war. meaning the war in vietnam. it seemed scary and real life. when i was 9 years old, my mom was worried i would go to vietnam. my draft number was not high and i was spared from the conflict. they mentioned the dow jones industrial average. they talked or showed the most active stocks. then the ones that had done the best or worst. national video was the worst, i discovered, hence the anger. i would write the names down that i heard and tracked them. kept them in, believe it or not, this ledger that i still have. here it is. what a terrific game. i was trying to figure out the next move of the stock. even if all i knew was the name. polaroid, syntex. pan am.

united. hey, so i followed a lot of those. a bunch of others. look at that. con air. easte eastern. national rca. admiral. i decided this was a cool game. i wanted to introduce this to my fifth grade class. showing them my ledger and inviting everyone to play to see who could find stocks that go up during the week. not everyone was into it as much as i was. my dad's company was national gift wrap and box company. represented the 3-m company. selling tape and ribbon. my executive director said you had to make the bows. they were coming up with product lines. that is why i favored it. right at fifth grade, pop came

home with a new line of 3-m they were selling. 3-m book shelf games. he said i want to learn about how the stock market really worked and the company created two games about business. acquire about takeovers which were the rage at the time. and stocks and bonds of which i am fortunate enough to have gotten a copyright here. courtesy of george, producing "mad money" who gave it to me for the holidays. i love that game. i have asked the ceo of 3-m to bring the games back. apparently they don't own the rights anymore. from mentioning this from my stock gain to stocks and bonds which george bought from e-bay. this is fascinating to get your kids started in them right now. it is easier than ever. pick some stocks. not of defense companies, but they are performing in an odd and positive way.

of companies that are familiar to your kids. have them track them and guess which will do better over time. not the city transport or growth corporation of america or the pioneer mutual fund or the city municipal bonds. here is the bottom line of my childhood stock market obsession. get started early. they may play for life because the stock market is a long-term contest. the earlier you get in, the more you can win. i'm going to mickey in new york. mickey! >> caller: jim, i wanted to thank you for what you do. i have been investing since i was young. what type of changes should i make to my investments as i get older? >> it is a generational thing. if your 50s, switch to bonds. most more. interest rates are low.

got conservative stocks and shift over time from the high growth to the partnerships and then you will be able to pick up income. rick in arizona. >> caller: hello, mr. cramer, how are you? >> good. >> caller: you mentioned your bucket list a couple weeks ago. you wanted to attend the indy 500. i have a bucket list of places i want to visit during my retirement. because of following your advice the last four years, i'm well on my way to being able to do those things. >> that's fabulous. >> caller: thank you so much. my question is, i have a couple of young children and i'm trying to get them started in investing. what items or ideas on investing do people need to know when they start learning about the market and investing themselves. >> first thing they need to know is what they own and the idea behind that is own disney. i tell people start with disney.

domino's. mcdonald's if you like mcdonald's. go to the mall. go to costco. go to places that you are familiar with. read the annual. buy a share. get him or her involved. get them started early. teach your kids about the market. it is a very valuable lesson. there are more coming up on the special edition of "mad money." we'll be right back. >> don't miss a second of "mad money." follow@jimcramer. send jim an e-mail at cnbc.com or give us a call at 1-800-743-cnbc. miss something? head to madmoney.cnbc.com. vo: traveling you definitely end up meeting a lot more people but

a friend under water is something completely different. i met a turtle friend today so, you don't get that very often. it seemed like it was more than happy to have us in his home. so beautiful. avo: more travel. more options. more personal. whatever you're looking for expedia has more ways to help you find yours. [ agent smith ] i've found software that intrigues me. it appears it's an agent of good. ♪ [ agent smith ] ge software connects patients to nurses to the right machines while dramatically reducing waiting time. [ telephone ringing ] now a waiting room is just a room. [ static warbles ]

welcome back to a bizarrely special "mad money" where i'm trying to teach you life lessons in investing from my life. i am not a dollar sign

represented by a man or stock symbol. ticker jim. i have learned a thing or two. tonight, you are getting that wisdom from the school of hard knocks. don't you love it at the beginning of the pro football game where the player says his name and the school of haknocks. now we covered how i got involved. the obsession of keeping a ledger to track stocks and ultimately how they trade through the greatest game on earth. no, it wasn't mondopoly. it was stocks and bonds. with the certificates and game boards and cards. you know about news and how that would send the stock higher or lower. that is what this was all about. i left the stock market games behind me by the time i got to middle school, which, by the way

was called junior high. my obsession was sports. i was the second fastest guy in school for ages. i ran track. the other thing i cared about was girls. whose movements were more elusive than any of this stuff. more elusive than the range of stocks. that was a random walk down springfield high main street. i would not win for losing. that is a subject of a different show. my father engrained in me my desire to save. even in high school, you have to save. i saved as i bussed tables at the old block and cleaver. we called it the block and cleavage because we were stupid. i sold soda and then graduated to selling ice cream. at that job, i learned the value of market power specifically cornering the market. i gave people the exclusive

right to sell ice cream. on the 600 or 700 level of the vets stadium. can you imagine how much money could be made if you had the only franchise in the upper deck? by paying those guys not to sell ice cream against me, i made r fortu fortunes. or maybe when steve carlton pitched, he pitched so quickly and got players out so fast, i would get stuck with unsold ice cream. you have to buy the ice cream from the company before you sold it. i would take a genuine beating. talk about learning how business worked. selling ice cream on a hot july night is short as short can be. i may jest with you about your name. you may hear me call you skip or come on, captain. i learned these names at the ballpark. it is what people called me to get my attention to buy ice cream. i loved the first inning.

i never forgot the monikers. at the advice of my father, i opened an account at fidelity. i put in a majority of my earnings. i read from the great peter lynch. it remained two of the best investing books of all time. those are the ones i tell people to get after they read my books and they want to learn more about the stock market. i did not save enough when i got to college. the money paid was work study. it went to tuition and room and board. when i got out of college and after a lot of attempts to get a job in the newspaper business, rejected by more than 50 papers, i have every single rejection letter in a trunk. i landed a position as a general assignment reporter. i have the pay stubs in my wallet to remind me of how hard it was and how poor i was. nonetheless, $156.

i contributed them. i put a few dollars away when i could. when i applied for the herold examiner. i put away $100 a week. i lived in tallahassee. after my job in los angeles, i had a nice apartment now. around the corner from a pioneer chicken which was too expensive for me to go to. a few weeks later, i was stalked and broken into repeatedly. something the cops were helpless to stop. i was assigned to a horrible school shooting in san diego. when i came back, everything was gone. so it began. my terrible, but thrilling six months of living in my car. trying to get by. the only real upside when you met a woman, it was easy to figure out the end of the night.

your place or mine. i know this is not your normal behavior. as much as i knew the goal was to save for an apartment, i was living hand-to-mouth. people would take me in to get a shower and change and maybe get a good night's sleep. you know what? i still never quit saving. i remember cashing my paycheck every week and writing a check to fidelity magellen fund. you have your gas, car and insurance expense if you have a car. terrific savings on homeowners and rent. how poor was i, yet still putting money away? when i got mono and then the jaundice liver and the green spot on my stomach. i had no health care. the hmo had no branch where i was last stationed where the company put me on the road so i could submit some expenses for the day. i had to go to a clinic to get fixed up. i was making my weekly trips to the doctor, one of the best i ever had.

the upside of investing living in your car, giving money to the best stock picker of all time, i managed through all the years, 35 years later, to put enough away to take advantage of the bull markets of our time. not to brag, but teach. that amount of money was well into the six figures. not because of my capital additions. i stopped putting money way years ago. because of the power of compounding and the amazing investor at helm. i think the take away is here i want you to save. earlier the better through thick and thin. when cnbc has the all star managers on, if you don't have enough time or money to handle your own or buy one or two stocks, send the money in. as little or as much as you can. here is the real bottom line. if i can send the checks to the fidelity fund when i was living in my car with jaundiced liver

and a pistol by my side, the most down and out you can be in this great country, you can put money away too. i'll try to make you more money after the break. ♪ [ male announcer ] a car that can actually see like a human using stereoscopic cameras ♪ and even stop itself if it has to. ♪ the technology may be hard to imagine... but why you would want it is not. the 2014 e-class,

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we're riding the delicious magical money mystery tour tonight. i have given you the lessons i learned the hard way through stock investing.

i told you how to get your kids started early and nothing should stop you from investing. if i can put money away living in my car, you can too. i love stock picking. after periods of pain and chaos, it is still totally worthwhile, if not lucrative. it is the reason why i believe you watch. your inclination. that is like the funny outfits and references and the sound board when i used to have a radio show for "mad money." it was called "real money." if you are picking stocks with real money, not just a ledger or with a game of stocks and bonds, you need to open an account. i got started in 1979 and there was no such thing with an online

account. i chose to put my money in a fidelity account. i turned to forbes. i read a nifty article about american agronomics. it was compelling. i bought first account. ten shares for $9. a week later, a frost hit and wiped out the crop. my investment was cut in half. i was completely devastated. >> house of pain! >> but not defeated. i sold out and took the capital and went back to forbes. i took seven shares of bobbie brooks. my money was halved again. fortunately, i had a decent job at a magazine which had just been started. i was making 20 gs. i was living at first and second near the united nations.

it was twice the rent for the rent in tallahassee. it allowed me to replace my stock offers. i was on the road a lot back then. after in historic kentucky, i fell in love with the breakfast at bob evans farm. i visited the huge fabulous midtown manhattan new york public library. one with the big lions in front of it. i looked into bob evans farm. they had microfische. it allowed me to compare it with other companies in the industry. i knew i had a good one. i bought 20 shares. the stock went up immediately. a good quarter. the stock split. i figured the first good component. know what you own. like it. what did i know about growing oranges? who knew about fashion? a good plate of sausage and

served in an attractive setting with a nice waitress? a company i found with tradition and good service and expanding in the midwest? that was for me. next up, standard press steel. it became sps. it was the old standard steel. from my old hometown. they made fasteners. a buddy from high school told me they were hiring like mad. wanted to know if i wanted job. i went to the library for research. nothing to print about the hiring push. right for a trade, right? no one had that skinny. it doubled not long after and by that point, i caught the bug for good. 23 years later, acquired by precision cast parts. the aircraft builders around the globe. i liked that for many years. now i figured it out. the best investment ideas come

from what you know and information gleaned from public sources even if they are hard to source as taking a trip to the new york public library when i was supposed to be working. i did not like the random way i was making money. a friend from home lucky and called for jobs at sps. a hearty breakfast at bob evans. there has to be a more methodical way. then it hit me. i covered some deals they were on in mergers. it seems like every deal was in the oil patch. one after another after another. smaller-to-mid sized oil companies were being bought. i was writing about it. i went back to the library. i took the stock research magazine and looked at oil companies. i cross referenced them to see

which would be acquired without problems because they are public or a family owned or they fit the parameters of the deals i was writing about. i settled on one. the oil company which was a gusher in indonesia. i did not have to wait long until it was bought. if you want to play takeovers, buy companies that will do on their own, but under managed which is the consensus i found by reading articles about the oil enterprise. that meant another oil company could do more which was cheaper than it should be. as much as i had hit winners, i was distraught that i had given up the ghost in the first few trades. i had been hanging around the track at the time. the track on weekends. mostly aquaduct nearby. i learned how to handicap by reading the books by the guy named andy beyer.

my first $50,000 season, they may be the best books from the ones i mentioned earlier. how to identify the best thoroughbr thoroughbreds. going to out of the way tracks. where information was less known. not betting on every horse in each race. bet big. cut your losses if you are having a bad run. every lesson to be applied to the stock market. you could take a huge swing when you know what you're doing. particularly when others don't on a less well known stock. don't gamble on the stocks for the excitement of it. don't let your loss pile up. after five years in journalism, i went back to law school. i saved enough to pay for my first year. all from the stock market. i would not have made enough if i kept it in the savings. an index fund would make me nothing. if you want to get started, go small. invest in what you know.

research it intentitensintensel. i got data from the public library. now the information is free and ubiquitous. now this is research and conference calls that i tell you are musts if you are going to know what you are doing. simple? no. lucrative? you bet it is. frank in arizona. frank. >> caller: jim, when they are considering buying or selling a stock, i look at the bid price and ask price. sometimes that price range is narrow. sometimes it is wide. how is that information useful and determining how to pull the trigger? >> if i like the stock, that is irrelevant. if you want to hold the stock for a while, you just have to hold it and forget about it. most of them are tighter. i used to buy stocks that could drive a truck through them. a dollar spread. things are easier now. don't worry about the spread.

>> this is a show that is a complexity. there is a conversation out there for topics that are not save for television. just good is never good enough. [ williams ] i face every challenge as motivation to improve my game. [ perry ] i worked hard to get where i am. but, i'll never rest. [ overton ] i always push myself, give a little more than expected. [ male announcer ] at southwest, we're never satisfied, never finished, and always looking for a better way. which is how we've grown to be america's largest domestic airline. [ overton ] welcome aboard. you hurt my feelings, todd.

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tonight's show is all about

you learning from my attendance at the university of financial hard knocks with a major in inn vef vesting. i showed you how to win and lose through examples in my life. i will show you how you can become a trader if you want to and become a good one at that. "mad money" has changed time and time again over the years. it has been on for so long and i have deliberately skewed it in the last 500 some odd shows away from trading and to investing. i have done so because there are more obstacles these days. you have to watch it like a hawk. you cannot do your job at the same time and follow the market. there are so many people with great sets of tools and assess the information in real time. there are products that allow hedge funds to move stocks

around like toys. you are gone one-on-one with the big boys if you attempt trading at home or work. it's almost a sucker's game. there are some advantages that you have now that you sure didn't have when i started trading in my law school dorm in '81. commissions are lower. you can get in and get out without much friction and without after commission profit. that is why i'm not worried about the spreads like earlier. the information from your personal computer or smartphone. i have to call brokers all day. and trading was lightning fast. i did not know which price i got when i bought it. did you have to wait at a pay phone while some kid chatted to his girlfriend or some woman was calling her mom. i was waiting for the phone. at the same time, i had to go with what i knew. i knew individual stocks for all the stories about harvard law, including the movie "paper

chase." i can tell you there was a ton of down time and good business school library. the stuff the brokers churned out and up to date microfisce. i had the best information around at that time. the best thing to do was to work on finding one trading idea per week. my reason was simple. you cannot be all over the map if you are doing this as a hobby. i could not take a lot of chances until i really knew what i was doing. that is a valuable lesson for you. if you want to start trading. i discarded stocks with catalysts or mergers. an article in the front page of "the new york times" may talk about break through in medicine. a report may discuss an oil find. i got on a roll. i started my first writing about the market. i wrote a news letter.

it was called "mr. bullish." i mailed to my parents. i had a thesis. i typed it on my olympic typewriter. i don't know. i would do no trade if i could not explain exactly what the company did and why i liked it and what would happen. i had that level of discipline. no buying of anything that did not have an exit strategy. i had to have an exit strategy from the moment i put the trade on. an important lesson. it made discipline by the assistance of the written thesis before i pulled the trigger. when you trade, you must trade with confidence. not the scare stuff. you could easily be shaken out by the broader ma eer market. would you be willing to put a stock recommendation on your voice mail and update it every week? this is jim cramer. i like this stock ahead of the

next quarter. i did that, too. i had that level of conviction about my pick of the week, which is important to possess. i was putting my money where my mouth was. i augmented the winnings with the work i got from my lawyer and legal work from a professor who moonlighted in criminal defense cases. it wasn't before long that marty, a publisher tried to get me to write a piece. i necessiglected to call him ba. he got three weeks of trades successfully at the answering machine. he asked me to meet me at the coffee house. he made more money from me than years with money managers. he wanted to give me $500,000 to manage. he said he had confidence in my. after i gave him a bit of tug and war, he gave me a check for $500,000. that was real money. i had it in my hands. it was too hot for the touch.

i ran down to fidelity. i set up another account. i went to work trading. almost immediately, i lost a ton of it. >> the house of pain! >> i could see how i would have to wash dishes at marty's house and mow the lawn for 125 years to make back the 70 gs i just blown to smithereens. my mistake. a man has to know his own limitations. you cannot trade a huge chunk of money at once. it was a violation of my discipline. you have to do so after you had ideas that you knew had a chance to pan out. with an entry point that was reasonable and exit point that was planned. knowing that you would be gone whether it worked or not, to keep that discipline in tact. i violated my own rules and i had blown it. i confessed to marty my sins and he should take whatever is left of the money back.

instead, he wanted to give me more money. he was betting i learned my lesson. he was right. i then reverted to my old style trying to be right about one idea at a time. keeping the rest in cash and going big with the conviction. like any good trader would do. i slowly made it back and i also paper invested. a more active, but not truly trading portfolio. i had a half million in the bank. that would be the beginning of my actual professional investing career. here is the bottom line. if you are going it trade, have a catalyst and exit point where something is supposed to happen and you are out of the stock either way because you are trading not investing. you need conviction and you have to ask yourself, would you be willing for the word to hear, hi, it's me. i'm not here, but i want you to take a swing at disney ahead of

the analyst me. if you can do all those things, start small. give it a try. stick with cramer. that i needed to make one of those tech jobs mine. we teach cutting-edge engineering technology, computer information systems, networking and communications management -- the things that our students need to know in the world today. our country needs more college grads to help fill all the open technology jobs. to help meet that need, here at devry university, we're offering $4 million dollars in tech scholarships for qualified new students. learn more at devry.edu. it's lots of things. all waking up. connecting to the global phenomenon we call the internet of everything. ♪ it's going to be amazing. and exciting. and maybe, most remarkably, not that far away. we're going to wake the world up. and watch, with eyes wide, as it gets to work.

cisco. tomorrow starts here. could lose tens of thousands of dollars on their 401(k) to hidden fees. thankfully e-trade has low cost investments and no hidden fees. but, you know, if you're still bent on blowing this fat stack of cash, there's a couple of ways you could do it. ♪ ♪ or just go to e-trade and save it. boom.

♪ [ agent smith ] i've found software that intrigues me. it appears it's an agent of good. ♪ [ agent smith ] ge software connects patients to nurses to the right machines while dramatically reducing waiting time. [ telephone ringing ] now a waiting room is just a room. [ static warbles ]

welcome back to the special autobiographical "mad money." now we're up to the professional grade. my time when i started at goldman sachs. i had been courting and been courted by goldman sachs for three years before i got a job. it was called security sales then. i got a ton of the history of those year and some of what i talked about earlier in confessions of a street addict. you can get the skinny on my goldman days, but that is not what tonight's show is about. tonight's show is about learning how to trade and investing by studying with me at the university of hard knocks. i will dispense with the anecdotes and teach you from the things that happened at goldman

sachs. i'm about making money. that is where i began to understand the process of actual money management. not picking a stock here and there. the process. the ability to build a portfolio from the ground up. i had the best teachers in the world at goldman sachs. lee cooperman was the research director at goldman. he put on an investing clinic almost every day. i never missed a session. hardly an hour went by where i did not hear a new great idea to explore. you know what i really learned from? my customers. chiefly wealthy individuals from all walks of life. it was something i learned to this day that cannot be understood by so many in the business. that is they can and do beat the market regularly. why can't they know it? if they only worked at goldman, they would see it. they are all theoretical.

i'm practicpractical. i had non discretionary accounts. i was not allowed to invest with my own ideas unless i could win them over with the purchase. i was on commission. i made money only with the buys or sells. i could convince people to act on it. no 20% fee or wins. that came later. that is how important i learned it was important to talk it over with an individual and articulate it in a way that made sense. could you do that would someone in picking a stock? you had to know your stuff. i asked if they knew enough about the stocks, about the ones they suggested to me about the ones they wanted to buy. i wanted them to be as educated about their ideas as i did. i knew that stocks go down. if it went down, well, if it went up, it would be their idea, right? if it went down, it is on me.

that is just human nature. i realize that quickly. it did not matter. i could not say that was your idea, pal. what else did i learn? how about humility? it was at goldman sachs where i learned how humbling the market could be. the bull market started just when i got hired. when one of your ideas went against you, you had to get on the horn and explain why should buy more or cut their losses. that is why you have to understand what to do when stocks go against you. i also learned to let your gains run while you cut those losses. i learned the hard way. many of my clients were terrific business people who did not know that much about stocks. they have been fabulous at their enterprises through wealth and actual companies. i had this real cantankerous client.

he worked hard to get where he was. i was working hard to try to get him as a client. trying to win him over and it took me ages and ages. i told him when i finally convinced him he should work with me, that i would be judicious and i would work hard and get it right by him. he said point blank, he did not want to trade. no trading, jim. i want longer-term investments. at the time, i liked kimberly-clark, the paper company. i still do. i see the manager come on the show. i told this cantankerous client that knb would be terrific for his portfolio. he told me to buy 1,000 shares. i got it! almost immediately it went up eight points. it was a dream. i had a winner. i called him. i said, bob, bob, i want to ring the register. i want to sell the 1,000 shares

of kimberly-clark. i thought he would thank me. he said i thought kimberly would be good for the long term. he wasn't interested in making $8,000. then he questioned my integrity. he wanted to know if i was churning him. that is a horrible charge. just trying to generate commissions with his money. i was scorched and torched. he taught me a terrific lesson. just as you don't want to turn a trade in an investment, you don't want to turn an investment in a trade. if you have a good one, let it run. bob was right. kimberly ultimately doubled. i was vindicated, despite myself. finally, i learned the science behind building a portfolio and a lot of my business about contacting people who came into a great deal of cash through inheritance or businesslike a powerball winner or somebody

selling his company to yahoo. these people were rather unsophisticated about money as they are unsophisticated about something else in life. i regarded my first job as listening to their needs. figuring out what they wanted. were they conservative or did they want capital preservation? were they aggressive? did they want capital appreciation? build that wealth quickly. i tried to get to know them. just as you should know yourself. you may think you want to get rich quick, believe me, you want to get rich carefully. ask yourself, can you handle the pain of the market decline? would you refer your money to appreciation slowly and get some from fixed income like bonds or dividends? do you want to participate in new issues? do you want to hit it out of the park with some capital or a larger part? maybe i'm not the right guy for you. you heard me say these many a night.

i try to teach you how to know yourself and what you can handle and can't. finally, this is the value of diversificatio diversification. you have oil companies double and double and in a short time after they struck oil and we figured out the fines. everyone got caught up in oil. i wanted oil in my personal account. the p.a. every day was another great day in the oil patch. oil services, oil drillers, oil platforms. you name it. then, oil, the commodity plummeted in price. the saudis started pumping like mad. the prices jacked up. the next you know, the bull morphed into a bear. then we were crushed. i had understood firsthand the concept of diversification. i never intentionally avoided

diversification. then that's why it is so important. i worked hard to get it. i learned from my early days the investment and build a diversified portfolio in a way to suit the customer. that is including no margin buying. consider yourself a customer of the show and all my investors who beat the market on their own in ways they like, aided by people like me who worked with them and put their plans into action. "mad money" is back after the break. yeah... try new alka seltzer fruit chews. they work fast on heartburn and taste awesome. these are good. told ya! i'm feeling better already. [ male announcer ] new alka seltzer fruits chews. enjoy the relief! just good is never good enough. [ williams ] i face every challenge

as motivation to improve my game. [ perry ] i worked hard to get where i am. but, i'll never rest. [ overton ] i always push myself, give a little more than expected. [ male announcer ] at southwest, we're never satisfied, never finished, and always looking for a better way. which is how we've grown to be america's largest domestic airline. [ overton ] welcome aboard. to be america's largest domestic airline. her long day of pick ups and drop offs. begins with arthritis pain... and a choice. take up to 6 tylenol in a day or just 2 aleve for all day relief. all aboard. ♪

we follow my love affair of stocks as a boy and showing the importance of investing early. you lived with me with the pistol in the back of the car. invest no matter the circumstances. you learn how to find the good ideas and research them. i want to wish you success and remind you when you hear from the greybeards that say you cannot make money at home and you have to give to an index fund. the story of my life is the opposite. you can make money different ways with managers and brokers and gloriously by yourself. stick with cramer.

>> you have the courage to fight for us. >> you are an honest man with guts. >> thanks for teaching me and putting me in charge of my future. >> it is time to take charge of yours. >> "mad money" with jim cramer. cnbc. so being an advertising

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is enough to bring a traveler to tears. we're putting the wonder back into air travel, one innovation at a time. the new american is arriving. how old is the oldest person you've known? we gave people a sticker and had them show us. we learned a lot of us have known someone who's lived well into their 90s. and that's a great thing. but even though we're living longer, one thing that hasn't changed: the official retirement age. ♪ the question is how do you make sure you have the money you need to enjoy all of these years. ♪

i would like to say there is always a bull market somewhere. i will find it here for you on "mad money." i'm jim cramer. see you next time. >> when we first launched, we were hoping for maybe 400, 500 people. harvard didn't have a facebook, so that's the gap that we were trying to fill. and now we're at 100,000 people, so who knows where we're going next? >> with over half a billion users across the world, there are more people on facebook than the entire u.s. population. >> this is part of our mainstream life now, so it's normal. even my grandmother is on facebook. >> facebook has taken hold in almost every aspect of everyday life, for better or for worse, in ways many people are unaware of. it's being used by police to find criminals... the description of the woman that led yer