bad. you are time has expired. thanks so much for watching. also, check out our daily segment inside "fast money." cr starts right now. have a great weekend. my mission is simple. to make you money. i'm here to left 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, just trying to make a little money. my job is not just to entertain you, but to educate and teach you. so call me at 1-800-743-cnbc or tweet me @jimcramer. they killed it. no mincing words. they crushed the nasdaq, with the tech-laden, tech-heavy, tech-stinking index falling 2.6%.

dow gave up 160 points. s&p dropped 1.25%. the difference is stark. and as you will see throughout this show, i've been adamant that the ipos, endless insider selling, and valuations on sales, not earnings, are all making it, so we don't have a clue where the nasdaq bottom might be, although i remain somewhat sanguine about its dow brethren. worse, it's become clear that many people are overextended, meaning they're borrowing a huge amount of money to buy stock. let me be very clear about something. i don't care what you say about margin buying. if you're doing it, and i know it's a record level, you're wrong. recognize that you can borrow money to go to college or buy a house, but you should never, ever buy stock with borrowed money, which is why i'm starting next week's game plan with a marching order. as tempted a as you might be to buy a host of fast-growing companies, i find it somewhat tempting myself, you must sell, not buy stocks on monday in you're using margin debt. the figures are really glaring about this.

for those of you that aren't using margin, and want to use these declines to average down, let me also be clear. you might want to sell something to buy something here. i don't want you betting the farm on the portion of the market that's looking way too much like march and april of 2000, when the dot-com bust began and the froth kept getting burned off. unlike back then, there are so many stocks that are actually undervalued versus their historical prices. that's very good. unfortunately, those names are barely down. they actually did quite well today. and that means they aren't bargains relative to the broad swath of merchandise that got hammered and is no doubt tempting to you, but i have to still put up a caution flag. you sai understand, after this kind of decline, if the sell-off is part of something bigger, and we can't rule that out, then being a hero and backing up the truck, that could be a major mistake. in fact, on a lift like we might get on monday morning, which i'm certainly predicting is a possibility, i would be a seller, not a buyer, of much of the damaged goods. yes, there has been too much technical damage, among many of

the newer nasdaq stocks, and the charts are now a seller's best friend. until we're sure this isn't the 2000-style parabal, caution, not aggression, will be warranted. one of the reasons i want to exercise caution, there's not a lot of news flow that would normally stop the selling in many of these high flyers. most don't report for a bit. so you'd basically be betting not that a bit of corporate news might be coming out, but that the general selling wave might be over and washed out, as they say, maybe they're washed out. given that many of the insiders in these stocks are frantically, even now, trying to sell down here, sell anything that's not nailed down, and there's no news, you'll be up aga up again sellers trying to get off margin, insiders who are selling the lock-in mammoth gains, because they paid next to nothing for their stocks, and hedge funds, new issue, who can't take the pain or fear of redemptions because they're now doing so poorly. these are formidable enemies

your capital. again, remember, the heavy selling is still limited town seasoned companies who have a very little track record and very bad renters and pukers, any don't see these stocks as bargains, they see them as sources as funds. just because three newbie stocks aren'te reporting, that doesn't mean we have no copies to talk about. next tuesday, we begin the parade of first quarter earnings. alcoa.t withue that's one of our favorite names. it's also the polar opposite of the stocks caught in the vortex ofoo selling. alcoa is up 60% from its october bottom. that's a lot of klaus kleinfeld's work, the ceo. but it's also not a sustainable increase in this a environment. even if it trumps the estimates by a wide amount, i don't think it will, it wouldn't surprise me if we get some first-class profit taking in letters aa. earlier, iaa mentioned that we don't have a lot of data points coming for the high flyers, but alcoa does do much more than just report its earnings per

share. it gives you an overview of multiple businesses, including autos, nonresidential construction, aerospace, truck building, and consumer products, also, by the way,, utilities throughout the world. at least turbines. the good news,th this is a tremendous overview that many decisions can be made from. and we're going to dofr that. we'll extrapolate. the bad news, alcoa has nothing to do with the unwinding of the security, software, big data, and biotech names. so it won't bail out the losers when it says l how many good things are h happening. it's part of the real economy. you want a real-world dichotomy between the unfolding nasdaq train wreck and what's smoking on the good old new york stock exchange. i'm not talking about high-frequency trading. then take a listen to constellation brands. thee beer and wine company, whih was a huge beneficiary of inbev, that spin off some brands when it bought bud or anheuser-busch. constellation has been. minting money with the modello brand

since o then, and if you don't know that, look at how much i'll serve tonight at my brooklyn bar. one of the most frustrating aspects of today's sell-off, it didn't create anything in these companies. take bed bath and beyond. it's well off its highs, but didn't get hit much at all today. that puts it in no man's land, and you need to think about that the way you might have thought about it in world war i. same with pure one when it reports thursday. the ceo, alex smith, is one of my bankable 21, one of the best out there. still, his company has missed the estimates a couple times in a row. i bet he beats the numbers this time, but the stock's not down. argh! one possible buy could be riteaid. as it started getting hammered in all speculative names, riteaid is the speculative

drugstore pick versus cvs and walgree walgreens. i think if you can get this stock with a five handle or $5 before the quarter and the speculative stocks away from riteaid are done being slaughtered, you can pull the trigger. finally, friday, we hear from two of the most important companies in this market, wells fargo and jpmorgan, the giant banks, one domestic and one international, with a very big domestic business. until today's employment number, which was decent, but produced a huge decline in interest rates, i was hopefult we would begin see a gentle rise in rates that would make it so wells and jpmorgan coin money with your deposits. it's not happening. as interest rates is stay stubbornly low, maybe worldwide pressure on rates. plus, these stocks were barely down in the great onslaught. i say listen to hear the tone of business, as there are no bargains versus some of the growth stock babies that got thrown out today with the cloud bath water.it here's the bottomth line. we need to see the speculative stocks, the cloud-based service and biotechs get washed out, have a crescendo sell-off.

we didn't see it today, before we can sound the all-clear to buy pretty much anything. as the high-flier contagion can no longer be quarantined to the nasdaq after today. but in this case, we'll be there just in timed to some buying of companies with genuine news flow by the end of next week. mark in tennessee, mark? >> caller: boo-yah, coach cramer. >> boo-yah, mark. >> caller: do you see any positive catalyst for verizon in the next little bit? >> yes, i do, actually. i think that once you see the combined company that is going to have all verizon wireless, i think you're going to see some pretty terrific numbers. and by the way, if the u.s. economy gets better than even their landline business is going to do well. i think you're in good shape with verizon oohere, especially with that high yield. let's go to john in new wiyork, please. john? >> caller: hey, jim, a big boo-yah to you from the west village. >> nice! >> caller: i'm calling you on ford. i have a position on this and i just keep watching it do nothing. can you help me out there? >> well, a lot of this is we've just been waiting and waiting

and waiting for ford europe to turn and some of latin america toe turn. i think that you're there. i think that europe is turning. i think you're fine in ford. i think you should hold on to it.ou plus, now, listen -- before we sound -- let me just say that we what we need to be able to do right now is just go over what i think is going to happen, and i think that these two banks are probably the most important stories of the week, they don't happen't until friday. but riteaid may be the trade of what's going on. stay with cramer. >> announcer: coming up, is there still time to order up grub hub after u its stunning debut on wall street? don't miss cramer's surprising comments on this fresh ipo. >> and later, the preparation, the perspiration, it all comes downom to this. the top-seeded stocks are facing off and cramer's making the call. find out which will be cutting down the net and taking over the ticker. plus, potential energy?

three electrifying deals have transformed nrg into the nation's second largest power generator. but will its investments in solar and wind create green from green energy? all coming up on "mad money." 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. orma give us a call at 1-800-743-cnbc. miss something? head to madmoney.cnbc.com. aflac. ♪ aflac, aflac, aflac! ♪

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got to look behind you. remember, candy crush got you upset with all those things. >> what, is this -- >> yeah. >> oh, my gosh. spongebob? who is that guy? remember that one with the cucumbers? never mind! >> kevin! yeah, that's right! that was this morning. on a life-sized piece of sushi took over the floor of the new york stock exchange. i found my arms wrapped around a

slice of pepperoni pizza and a part of a sandwich, part of the grub hub ipo hoopla. and i said to myself, if this isn't what a top looks like, then i don't know what does. yep, today we got the initial public offering of grub hub, that's a beloved food delivery service. and as the stock went to a scorching premium, of course, well above the range of the initial price target, of course, i was just plain worried. you see, back in 2000, i vowed that if we ever again saw a parade of endless ipos, i was going to speak up and say, this is all too much. we can't have this much supply of this many companies and not expect the market to get hammered, like it did today. i say that not just because the nasdaq rolled over horribly all session, in part because of the ipo mania, but really because i lived through it. i helped bring the street public in 1999. opened up at 63 and went to 67, and then it was all downhill from there. a couple of years later, i was

trading at a dollar. i consoled myself by remembering that at least it didn't disappear like 300 deals during that same period, a vast majority that looked just like the street, with no earnings and no prospect of earnings in the near future, because the opportunity was too great to make a profit. where have you heard that lately? or at least, that was the rationale the bankers gave for it, that was transpiring back then. oh, it's the rationale now. i vowed the that i would speak up, because unlike say, high-frequency trading, which is a lot of, you know, at this point, come on, really just causes people to use pennies per share, i'm orvel against it, but that's not the point. the seemingly infamous supply of companies coupled with the massive insider selling, once the company lawsuits expire could cause people to lose many dollars, not pennies per share, dollars, that could be meaningful to the life savings. dollars like those that got lost today in the nasdaq meltdown. we've had not one, but two serious assaults on the stock market, just in this millennium alone. and i don't want you to have to

own stocks. the second, the near collapse of the financial system itself, in the 2008/2009 period, should have been stopped by the coolest regulators well before it got out of hand. they know nothing. the first, the dot-com collapse, was just about greed. companies took advantage of the fervor for dot coms that in retrospect was totally a bubble in the same proportions. so this time around, i want to go my best to brick the ipo bubble early. remember, it's ipo and nasdaq, not the whole market. fortunately for investors, there are a number of flaws in both the analogy to the dot-com era and the comparison to 2014. the analogy doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. unlike 2000, many of these companies like grub hub are real. it's given its due. grub hub is immensely profitable. it's in rapid growth mode. but up in the 30s, while the stock opens, wildly expensive, selling 60 times 2015 earnings, which i find to be an offensable evaluation. one that has 60% of the electronic ordering market,

according to renaissance capital, the ipo guru. still, that's very different from 2000, when there were no earnings and stocks traded on page glitter eyeballs. if you got in the grub hub deal, what are you thinking? there are parts that are actually very cheap on next year's earnings. that sure wasn't the case in 2000, where all of tech was ridiculously inflated. lots of tech is not expensive. but for every grub hub or ims health, another very profitable company that became public with a bang today, there's an o-power or five nine, that also ipo'd with a wimper, and those are much more emblematic of the moment, at least to me. o-power is an profitable solar power company. f-five nine is a money losing cloud-based call center. that's per se, worrisome, people. plus, the hoopla around all these deals, including a dancing chicken caesar wrap that i bumped into on the floor, unavoidably raises eyebrows, especially if you're king

digital, another company with dressed up characters that became public last week. i'm doing my duty here, people. reminding people of what happened 14 years ago, while apricing you of the current environment similarities, just as i always swore i'd do if i saw a potential repeat of a bygone era that lost people trillions of dollars in life savings and wrecked the stock market as a source of wealth for tens of millions. let's say today was a yellow flag, one that like traffic lights, inevitably turns red, unless the market wisely pulls the plug on the whole ipo love affair. let's talk to blake in new york. blake? >> caller: jim bo! >> caller: i saw pot belly upgraded today and i wanted to see your thoughts on pot belly. >> i saw pot belly came back to the price it actually came at. that's a long, winding road without a two-for-one stock split. and i still don't want to touch it. pot belly is the antithesis of what works the best in the danny

meyer index, a stock like chipotle. a yellow light slowly, but surely does turn red. be careful out there. after the break, i'll try to save you some money. >> announcer: coming up, innovative biotech takes on american energy. find out who will come out on top when the money madness tournament wraps up. and later, it's a leader in solar energy. but does energy stock have a bright future? cramer has the exclusive after the company's transformative deals. all coming up on "mad money." friday night, buddy.

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in celebration of march madness, with the final four coming up this weekend, we decided to do our own "mad money" version of the final four this week. the rules were simple. we took the two qualifying best performers in the s&p 500 from the first quarter. nab nabors and tyson food and pitted them against each other with nabors coming out on top. then last night, plug power against intercept with intercept taking home the win. now we've made it to the finals, where the winner of the s&p final, nabors facing off against intercept. you couldn't ask for a more perfect illustration of nabors, a down and dirty oil driller, versus intercept, an icarus who

flew too close to the sun and is now plummeting back to earth. you have the value stocks that do better when the economy improves, like nabors, and then intercept. but the growth stocks can't hold up to the locomotive. it's causing a hideous, high-speed train crash that you could argue is killing all of the nasdaq. >> house of pain! >> during the first quarter, nabors rallied 45%, while intercept soared an astounding 383%. i should say, astounding and unsustainable, 383%. but for the rest of the year, there's no doubt in my mind, at least, nabors who may be among the worst of the drillers, will be the winner. this happens to be a blowout for nabors, because this market has lost its appetite for risky growth plays, like intercept. it sees an improving economy, 230 jobs created, it wants value stocks that can flourish in that

environment. but nabors most likely wins, because this is a low-scoring defensive battle, not because nabors is hitting threes all over the place. it remembers the stage biotech stock that was so loved both last year and for the early part of this first quarter. this is a stock that became public in october of 2012 at 15 bucks, rallied as high as $497 early this year, and has since been smashed along with the rest of the biotech cohort, falling $292 at the close. this offering shaved off $31 or 9.6% of intercept's value in a single session. today, as the ref, what can say? i'm calling a technical. as i did last night, intercept develops drugs for women's disease, and its main product candidate is an anti-cirrhosis drug, an orphan drug and it could make billions fit gets approved by the fda, which i think it probably will.

although not for some time. over the $5.8, $5.5 billion valuation and going lower, the upside for the company's lead drug is already baked in. last night i told you i could see speculating intercept as it comes down, but only if you use deep in the money call options dated out a year. the great thing about options, they cut off your downside, which is what is needed with a stock like intercept, and there's a lot of downside to worry about. even if we think the war of drug status, with a lot of the orphan drug stocks have been getting crushed. i don't want to make this about two stocks, intercept and nabors. what went wrong with intercept is what went wrong with a lot of things, with shareholders desperate to get out, perhaps because they're margined. for example, intercept priced a 1 million shares secondary offering, not even that big, but 400,000 of those shares are being sold by investor who is took the company public. i don't regard that as a good sign. you want an even worse one. intercept priced the secondary

$320 right below where it went at yesterday, but the deal sent the stock into a tailspin, down $31 today. this is not at all unique to intercept. you have all these developments biotechs and other technology-based companies, many of which like intercept have become public in the last year and a half. and right now these stocks have become hated, and yet they're still up a lot from when they became public. investors are fleeing from them like someone just shouted "fire" in a crowded theater. i can't blame them either. interskpecept and its brethren wildly overvalued is, but for a long time, that didn't matter because growth was so scarce and hard to come by. but now the market has started to care about valuation again, and companies that can grow and are cheap. don't get me wrong, i have nothing against intercept. it's just that this kind of superrisky biotech speculation has momentarily, at least, gone totally out of style in the wall street fashion show and it happened overnight. that matters. hence the hideous 2.6% decline in the nasdaq today, even though the averages were higher.

this whole week. intercept happens to be emblematic of what's wrong with this whole cohort. nabors is exactly the kind of stock that this market has decided that its likes. nabors is cheap, sells for 14 times last year's earnings, and that's a pretty big discount. second, look at what was up today, the price of oil. nabors is a global driller, although the majority of its business comes from domestic onshore drilling here in the u.s., where we are awash in oil, and demand for rigs to drill has started to go high. companies even want lower quality second-tier rigs, which nabors has so many of. and the international business is improving too. nabors is a cyclical company. but when the economy is improving, as it surely is right now, and the price of oil therefore rising, you better believe nabors can rack up some tremendous earnings, as anyone who goes back six years knows, because that's when the stock traded at 50, more than double its current price. that's why the stock market is so clear among the first quarter

winners, its cyclical value plays like nabors, that should keep winning, which is what we care about. and risky speculative growth stocks like intercept, that may not continue to win. here's the bottom line if for our own "mad money" version of march madness, nabors from the s&p 500 conference is the champion. nabors itself may be a lower quality driller, but this market has decided very clearly that it now prefers cyclical value names like this one. as for the over-valued secular growth stocks like intercept, that were so popular last year and during the early part of the first quarter, they're now all about fear and loathing and, yes, fouling out. john in washington. john? >> hey, boo-yah, jim, from the evergreen state. >> nice, what's up?! >> caller: hey, for a long time, i've had my eye on smith and wesson, swhc. they've had a bunch of good news lately. they've beat earnings, they've announced a big stock for purchase, but there's always that constant threat of gun control looming. what's your opinion on -- >> i do not fear gun control.

i think that the lobby -- the pro-gun lobby, i think, is very powerful. i think what i do fear is saturation and whether the earnings can be maintained. and in that sense, i think it's not an expensive stock, but it's not one of my favorites. and that, cramerica, is how "mad money" march madness is done. and the s&p division faced off against the nasdaq and the winner, almost by acclimation, i would say, is nbr. stay with cramer.

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it is time, it is time for a very special "lightning round" on "mad money." i take rapid-fire calls, don't know the name of the calls or stocks ahead of time when you hear the sound, then the

"lightning round" is over. are you ready, skee-daddy. time for the "lightning round" on cramer's "mad money." paul in new york, paul? >> caller: boo-yah, jim. >> what's up? >> love your book. ranks right up there with "the intelligent investor." >> thanks very much. >> caller: wanted your advice if i should pull the trigger on rig. >> it's not as good as insco. let's go to les in north carolina. les? >> caller: hi, jim. >> yeah? >> caller: right down to business. at age 55, i have most of my long-term money divided between two allocation funds. this past december, i did buy luk. for 27, it went back to 28, back down to 27. i hope to keep it long-term, what are you thinking? >> you have to look at that stock long-term. so it's not, it's really hard to pin down. they are trying to be like a mini berkshire hathaway. just led it ride.

robert in new york, robert? >> caller: jim, a happy boo-yah to you and your crew. >> same. >> caller: i have a two-part question on hess regarding their management, and wasn't there some kind of a management crisis a while back? >> not real crisis. they felt they got a lot of activist pressure to do things, and they did and it's paying off. that's part of the group of the market that's really quite good. the oils. they did great today. that's why i'm saying it's a split market. there's a part that's too speculative and got too frenzied, then there's hess. larry? >> caller: want to give a gator shout-out. mine is tractor supply. i bought it about eight months ago, up about 30%. >> i think you should -- >> sell, sell, sell. >> the last quarters weren't that crazy. i think you should ring the register. a lot of retail traffic is a little high right now. george in california, george? >> caller: yeah, jim, my

distinct pleasure to be able to talk to you. and i want to thank you for all your generosity. >> man, you're kind, thank you. >> caller: and sharing your bountiless knowledge with investors like myself. sales force, sizzle or fizzle? >> this is really important. this is the stock that started the whole decline, frankly. it's been hideous since then. people say, what should you pick at? if i had no softwares and service, i would be going towards sales force and buying a quarter of my position on monday, if it doesn't open higher. let's go to michael in illinois. michael? >> caller: hi, cramer. a big boo-yah to you! >> right back. >> caller: i have some bcrx and i would like to know your opinion on it. >> this is part of the very speculative group that has gotten too hot. wait until it comes down. or if you wanted to, sell half and buy it lower. that is not going to hold up over the next few weeks. and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the conclusion of the

"lightning round"! >> announcer: the "lightning round" is sponsored by td ameritrade. ameritrade. it's bubbling, tesla, amazon, netflix! see i got netflix there. sorry to burst your bubble, but east too got popped. how do we pronounce that? a bubble. thomas in ohio, thomas? >> caller: hello, jim? >> thomas? >> caller: jim, can you hear me? >> thomas, i've got you man. yeah, it's cloudy here. stay with cramer! guys, i have an announcement. i slept in this morning until 6:00 a.m. and i'm going on a nice, relaxing vacation to tahiti tomorrow, because i think i deserve some downtime. april 2nd, fools! are we really doing this?

you know i never sleep until 6:00. i was up about 5:45 this morning. does anyone like an april 2nd joke? because i will do anything to try to get ahold of your attention. there, i tomahawked. we're doing our own "mad money" version of the final four. money madness. we take the two best-performing qualifying stocks from the s&p 500 from the first quarter, and tonight we pit them against each other. nabors, the driller, is the winner here. intercept wins the nasdaq conference and goes to the finals. the final game, it's tomahawk friday! who the heck would ever want to miss this one. stay with cramer! [ indistinct shouting ]

♪ [ indistinct shouting ] [ male announcer ] time and sales data. split-second stats. [ indistinct shouting ] ♪ it's so close to the options floor... [ indistinct shouting, bell dinging ] ...you'll bust your brain box. ♪ all on thinkorswim from td ameritrade. ♪

on a hideous day, on a day like this one, you know what group hung in there? you know which cohort actually

went higher? the utilities. the whole sector has been doing pretty well, all year. strongest sector i follow. take nrg, the owner of the largest fleet of power plants in the united states, with a stock up 13% year-to-date, more than half of their power generation comes from coal, with oil and gas coming second, but the company does have sizable solar and wind portfolio, as well as a decent nuclear business. nrg is in all the right places. they get 50% of their business from texas, which has one of the tightest power markets in the country. prices are expected to rice pretty substantially over the next few years. and inergy closed in on an edison acquisition. a deal that could be very beneficial for the company down the road. maybe most of the important thing we want to talk about, inergy has a vision. in the march letter, he says he wants to become the amazon, facebook, apple, or google of the energy world, to maybe he's going to be the nrg of the utility world. david thinks we're headed toward a clean energy economy. a world that gives individual

choice back to the individual energy consumer. and that's among the reasons why nrg spun off nrg yield last july. the company gives investors a vehicle and rewards them with a bountiful dividend. one that yields 3.4%. now, energy yield became public in 22, rose 24% on its first day of trading, and rallied another 52% in the aftermarket to $42 and change. in other words, it's nearly doubled from the ipo price, which is why the yield is now below that of many competitors. let's check in with david crane and find out more about his company, what it's doing, where it's headed. mr. crane, welcome back to "mad money." >> good to see you, jim. >> normally, we'd be talking about, how's the quarter and the fantastic deal you just did. but when someone, i read an investor letter from the ceo, when it sayses there no amazon, apple, facebook, or google in the american energy industry,

i've got to start with that. >> the first thing you start, from a shareholder perspective, they've created about $1 trillion of market cap. it's a good model to follow. but trying to analyze them and extrapolate to our industry, they offer a ubiquitous product that everyone uses every day, and they do it in a seamless way. as you said, they empower people, but they actually do it for you. and there's no one doing that in the energy world, because energy has historically been force fed on to the public. you don't pick who you get your energy from. you don't get where it was sourced. . and all of that's going to change. >> but let's play skeptic here. i mean, this is just an industry that's high bound and one invitationary among hundreds of execs who are just thinking about the public utility commission, and the next meeting can't pull it off. >> no, well, that's true. one person can't. but, you know, if one person starts the village and the village grows. but i think that there are more

people coming and if we had been having this conversation a years ago, i think you would have thought that the way i think about this is pretty isolated. i actually think with some of the technology revolution that's occurred in our space, a lot of people are thinking, the way i am, i just think it's going to happen a lot quicker than most other people in the industry. and as you know, timing is everything, and investing. >> true. now, if we're going to have the world you're talking about, what is going to be the level of government involvement and subsidy? >> well, there's all this dispute about, you know, which part of the energy sector is most subsidized by the government, and i mean, everyone points at everyone else. and i really don't have time for that debate. all i know is that, you know, some of the key technology changes of which the precipitous drop in the price of solar and the fact that, you know, in half the country, within the next couple of years, you'll be able to put solar on your house and make power cheaper at your own house, with more resilience from the grid in terms of teardown events than it costs you to get

from the grid. if half of the united states, if that makes economic sense from them, quite apart from the environmental benefit, why aren't all americans going to do it? and there are a lot of houses in the united states. >> okay. so let's -- i think you know your industry, but i think the average person doesn't. and the first thing i would say is, wait a second, david, it's not sunny everywhere. what's the actual scientific retort to that? >> actually, you know, compared -- the initial renewable source of energy was wind and, you know, the one thing about solar has over wind, you have a pretty good idea of when the sun is going to come up and when it's going to go down. it's a little bit more reliable. but this solar photovoltaic technology, initially, people thought, it really only works in the arizona desert, but it actually handles diffuse light pretty well. if you think that germany is one of the largest users of solar photovoltaic and look at a solar insulation map, germany looks like alaska. so the lower 48 all look like an attractive solar energy market

relative to germany. >> all right, so is america, say, 20 years ago, there's a great line you talk about, the only real question is how quickly will this future occur? everyone seems to accept it. but are we expecting 20 years from now, when we buy a house, we expect there's a solar panel on top and you're getting paid by the utility company rather than paying them. >> i guess, it's, will you be paid by the utility, if the utilities still exist 20 years from now. but the reason i put the 20 years in there, the closest parallel to what's happening in our space is what happened to the telecon space. in my view, it took about 20 to 25 years for the cell phone technology to completely overwhelm fixed line telephony. but wall street saw -- you could see the end coming ten years before the end actually came. and as you know, the equity markets anticipate change. but we think this will be on us in a heartbeat. >> last question i have is, if that's the case, there's a lot of nrg that doesn't fit the description of distributable energy.

what happens to that? >> well, one of the things we have to keep in our mind, particularly coming out of this winter is, you know, it's nice to have the strategy for 5, 10, 15 years in the future, but we've got to keep the lights on right now. and this was a tough winter that way. so, you know, the average age of an nrg coal plant is 43 years old. so when i talk about what i talk about in the letter, i talk about what we build that's going to be here for the next couple of generations, it's not sort of really saying anything about the fact that we still need a lot of the technology that's keeping the lights on, you know, for the next 5, 10, 15 years. >> well, you've got the perspective both in the near-term and the long-term that investors want. that was david crane, the president and ceo of nrg energy, by forward the most forward-looking ceo in the industry. "mad money's" back after the break. break.

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we've been reading a lot of stories about the crushing burden of student loan debt. right now, tens of millions of americans owe more than $1 million in student death. in study after study, kids who graduate with no debt end up being worth a lot more money than their classmates with outstanding student loans. i'm a big believer in social mobility, which is why i'm constantly coming out here and teaching you to use the stock market, still the greatest engine of wealth ever created, to help you make serious money. and as it happens, i just got a tweet. remember, send them to @jimcramer with the #getaplan

ask welcome want to start a 529 for my kid. what are big considerations i need to make? on twitter, a very strange pattern, because i think what that person means is, what should we do with a 529 plan. so tonight for my playbook, the segment where we cover personal finance and basic financing, let me tell you about paying for college. for any of you who are thinking about becoming parents, there are very few things that you can do for your children that are better for paying for as much as their college education as you can afford. that's why this segment is so important. of course, if i were to make a kind of abe maslow style hierarchy of financial needs, i would tell you it's much more important for you to save and invest for retirement, though. as i said, many times, through tax-favored accounts, like a 401(k) or an i.r.a. for those of you who are parents, how could your own retirement be more important than making sure your kids have the best future possible? simple, believe me.

if you reach retirement age and you don't have enough money to pay for your needs, who do you think is going to support you? your kids! you don't want to be a burden on them. so take care of yourselves first. however, after you've saved enough for retirement, then it's time to start thinking about college. even if your kid is only a toddler. even if a kid is only a gleam in your eye, the best way to save for college, hands-down, is through what's known as a 529 savings plan. those plans vary -- these plans vary state by state, but the general rules are true all across the country, so let me do some generalization. while the rues differ from state to state, generally speaking, a 529 doesn't let you manage your own portfolio. you have to pick between a mix of different mutual funds, just like with many 401(k) plans. this is really not my favorite way to do things. i prefer you to have control of your assets. but 529s have so much going for them, i'm willing to swallow this one flaw. remember, when you can only choose between funds, go for a

low-cost fund that mirrors the market, either the s&p 500, or something that i don't talk enough about, the vanguard total market fun, which you'll see in many of these 529s. all the stocks traded on the new york stock exchange and the nasdaq. but since it's weighted by market cap, its performance will be similar to the s&p, which contains the 500 largest companies. so what are the rules for a 529 plan? let's say you've just had your first child. hey, congratulations! if you can afford it, you should start a 529 with your kid as the beneficiary, right then and there. or maybe wait a couple of days. after all, you just had a baby. although, anyone who's read "confessions of a street addict," i traded big blocks of alcoa throughout the birthing. no, i wasn't proud of it. here's how a 529 works. the contributions are not tax deductible, so you're paying for this out of your after-tax income. that's not great. but, and here's the good part, once your money is in the 529 plan, you don't pay any taxes on your gains, so they compound tax free, year over year. really, it's a lot like a roth i.r.a., except for college

rather than for retirement. because of federal gift tax laws, you can only contribute $14,000 a year if you're single, $28,000 if you're married, and you file your taxes jointly. still, that's a heck of a lot of money. oh, and by the way, your child's grandparents can contribute to the same 529 plan too. you might not know that. let's say for some reason, you or your parents are sitting on a really huge sum of money. one of the cool things about a 529 plan, you can front load up to five years with the contributions, without incurring the federal gift tax, as long as you don't write any checks to the plan's beneficiary over the next five years. in other words, a single parent or grandparent could potentially invest $70,000 into a 529 right from the start, or if you're married and filing jointly, you can contribute $140,000. for the following five years after that, you won't be able to contribute anything without getting hit by the gift tax, which is something you don't want. but honestly, once you've dropped that kind of money into a 529, you're set as long as you invest it wisely. the key, though, is you want to

get that 529 money into the kid's 529 as early as possible. that's because the greatness of these plans is all about the power of what we call compounding. remember, you don't pay taxes within the 529, so let's say you somehow contrive to contribute $70,000 right off the bat and invest that money in a low-cost index fund that mirrors the market. the rule of thumb is over time you'll make roughly 8% per year. i know the stock market's a lot more volatile than that, meaning it can go down like the nasdaq, but as a thought experiment, if stocks generally perform like they have historically, you could double your investment in about nine years. so if you start saving right when your kid is born, by the time he or she is 18, the value of your 529 plan could have doubled and doubled again, turning a $70,000 investment at the start into $280,000, barring some kind of market catastrophe. that's enough for a fancy, expensive private college education, and then sum. i know that most people can't

afford to front load a 529 plan like this, especially with not all of the expenses that come with raising a child, but it comes to mind that front loading is the best strategy. the last thing about saving for college and grad school. any plan in a 529 plan you don't use, you can transfer to another relative. we're talking siblings, parents, even first cousins. and if you save all this money and your ungrateful child decides not to go to college, you can withdraw the money from your 529 plan, but in that case, you'll have to pay taxes on any of your gains, along with a 10% penalty. so here's the bottom line. if you have children, then after you've made enough retirement contributions for the year, putting money in a 529 college savings plan should be the next item on your agenda. it's the best way to protect your kids from the crushing burden of student loan debt. and for more great financial advice, i need you to do this. go to yourmoney.cnbc.com. stick with cramer. ♪

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all right. even if this is 2000, usually start catching a bounce after this decline of the nasdaq. but the first bounce may not hold. my suggestion is, if we bounce, you lighten up a little.

there's a lot of stocks in the dow and s&p that are holding up really fabulously, that are just plain old companies. nothing the matter with owning a couple of those. i like to say there's always a bull market somewhere and i promise to try to find it just for you here on "mad money." i'm jim cramer and i'll see you monday. >> narrator: in this episode of "american greed"... ride 'em, cowgirl! rita crundwell appears to be a humble, small-town civil servant. but she's living a double life as a world champion horse breeder. it's a deception that comes at a huge price. >> everything that i've learned about showing horses, you must either be independently wealthy, or you're stealing the money. >> narrator: when this cunning comptroller diverts more than $53 million of dixon, illinois' money into her horse empire, she leaves a city on the verge of collapse. >> people are gonna have to lose their jobs to balance this budget. for what, a horse? for a trophy? are you kidding me? >> narrator: and later... staten island native joe mazella wants to help friends anne