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 help you find it. "mad money" starts now. hey, i'm cramer. welcome to "mad money." welcome to cramerica. other people want to make friends. i'm just trying to make you a little job. i'm trying to teach and coach so call me at 1-800-743-cnbc. every time you think you've seen it all. we thought there can't be any more scandals as bad as the last one or any more chicanery.

wall street comes up with a new twist, the can if you're not protected, make you feel like it's just not worth it to be involved in our beloved stock market. i can't tell you how many times i've come out here on days when there's bad news of glitches or insider trading or flash crashes and say to myself, how can people take this anymore? the abuse! the answer? frankly, there's really no other choice. you simply can't make enough money in any other asset class. particularly bonds where the rates are so, so low. to be able to retire or take that trip you want. pay for tuition. bonds can't pay that tuition. you've got to own stocks. you know what you need, though. you need a survival handbook. and that's what i'm giving you tonight. first, scandal's not new to wall street. i went through scandals in the 1980s. stock market mechanisms hasn't

always been smooth. the '87 crash, i traded through that. it didn't have anything to do with the economy. it looked like the economy was going to get weak because of the crash that didn't. it was strong. that said, we do seem to have really ratcheted up the unfairness in the last couple years. and i know it's just been the economic fallout of the great recession. who can forget the hideous event that was the long-awaited facebook fiasco? may of 2012. now, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring people back to the stock market who fled. a company that has $1 billion was going public, a sterling product, beloved product, the management quirky. everyone in it had already gotten rich. the company had tons of money on hand. so it wasn't like they needed to be greedy. it would have been an unbelievable moment to price the deal reasonably so everyone won. nope. they offered 420 million shares at $38 apiece, a price that both the company and the broker knew

was at the top end of the range especially given last-minute chatter that the company was being challenged by desktop to mobile, something that turned out to be totally true. and the deal flops. in a horrible way. making matters worse, the nasdaq exchange to facebook couldn't even get the stock open. when it did, no one could sell it. the combination total chaos, confusion and overvaluation. a classic opportunity to bring people back to the stock market was botched. and we had still one more event that drove people to the sidelines. it was just like the dotcom bomb that i lived through, 1999/2000. how about that crash flashback in may of 2010 where the market briefly lost 10 trillion bucks because of a computer glitch. i was on television when it happened. i was on "street signs." it was the most embarrassing and least reassuring events i've ever seen. who could trust that mechanism with her life savings?

stocks didn't even seem like an asset class that day. it seemed like smoke and mirrors. how about the latest insider trading scandals, this one a hedge fund manager. director of goldman sachs and procter & gamble, raj got 11 years in the slammer, gupta got two. i'm not even talk about the madoff scandal. there were many people who knew the returns were too outrageous to believe. all these busts from satellite firms allegedly connected to s.e.c. capital. how do you protect yourself from this? first, some of it can't be stopped no matter what happens. there will always be fraud le fraudulence. i can't protect you from an economic collapse. the great credit crunch and recession. even diversification which we

always call the only free lunch on wall street only caused you to lose less in that year. consolation, maybe. the great destruction of wealth. let's just say nothing can protect you if you own stocks. but what i can do is offer you some simple rules tonight that will let to you have more confidence in the stock market, even if you think portions of it are rigged or beyond your comprehension. and the first rule, know what you own. i know it sounds simple, of course, everyone thinks they know what they own. how does this protect you from the myriad of ways. first if you actually know what stock you own and it goes down. you'll actually be able to take advantage of that, the mechanical lunacy and buy more at lower prices than you'd ever thought you'd get. if i was using limit orders, not market orders. second, if you know what you own, you can handle a stock -- take facebook. it's actually a pretty good company. maybe you could buy it on the way down, get a better average. third, if you know that you own what you own, then who really cares about guys like the raj or

the gupta or any of these other guys that are nabbed by the u.s. attorney? what does it mean? if you know what you own, you are in control of your own destiny. but how do you know if you know what you own? in other words, a lot of people think they know what they own. it's a real issue. here's my answer. it's a practical way to look at it. first, say you stop me coming out of the squawk on the street/new york stock exchange down on wall street. this happens five or six times every single day. let's say you shout at me. hey, cramer, what do you think of that xyz corp? you know what i do? listen. what do you think? tell me what it does. tell me why you bought it. do you know that the vast majority of the people don't even know either answer? they don't know either answer. they usually got some tip. they saw some chart. heard from some uninformed source that it was going to the source, but they have no idea what business it is in or what it does or how it's even doing. they don't even know in a lot of

cases what it makes, how it makes its money. they don't know go it pays a dividend or if it makes money or pays, you know, loses money. they have no idea. by the way, i see this all the time @jimcramer on twitter. i say why did you buy it in the first place? if you don't know, of course you should sell. ask yourself those same questions that i put to the perfect strangers every day. can you answer them? do you know them? if not, geez, you shouldn't be investing in that stock. maybe you shouldn't be investing in any stock until you do. there's always index funds, always good mutual funds. here's the bottom line. the first rule to protect yourself is get some knowledge, please. know what you own. can you describe it to me if you see me at wall and broad? can you tell me what it does and why you bought it and give me, say, a three-sentence pitch about why it's good? if you can't, don't bother me and don't bother buying. here's a promise and a prediction. you're just going to lose yourself some big-time money.

why don't we start with some questions. let's go to skcott in colorado. >> caller: boo-yah, jim. i have a question about price targets. when an analyst sets a target price, how does that fit in ply planning for evaluating stocks, and when does that price target expect to be fulfilled by the analyst? >> one of the reasons why i am neutral on price targets, we do some my charitable trust, as the stock goes down, they keep making their price targets lower. and then as the stock goes up, they make the price targets larger. it really isn't all that valuable. what i find valuable is what they think the stock is going to earn. and then we try to apply a multiple to it. so the key thing is the earnings estimates in the future. that's why stocks trade where they do. profits. and then we can figure it out on a case-by-case basis. don't use their price targets. steven in california. steven. >> caller: yes, jim. hey, boo-yah to you. >> boo-yah back. >> caller: okay, i was

wondering, i bought a stock before and it had a reverse stock split. and it didn't do that good. so i'm wondering when a company does a reverse stock split, are they trying to make it more interesting for other companies to buy it up, or are they just trying to save money? >> no, steve, it's a great question. they're usually trying to save embarrassment. citigroup did this. they felt that a stock that was under $5, for instance, wouldn't attract sthugss. they like to buy stocks that are over $5. so it was a way to gussy it up a little bit. it has nothing to do with the fundamentals. it does make a stock more investable to institutions whether you think it should or not. everyone needs the stock market. everyone needs a survival guide to the stock market. and it's a jungle out there so the way we're going to start is, if you know what you own and can explain it to me, then you can buy more if it goes down. "mad money" will be right back. don't miss a second of "mad

money." follow @jimcramer on twitter. have a question? tweet cramer. #madtweets. send jim an e-mail to madmoney@cnbc.com. or give us a call at 1-800-743-cnbc. miss something? head to madmoney.cnbc.com.

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welcome back to cramer's stock market survival school where a i'm giving your g.e.d. in trading through tough trading markets, your master's in what to do when the machine dries up. kind of like terminator 2 judgment day. caused the market to plunge 1,000 points for no reason. like what happened on may 6th of 2010. and if you listen and you listen well, maybe you will get your doctorate in making money when everyone else is losing it. there's the degree i want. we may not be able to control the amount of pain that the market throws our way but we absolutely can control -- >> the house of pain. >> how we deal with it. we can control whether we're prepared for the pain, whether we're positioned so we don't lose more money than we should because we've taken proper

precautions. later today i'm going to explain how many of the risks with owning stocks, risks that you need to watch out for. in order to guard and expand your wealth. but right now i'm just talking to you about how you can deal with the risks that come from being a human being, from simply being human. there are many of them. and if you're not careful, you could end up doing more damage to your portfolio than any external force, any negative that takes down stocks. basic investing mistakes can lead to enormous investing losses. i'm going to show you how to make your portfolio safe from the next selloff maybe from yourself to ensure you're in a position to make money, not endlessly lose it. you know i don't think it is but no matter how broken or rigged the game may seem to you, even though i don't think it is, but i do not quibble with those who think it is. it's too hard. in a tough market, you can't afford to make the mistake that investors find themselves making all the time. you don't want to make it any harder on yourself than it has to be. so that in mind, here are my rules for

agony-proofing your portfolio. earlier i said know what you own. each one of your stocks requires time and homework. you've got to be able to explain it to me if you see me on the street, what it does and why you bought it. never, ever buy stocks on lesson number two. meaning, do not borrow money from your broker. these are not homes that you can live in to go down. it's okay if you take out a mortgage in that case but not in stocks. it's not home. it's a piece of paper. and that piece of paper can go down in value threatening your nest egg yet the practice is just plain dangerous. the devil's work, to make a lot of money off it. my margin might seem like a method of making a small amount of money go a long way. in reality, it's a great way to potentially wipe yourself out. you can't take losses. you can't sustain and buy more as the stocks go lower. once you get too deep in the red, the margin calls come in and you have to sell your whole position in order to cover what you owe. it's simply not safe. nobody needs that level of risk. nobody. i consider margin the equivalent of juicing in professional

sports. starts off great. ends very badly. lesson number three, and this is also something i hit you over the head with all the time, but it's just so crucial i've got to explain it again. never use market orders. when you pick up the phone and call your broker and tell them the buyer to sell a stock but you don't name a price, that's a market order. you may not realize it but what you're doing is giving that broker permission to fill your order at any old price the market gives you. okay, so let's ask then, you go to the supermarket, buy a head of lettuce at any price. would you do that with a sweater at the mall? i'll take any price you give me. no, you would never do that and you shouldn't do it with more expensive things that are called stocks either. people ended up selling procter & gamble at $38 a share even though it was worth much more in 2010 when the machines took over and we tumbled and nearly 1,000 points, the flash crash in the time it took me to walk out of the set and just sit there for

"street signs" for a few minutes. with all of the nasty news, your probably recognize that while your broker may be a great and helpful person, his interests are not aligned with yours either. his top priority is not to get the best possible price. he works for a brokerage house and his job is often to create commissions. that's how he's often paid. and that's not what we do on "mad money." i don't have any conflicts here. i don't want your commission. have i ever asked for any fees? no. that's why you have to trust me. because instead of placing market orders, i'm always urging you to use limited orders. it doesn't cost a penny more but over time, it could save you a small fortune. tell your broker the highest price that you're willing to pay if you're buying and the lowest price you're willing to accept if you're selling. that way you'll either get your price or if the stock isn't there at that price, then the trade won't happen. that's okay. you have to protect yourself. always use limit orders, not market orders. never forget the lesson of that awful bogus down 1,000-point day because first of all, it could happen again and it wasn't bogus for those who used

market orders because those trades really happened. they got hosed. i don't want you to follow in their footsteps. i want you to make money on those down days. buy stocks at your price. here's the bottom line, if you don't buy stocks on margin and you use limit orders rather than market orders where you say buy or sell, you will get hurt a lot less than others who don't know better. these are the first steps to making sure you survive a horrible market. rather than getting panicked at the scale of your losses and then getting blown out. after the break i'll try to make you even more money. i'm jim cramer and welcome to my world. >> one man, one mission. >> i just want to make you money. >> eight years. >> you need to get in the game! >> tens of thousands of miles traveled. >> this new black gold rush is just getting started. it's the sound of american industry roaring back to life!

>> hundreds of ceos. >> my life story can be your life story. >> thousands of callers. >> boo-yah, jimbo! >> millions of your e-mails and tweets. "mad money" thanks cramerica for being with us for over 2,000 episodes.

we're going back to school. cramer's stock market survival school, that is. because when the market is in awful shape, when it's broken, there are very real worries that the system is not working correctly. we know it can happen even in outrageous bull markets. maybe it's even more important that be than ever to know how to protect yourself. stocks sometimes go down. there's nothing you can do about it. it's just the nature of the game. don't be in the game if you think the stocks will never go down. there are times, though, where they will go down more than others. at times when the agony is unbearable. that's why i've already gone over three important lessons tonight.

always know what you own, never buy on margin, never use market orders, only limit orders to buy and sell stocks. these are basic rules, sure, but they're basic because they're critically important. they're absolutely essential to building and maintaining your wealth. i've got four more lessons to help fight the pain in an excruciating market. i've got four more lessons. venture from losing more money than you have to. it takes time. it takes homework. the max could be one hour per week per stock. but even if you can give it a 15-minute overview, much less than that and you might as well be gambling. if you don't know what you own, then when your stocks go down, you have no idea what to do. should you sell? cut your losses? buy more @jimcramer on twitter? the only way you can feel confident of either decision is by doing the work and understanding the companies in your portfolio. that means it's not safe to own more than ten stocks at once. now, i know that many of you own far more than that. look, i did at various times own

20, 30. i can understand that. as soon as you get above 10, you run of risk of running your own mutual fund. you shouldn't feel compelled to try to mirror the s&p 500. there's no good reason to earn 30 stocks when diversified names will do unless you're really a full-time home gamer. you can't handle 30 stocks, even 20. it's like having a part-time job in addition to the one that you already have. ten is just right. more than ten and i think you'll start to skip out on the homework, and that's especially dangerous. especially at times when stocks seem to go down a lot. periods when we're in a bear market, it's horrendous to have that many stocks. next lesson, don't own too many low-dollar stocks. first of all, i'm the guy on tv who recommends speculating. i accept hoe i accept low-dollar single digit. they help by making a market investing interesting. they keep your head in the game and others are being blown out. while it's still safe to have a speculative stock in your portfolio, the emphasis is there on the singular, a single speculative stock. not more than that.

because as sexy and as tempting as these single-digits can be, they shouldn't make up your whole portfolio. they are risky and a bad market risk is something you want less of, not more of. you want the colgates and the cloroxes, for heaven's sake. no ceo said, boy i want my stock trading in the single digits. that's why many companies like to do ten for one reverse stocks. many companies like to do ten for one reverse splits, make their stock seem more investable. it may seem like under $10 names have less downside than other stocks. but it's a trick of the eye. single digit stocks can go to zero. own more than one, and i know many of you do, you might as well be gambling. next lesson, and this one i beat over your head every wednesday on "am i diversified?" but it is so critical to investing success, i'm going to tell you again, you must be diversified. it's the only free lunch. meaning, it doesn't cost you anything but it saves you money. that's the point i make in jim

cramer's "real money" in paperback all these years and the handbook to which i used to run my hedge fund. no matter how many times i say it, though, i know many of you still keep too many of your stocks in the same sector. i keep getting them. i can't believe it after all of these years. why shouldn't you put all of your money in one hot sector? why do you have to spread it around so no more of your portfolios are in the hot sector? because the biggest risk out there is sector risk. just ask the people at double down on tech stocks in 2000 and then lost it all staying diversified. some big bad event happens and really damage an entire sector. only some of your stocks will go down if you're diversified and maybe, just maybe others will even go up. same thing with the bank stocks in the 2008, 2009. they were very hot. housing stocks were all very hot. finally, when the market is getting killed day after day after day, it's important to have enough dividend-paying stocks in your portfolio.

especially ahys. accidentally high yields. most people don't realize the importance of dividends. they think they are boring, for senior citizens only. fully 40% of the s&p 500 has come from reinvested dividends. by the way, you always have to reinvest them. when you forego dividends, you're giving up gains that you could expect to makeover time from stocks. and all the reasons that make dividend stocks worth owning becoming even more compelling in a down market. that's when they really, really give you that cushion. yes, there are even a trampoline because as share prices go lower, yields go higher making them more attractive to other investors who don't own them yet and give you a better return for just owning the darn things. you can buy stocks with bountiful dividends safely on the way down. i can't emphasize enough how important that fact is in a horrible market there are so few stocks as they go lower, stocks with big dividends, especially the accidently high yielders, meaning stocks that used to have small yields, but because their share prices have gone down, not because they cut the dividends,

their yields have become notoriously big and they are one of the few groups you can feel comfortable with just picking away at. accidental high yielders work better than any other stock during the financial crisis. remember, the dow went down to 6500 and these still worked, and they still work whenever the market gives you these dividend bargains. and by the way, those big dividends for companies that can afford them, well, they are bargains. mark in my home state of new jersey, mark? >> caller: yes. boo-yah, jim. >> boo-yah, mark. >> caller: do companies have to publish their dividend dates and how many days before that date do they have to publish it? >> well, everything's on -- all the different finance sites have it. but remember, i care more about the price that you buy the stock at. not the price -- if you don't have the dividend, you buy without the dividend. it's cheaper without it. i don't want to say they're

sleight of hand, but they are not something you should worry about. what you should worry about is buying high quality stocks. the dividend stock adviser, which is a fantastic newsletter that the street.com has, it's a great place to look. let's go to louie in california. louie? >> caller: good afternoon, dr. cramer. >> oh, thank you. what's up? >> caller: i have a question about diversification and risk. >> okay. >> caller: i've watched your show for several years and i'm now newly retired. i own eight positions. i followed your advice to buy a good company in stages. it dips a little and sell when on temporary top. every time i sell i allocate as returned on my capital, leaving the profit allocated to the remaining shares of the position. so now i have four stocks that are 60 to 100% owned with house's money and that's a profitable boo-yah. >> that is so perfect. you are the total game play. can i help you? >> caller: yeah. here's the question. the other four stocks at risk that i have, i own diversified

and balance and most have some profit but some of them overlap the other stocks that are owned with house's money. so which is more important? diversification and balance of the whole portfolio or diversification and balance of those shares still owned by my capital? >> well, you know what, if i -- you know what i'm going to do? this is the first time i've ever had this question. what i'm going to say if you're playing with the house's money, i'm going to bless the diversification because you're not going to give it back. and diversification is about not giving it back. but you can because you've already won. how about josh in louisiana. josh. >> caller: boo-yah, jim. >> what's up? >> caller: hey, i was just wondering how you use the futures market to judge how the market will do throughout the day. >> i hate it. i won't use it. i think people who use it are lazy. they are simply looking at how europe or asia was and making a determination. forget about it. we trade stocks, not futures. that's quite simple. look, you've gotten more tools for your survival now.

we don't own too many stocks, right? we know we should limit the number of speculative stocks because they tend to trade together. we know that diversification is key and we know to focus on high yielders particularly in times of trouble to reduce your risk. stay with cramer. 1,000 points in just a few minutes. >> machines gone wild. >> was there a glitch? >> hedge fund insider trading. >> have there been more doubts about this market? >> nasdaq trading has been halted. >> feel like the odds are stacked against you? some people feel like the game is not worth the play. but i know that together we can win. >> jim cramer leveling the playing field for all. >> i'm not walking away from this market, and you shouldn't either. huddle up, cramerica. >> "mad money" kicks off weeknights.

boo-yah, skeedaddy.

>> let me tell you how i see it. >> cramer, boo-yah. >> cramer, boo-yah. >> announcer: see the world through the eyes of jim cramer. "mad money," weeknights, only on cnbc. >> there's nothing like it. >> all night i've been teaching you how to handle the inevitable corrections, part of cramer's stock market survival school. i've gone over many of the things you can do to minimize your down side. take your portfolio against actions downright nasty. it was the time of the fiscal cliff negotiations or even the original sequester scares. i want to go a step further. in order to deal with increased risks, and many consider to be frothy, you need to understand what those risks are. you need to know what might cause the next selloff. you need to be familiar with forces causing your stocks to get hammered that you may not even know about. in other words, when the market corrects and you know it's going to, you need to

know why. you need to know what's really hurting your stocks. now we like to think when a stock goes up or down, that's quaint, people. companies that do well get rewarder with a higher stock price. companies that don't do well get punished with lower ones. and ordinarily that's how things used to work. you know, in a vicious decline, the connection between a company and its stock can become gossamer thin and often become severed. you'll see the stocks in good companies get taken down right with the bad ones, even when they report good news. that's the kind of action that can drive investors completely insane, it drives you batty, if a stock can't go up, it's reporting a blowout quarter, you're thinking what can make anything go higher? is there any point at all distinguishing the good from the bad when the market is just selling everything? why even bother to do the homework that cramer says you should do? well, yes, there is a reason. eventually we're going to come out of the selloff. and the fundamentals are going to start mattering again. it could take a while for that

to happen. and in the interim, it's crucial you recognize why this is happening. you may be able to make some sense out of the chaos. you will be seeing stock trade and really tough quick percentage spill, you'll see stocks trading in lockstep with the good, the bad and the truly ugly all going lower. some of that is absolute pure panic but also structural reasons why this happens and you need to know that. hedge funds have turned stocks into an asset class closer to baskets of corn or lumber. this is a verb that is new. they have commoditized equities. that's the lockstep where they all trade together. how have they done this? well, because for many of the big institutional money managers individual stocks are just too small to handle the amounts of money they are dealing with. so they turn to the s&p 500 that allow big bets to be made in seconds. in a difficult market is rising, pessimism, i'm sorry, pessimism, these hedge funds will just sell to futures as soon as they get pessimistic and they will sell the futures and bang them down. and they'll sell

the etfs. that brings down everything in the s&p 500. there's no element of group thing. here most managers tend to hurt like herd animals. think wildebeests on the discovery channel. i want you to think of wilder beast causes them to blowout sectors at the entire same time. we saw it over and over again during the battle days. the idea of stocks as paper risk. meaning all of the things that could cause a stock to go do nothing have absolutely nothing to do with the underlying company and that, i know, mystifies you. and everything to do with the asset class of stocks is traded. these are risks that have nothing to do with the earnings or fundamentals of the company at all but still exert an enormous amount of control over where stocks go, especially in a pessimistic-infused bear market or one of those incredibly quick declines that we always must be on the lookout. what kind of risks am i talking about? let's say we're in a prolonged down market. then you have to worry about the ability of short sellers to

create fear and panic because it trumps the ability of buyers to instigate greed. that means the shorts can push down stocks relentlessly with endless selling firepower. now, this is new. it didn't always used to be like this. certainly not when i got into business. we used to have a securities & exchange commission, one that reined in the shorts and helped you, help the home gamer, help the little guy. and then the bush era came along the the s.e.c., well, it lessened its commitment to the individual and then increased to laissez-faire reality. they repealed something called the uptick rule back in 2007 they did this. this was a regulation that had been in place since the great depression. it was created in the aftermath of the great crash of '29 to '32. that was in order to avert another disaster of the same scale, which curbed the ability to bang down stocks. and they had to pay more and

uptick before they could sell a stock short. and for 79 years it worked. then the s.e.c. got ready of the old-fashioned uptick rule and the shorts were able to run wild. do you think it's a coincidence that they got rid of the uptick rule when we had the great recession of stocks? yeah. you know, the shorts were able to continue to run wild whenever we got a particularly nasty selloff. that kind of relentless unstoppable short selling was instrumental with the lehman brothers. ever since the problems with greece, portugal, spain, ireland began or we've seen it in stocks in our market because of deficit funding or debt ceiling issues or, of course, the sequester. sure, when things are good, we forget about the pernicious impact of short selling without limits. and they are just not fair versus the way the s.e.c. used to police these issues. i hate it. short sellers aren't the only risk. to make matters worse, we now have the proliferation of mass destruction, double, triple, exchange traded funds, that give you two or three times the short selling bang for your buck.

these are etfs that only exist for day traders. that's not the point of our stock market, is it? they don't work for long term or even medium-term investors because they rebalance every day. take the skf, that's the extra short financial proshares with 100% leverage. you would think that it would make people money during the financial crisis. all the bank stocks got pulverized. many of them got wiped out. wouldn't this be the instrument of choice? wrong. wrong! the skf actually lost you money. one of the worst years in bank stock history and that's what happened? how is this possible? because of the super leverage etfs are zained to track only day-to-day changes. longer term they are more a play on volatility than any of the sectors they allow you to short or to own. so here's an interesting issue. if these etfs have no value for long-term investors, what's the point of even having them? frankly, it's hard for me to avoid the conclusion that their

main function is to allow the shorts to get around the margin rules and manipulate the market with massive selling firepower at once. this gets a larger problem that no longer seems interested in protecting you. protecting regular investors. here's the bottom line. stocks are not cash. they don't act like cash. they can't be viewed as cash. remember, the stocks go down for many reaps that have nothing to do with the underlying companies. the massive selling firepower of the etfs of mass destruction. stay with cramer. >> announcer: keep up with cramer all day long. follow @jimcramer on twitter and tweet your questions. #madtweets.

all night i've been teaching you how to survive rough corrections to the stock market, how to avoid the mistakes you make yourself, warning you about the process that they use to push stocks around like the futures and etfs of mass destruction, things that can cause the performance of the stock to become disconnected from the companies to become much more

commoditized. but there's one more thing that you need to know about, one that suddenly turns like that, it's that the lifeguard is off duty. when you go swimming in this market, you better remember there's nobody out there making sure the water is safe. the s.e.c. which should be working to level the playing field to protect the little guy, they don't think it's their job anymore, at least that's my opinion. for instance, high frequency traders who determine the portfolio 11 times in ten seconds over the ordinary home gamer like you. these high frequency guys make up 80% of all trading. there you go. this is the market you're really dealing with. we need an s.e.c. that protects the unsophisticated from these capitalists. one that is captured by the exchanges at, i think, the expense of you. yep, this is no longer the s.e.c. of arthur levitt from '93 to 2001. leavitt was one of the greatest s.e.c. chairmen ever because his mantra was to give the little guy a break, to level the playing field, to make the

market safe for the individual investor. he favored investors of home gamers like you over the hedge funds because he knew the big boys didn't need protection. they've got all kinds of money. but under the reckless laissez-faire anything goes bush s.e.c., that all changed. i think the obama administration so far has hardly done anything to roll back the damage. the s.e.c. has approved all kinds of things. all the changes that made the market faster for quick, tiny games, the etfs allow managers to evade the margin rules, etf selling power or buying power through repeal of the original uptick rule which protected us from endless short selling. the s.e.c. either apraproved or enacts these things to make the market more dangerous and difficult when things get bad and will do so again when we get that kind of quick, sharp decline. if you expect the s.e.c. to have your back, think again.

if you think the exchanges have any interest in maintaining the legitimacy of our stock markets, not so much. you've got to understand, the exchanges aren't on your side because their whole bias is to allow the big institutional hemg funds to make lots of fast trades. in the old days the new york stock exchange and nasdaq were nonprofit organizations that could police themselves. now they're for-profit public companies and their goal is to make money. now, nothing wrong with that. but we're living in a very different investing world than we were a decade ago. and the s.e.c. doesn't seem to have noticed. until we get someone on the s.e.c. who is saying, you know what, let's look at this through the prism of the i.r.a. or 401(k) instead of the prism of the right to have manipulators without regard to what it can or cannot do or how bad it is. then you should not be surprised, by any kind of outrage. this also means that you have to protect yourself. yourself from the madoffs of the world, for instance, who offered too good to be true performance.

the s.e.c., we know now, isn't equipped to find these people or maybe it's in bed with the wrong people. maybe it's examining the minor people instead of the major ones. be sure that you can deal directly with the money manager accounts. be sure you can deal directly with the money manager's accounts. he won't like that. i don't care. don't give money to a money manager where he puts it to work in something that doesn't have an easily accessible price. you never would be putting that mortgage-backed junk that burned so many investors. if you can't find the price on yahoo! or cnbc.com, i want you to take your money away from these people. listen to me on this. here's the bottom line, the i know! financial crash, more like a battlefield, world war i, vastly outpaced the ability of humans to deal with the newfound firepower, stocks that trade like commodities, movement that makes no sense whatsoever. these are now the normal. the obama s.e.c. like the bush

s.e.c. isn't watching the store. hey, we don't have to like it. we better get used to. stay with cramer. i'm jim cramer and welcome to my world. >> one man, one mission. >> i just want to make you money. >> eight years. >> you need to get in the game! >> tens of thousands of miles traveled. >> this new black gold rush is just getting started. >> it's the sound of american industry roaring back to life! >> we're going to be -- >> unhads of ceos. >> my life story can be your life story. >> thousands of callers. >> boo-yah, jimbo! >> millions of your e-mails and tweets. "mad money" thanks cramerica for being with us for over 2,000 episodes.

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i've said it before, i have the smartest viewers around. so let's hear from you with some of the tweets you've been sending @jimcramer. i got that cool avatar with my mop. okay. our first tweet is from @allenpowell6. he writes, why limit orders obama? got to be a good story to go with it. we know flash crashes are no longer going to be isolated events. well, if you had a market order and it's entirely possible -- let's use procter & gamble. it was at 60.

it went to 40. they can give you whatever prices you want. if you put a limit order and sell it at 59, boom, you're out. you sold it at 59, you can always buy it back at 30. it's about flash crashes. that's why. it's about wild markets and taming them with limit orders. our next tweet is fantastic. it's true, @jimcramer called me out for yawning when at #georgiatech haven't yawned since. that's right. i used to make people leave my hedge fund if i caught them yawning. i said, just go home. take a nap. i also approve of our staff's hunting through the archives. no one does it better. voracious hunting through the archives. nobody does it better. >> no more yawning, man. i used to fire people at my hedge fund when they yawned. i made them walk around the building and come back again and they yawn, they are fired. >> yeah. i've become sweeter and kinder yeah, look, and gentler now, someone on the staff yawns on "mad money" i say, listen, get me a soda or a

diet coke or something. i am no longer trying to fire people, but i think i will. anyway, here's another -- i'm not kidding. sighing is even worse. here's another tweet from zander@318. does a volatility index belong in any portfolio? don't complicate it with this risk on, risk off stuff. own stocks, for heaven's sakes. the next writes, let me get this straight, on wall street roll up the sleeves, when cooking and cleaning leave them down? well, yeah. i like to dress up. that happened to be her day off. it was mother's day. someone has to take up the slack on mother's day. it might as well be cramer. my eggs are good. everybody was -- it was a good day. let's go to the next tweet from

@sjeppley who wrote the following, i've got a year left of college. what would you recommend to do during senior year aside from hitting the books hard? this is real easy. have the gosh darn time of your life. every day since then is work. a lot of kids think college is work, that is the best time of your life. everyone looks back on it as the best time of your life. don't waste it working. here's another tweet, this one from, boo-yah from equador, cramer. watch you every night. great show. if you can tell me that the analysts watch me at the galapagos, then i've got reach. keep them coming. no, let's stop because we're out of time. you know what, on the yawning guy, i've got your picture. i know where you live. i'm coming for you. stay with cramer. it's a brutal full-contact sport. >> from the time the whistle

blows -- >> traders bracing for what could turn out to be a wild session. >> this is the last play of the game. >> markets absolutely getting hammered today. >> i know it's not easy but i promise to keep fighting for you. >> jim cramer, leveling the playing field for all. >> the road is a tough one but the payoff can be your greatest win of all. >> join "mad money's" training camp weeknights.

i like to say there's always a bull market somewhere and i promise to try to find it just for you right here on "mad money." i'm jim cramer. see you next time. "the suze orman show"... do you have a question about student loans? well, this is the place to be. it's an #asksuze special focus. so, your payments, when you graduate, will be about $1,000 a month. are you aware of that? >> no. i had no idea. >> and you ask me, "can i afford it?" $1,200... >> yep. >> ...to go see a packer game? what is that on your head? >> that's my cheesehead, suze. >> hi, everybody. i'm suze orman, and you are watching "the suze orman show." tonight ispe