side of that. i like gld gold for diversifier. and happy valentine's day to my mom betty. >> all right steve your thoughts. >> so nice tyler. thank you so much for being here to be with you all. to me, it's a trade that hasn't gone so well, but i'm. >> still in it. >> altimmune. all right, folks, thanks so much for watching fast money. mad money starts right now. >> 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 to make friends i'm just trying to make you some money. my job is not just to entertain, but to educate and teach you. so call me at one 807 43 cnbc or tweet me jimcramer. whenever you're listening to anyone's investing advice you need to consider the source. and ideally you want to know where that person is coming from. that's why tonight i'm going to tell you exactly who i am and how i

got here. no not the standard introduction i'm jim cramer, host of mad money, co-host of squawk on the street, chief of the cnbc investing club. what i want to do tonight in an extremely special show by even by wacky standards, is trace the arc that brought me to mad money. not for some autobiographical ego trip, but to kind of give you some money making lessons from the phases of my various careers and explain, of course, how you can pop the phone. remember, in the end, this is america, and everything we do here is about trying to help you make money. in short, i'm giving you the investor guidebook and call that the skinny on how i learned to be a good investor and how i continue to learn every day so i can help you become better than ever. well, i want you to be better than i ever was going to be. by the way, that's our mission in the investing club, too. let's start real early. my love of stocks didn't begin after law school or college or even high school. no, my love for stocks started back in fourth grade. that's right, fourth grade. you see, my dad would bring home the old philadelphia bulletin. boy, that brings about a long time ago.

that was at that point, the philadelphia was one of the largest newspapers in the country. he'd have it when he came back from work every night and give it to me. i wanted to comics in sports. i was ridiculous phillies fan back then, i still am. it's a lifelong affection, i guess. although i pivoted hard toward the eagles, i was also a curious kid. curiosity has always been both a blessing and a curse for me, not unlike the proverbial cat that's always probing, looking, occasionally jumping on some hot stoves. anyway, there was always this solid chunk of the paper that seemed impenetrable to me the business section. it was impenetrable because it had these giant lists of names of an agate type that seemed to go on forever. there were the other tables different from the batting averages, tables, and box scores. i scrutinized with regularity. when i read them from left to right, they made no sense to me whatsoever. open range. closed. open. what range? what closed? what were these strange things? why did they matter? i asked my dad, who i knew dabbled in the stock market, because occasionally i'd hear him get mad when he heard prices that were mentioned on the radio. in particular, he always seemed to

get angry when i heard something called national video and how it went out. i don't know what video did or didn't go out and why it went out. i don't know if pop did either though, but i know it made him furious. i wanted to know why. so he sat me down one day and explained that each of those lines represented the performance of a stock at a company on a different day. the opening was where the stock opened in the morning. the range was how low and high it traded during the day, and the close was what it was worth at the end of the day. that fascinated me. i mean, how could there be so many companies and why the heck did they trade in ranges? he told me that each day people tried very hard to figure out which stocks would go up in value, and they wanted to buy them so they could make money from those moves. frankly, this struck me as downright silly. i told him that when i looked at baseball tables, i was always trying to figure out who was hot, who'd go up on average, who'd go down, and what it means for the teams i like specifically, of course, the phillies. he said it was pretty much the same thing with stocks. you studied the companies like you studied the players. some

players were just okay, some were hot as a pistol, and of course, others were just plain duds. i told him i wanted to figure out the stock market, too. i wanted to figure out which stocks would go higher, just like everybody else. i wanted to know if i could learn something from just following the ranges and reading the tables. he said, why don't you try? it seemed in my house the radio was always on until pop put the tv on in time for dinner. we always watched the news while eating, even as i admit i hated it because most of the news was about the war and that meant the vietnam war. and it was really seemed to be going well at all. but right after the world news on the radio or tv, they always mentioned dow jones industrial average, and they either talked about or showed the most active stocks. then the ones that had done best or worst. national video pop stock was off from the worst list. and that's why i guess my dad was so angry. so what i did was write down the names that i heard and i tracked them, kept them in a ledger i still have. what a terrific game it was. trying to figure out the next move of a stock, not a player. even as all i really knew was the name. most

of them were defense stocks, and they went up a lot in tandem with the war. after a year, i decided that was such a cool game that i wanted to introduce it to my fifth grade class, and so i did. going in show and tell with the philadelphia bull and showing them the ledger. invited them to play to see who could find stocks that went up the most during the week. needless to say, not everyone was into it. but the darndest thing happened not long after my dad's company at the time, national gift wrap and box company, represented gm, then known as the minnesota mining and manufacturing company, the philadelphia area. he sold tape and sashimi. that was a fancy ribbon that bowed easily. remember, there was a time when you had to make your own bows. triple m, as we called it, was always innovating, coming up with new product lines, which it still does. but these days it's also plagued, unfortunately, by major litigation issues. but about fifth grade, pop came home with a new line of three m products. he was selling games. that's right. they got into what was known as three m bookshelf games, he said. perhaps i might want to learn more about the stock market. and he had two games that he was selling well, about business. one was acquire about takeovers and the other was stocks and bonds. i almost

cried when a good friend bought me this recently. i love that game so much. and at one point i even asked the old ceo of ibm to bring the games back. apparently i don't own the rights anymore, but the point of mentioning all this is from my own mixture of stock game to stocks and bonds, is that stocks are fascinating enough to get your kids started on them right now, and i'm urging you to do just that. it's easier than ever. pick some stocks, maybe some stocks or companies that your kids are familiar with. then have them track those and guess which will do best over time. so here's the bottom line. the bottom line, at least in my childhood stock market obsession. get them started early and they may play for life. because unless the stock market it's a long term contest, the earlier you get in, the more you can potentially win over the long haul. let's go to dave in california, please, dave. >> hey, jim, thanks. for taking. my call. >> of course. what's up dave. >> jim i'm an older. >> retired investor who's moving most of my stock. >> portfolio gains into. >> t bonds. >> and cds. >> what are. >> the advantages. >> of.

>> bond ladders and how do those work? >> well, i mean, look, i think that you with what i like about a bond ladder is it's it would normally matter a great deal. the yield curve is so flat. i'm trying to think it really doesn't make people want to ladder bonds right now. it really doesn't make a lot of sense. i want you to stay short. no reason to go out in the long end and you can just keep reinvesting like that. but i also want i'm not sure of your age, but i always want people to remember that. i think you don't want to bet against yourself and put too much money in bonds, because stocks still represent the greatest opportunity. and don't forget utility stocks. they can play a role too. they could have multiple years of goodness. let's go to philip in michigan please philip. >> booyah jim. >> what's up philip. >> hey i. >> wanted to thank you i've been listening. to your show. >> since 2006. and one of my coworkers turned me on to the show. and you've made me all. >> sorts of mad money. >> oh fantastic. thank you for that. thank you. >> i'm also a member. >> of the.

>> cnbc. >> investment club, so i enjoy. tuning into your everyday. >> and listening. >> to you there as well. >> okay. >> my question. >> my question. >> is so. >> i know. >> that you. >> refer to. >> dividend reinvestment. >> as the eighth. >> wonder of. >> the. >> world. >> and i'm totally there with you. >> all right. >> my specific question is. >> is should. >> i involve myself in my. brokerage program? or should i take the cash. >> and then put it back to. >> work in a stock. >> when i am a huge dividend reinvestment plan person? that's that's and matter of fact, i wish there weren't weren't an alternative. but for my charitable trust, i have to send the dividends out and it has really hurt my long term performance. you can't. you've got to reinvest. and that's where some big money can be made, right? one of the biggest things i learned from getting interested in the stock market early is that it is a long term contest. the earlier you get in, the more you can potentially win over the long haul. i mean, money tonight i'm giving you an inside look at how i got to where i am today, from growing up to goldman sachs. along the way, you learn the best

practices. i learned about the market and how you can incorporate these life lessons to yourself. so stay with cramer. >> don't miss a second of mad money follow jimcramer on x. have a question. tweet cramer hashtag mad. send jim an email to mad money at cnbc.com. or give us a call at one 800 743 cnbc. miss something. head to madmoney.cnbc.com. brian sullivan joins kelly evans power lunch weekdays two eastern. cnbc. >> at capital group we believe in the potential. energy of. >> fixed income. >> fueled by. >> 50 years of experience. our distinctive approach to fixed income. investing has delivered strong, long. term results and could power. portfolios to. >> reach investor goals. all you. >> have to do to activate this.

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craig here pays too much for business wireless. so he sublet half his real estate office... to a pet shop. there's a smarter way to save. comcast business mobile. you could save up to an incredible 70% on your wireless bill. so you don't have to compromise. powering smarter savings. powering possibilities. switch to comcast business internet and mobile and find out how to get the new samsung galaxy s25+ on us with a qualifying trade in. don't wait, call, click or visit an xfinity store today. bizarrely special bad buddy, where i'm teaching you life lessons in investing from my life. well, i'm not a dollar sign represented by a man or a stock symbol for that matter. ticker. jim, i've stumbled around the stock market long enough to learn a thing or two. so tonight you're getting some of the wisdom from the school of hard knocks that i've enrolled

in and passed. don't you always love it? at the beginning of a pro football game where they have the player say his name and his school, and some say school of hard knocks? well, that's what i intended when it comes to stocks. and you are getting the made for tv version right here, right now for law school. i went to harvard, though. we covered how i first got involved in the market, my fourth grade obsession with keeping a ledger to track stocks and then ultimately learn how they trade through the greatest game on earth. no, not monopoly, but stocks and bonds with its little certificates, its game board, and its cards about news that would send the stock higher or lower. i love that game. i love the stock market games behind. by the time i got to middle school, which we call junior high back then, where my obsession became sports, i was the second fastest guy in the school forever. so i ran track. and then of course, in girls who my teenage self found far more mystifying than the market. maybe still do anyway, but that's the subject of a different show entirely. however, my father did ingrained in me the desire to save money. early on. i learned that even in high school, i saved as i bused tables at the old block in

cleveland, which of course we called the block and cleavage because we were really funny and we were at the height of adolescent humor. i saved more working as a vendor at the old veterans stadium, selling first cold soda, then ice cold. that's how i did it. hey, ice cold. i got ice cold soda, then only graduate into selling ice cream. hey, i got ice cream, vanilla and chocolate. very quickly, i'll go into the value of market power, specifically cornering the market, and i pay people to give me the exclusive right to sell ice cream. hey, ice cream here on the 600 and then on the 700 level, which i own by keeping everybody else out of it. can you imagine how much money could be made if you had the only franchise, the whole upper deck? well, at least it's the upper upper deck. even for a team as horrible as affiliates with one almost no games, i made fortunes except the one time they gave me strawberry ice cream. talk about having to run from a customer after they sold you sold them that stuff. or when steve carlton pitched because lefty was on the mound, he got out so fast that i got stuck. unsold ice cream. i had all the strawberry. you can't take it home real bad. you had to buy it from the company before selling it. so i take a

beating whenever carlton was on the mound. that's a business lesson. talk about learning how business really works. the shelf life of ice cream on a hot july night after the ninth inning is about as short as short can be. by the way, during the lightning round, i might chat with you about your name calling you. hey, skipper. hey, captain. how you doing, chief? i learned these names at the ballpark. is what people called me to get my attention to buy ice cream. hey, chief. and frankly, i loved it. and its bizarre intimacy, and i never forgot the monikers, bud, i mean, partner. and that's why i use those terms on mad money. anyway, i made a ton of money. at the advice of my father, i opened an account at fidelity with the magellan fund. i contribute a little every week. it was the top performing mutual fund of its time, run by the great peter lynch, who has written two investment books one up on wall street and beating the street, still available on amazon. they are fabulous. yet, though i didn't save enough when i got to college, the money paid was work study anyway, and it went toward my tuition, room and board. but when i got out of college and after multiple attempts to get a job in the newspaper business, i was rejected by 57 papers. i still

have the rejections. i've saved every one of them. i hate everybody who rejected me. and never mind, i land a position as a general assignment reporter at the democrat, making 150 bucks a week, 150 bucks a week was not a lot to really kind of. well, anyway, i still got a tattered pay stub. i've got it in an old wallet to remind me of how hard it was when i got started. nevertheless, you know what i still saved? i put a few dollars away when i could. a few dollars, i mean, like maybe $4. not that long after that, i applied and got a job at the now defunct los angeles herald-examiner that was a horrible job, paying $179 a week. but as you can imagine, los angeles more expensive than tallahassee. soon after my sojourn began in los angeles, i found this terrific bungalow apartment in what was known as the fairfax district, right near canter's. pretty sketchy around the corner from a pioneer chicken, which was way too expensive for me to go to. a few weeks later, i was stalked. my place was broken into repeatedly, something the cops were helpless to stop. at the same time, i was assigned a story in san diego, a horrible shooting, and when i returned, everything was gone. everything. everything i had, including my checkbook, of which of course, was cleaned out. so it began my

terrible but thrilling six months of living in my car, basically trying to get by. while my ultimate goal was to save enough to get an apartment i was living hand to mouth and people would take me in now and then so i could get a shower. that's really it's really important to get that shower or maybe even a good night's sleep. but you know what? i never quit saving. i remember cashing my paycheck every other week and then writing a check to fidelity magellan fund for what i could afford. you only have your gasoline, car insurance, and food expenses if you're living in your car. saving on homeowners insurance, which was very expensive back then. needless to say, it was unsustainable when i only came down with mononucleosis and then the attendant joined us. sliver yellow spot about the size of greenland. you know, on those mercator projectors on my stomach, i had no health care. the hmo my newspaper belonged to, i had no branch where i was at at last station when the company mercifully put me on the road so i could at least submit some expenses for my day to day. so i had to go to a migrant farm workers clinic to get fixed up, and i still put money away. even then, even as i was making my weekly trips to the doctor, who

was one of the best i've ever had. but the upshot of investing is this is a challenge. the whole story is a challenge, and this is what it is. if i was living in my car and i invested, i never want to hear that. you didn't say never. that's why i went through this. amazing. with the magellan fund back. back then, i was giving money to the best stock picker of all time. fast forward 35 years later, and enough to take advantage of one of the greatest bull markets in history. the magellan money ultimately amounted to a fund well into the six figures. not because of my additional contributions, which remember only just a few dollars a month, but purely from capital appreciation and the power of compounding. i never touched it. i still have it. i just let it build. i think the takeaway here is that i want you to save no matter what the excuse. obviously the earlier the better, through thick and thin. listen, when cbc has those all star managers on it, keep your ear open. if you don't have enough money or to handle or handle the time to own stock portfolio, you can only own 1 or 2 stocks. send the money in as little as money as you can to an index fund, to a monitor, to one of these big mutual funds. if

you need help managing your own portfolio, join the investing club. i think that's the best way to go. and here's the real bottom line. if i could still send those checks to fidelity magellan from when i was living in my car, sleeping in the back, jack daniels and a hatchet, and then ultimately a yes, pistol, sick as a dog and a sliver. then what's your excuse for not getting started? you can put some money away too. that's the way i always do it. that money back. >> into your. >> coming up. take a trip down memory lane. the hair is gone, but the wisdom tolls on. stick with cramer. >> huia for the emperor. >> of cramerica. >> honorable james j. cramer. >> you got me jumping around. >> my. >> office right now. >> thank you so. >> much for all. >> you. >> do for us. >> i enjoy your show. >> and i find it very entertaining and informative. >> i watched your first ever episode of mad money back in 2005, and i've been watching every single episode ever since. >> don't miss mad money every night at 6 p.m. eastern. plus join the cnbc investing club and

stick with cramer around the clock. >> cnbc live ambitiously. >> get invested. join the club. >> the cnbc investing club. is for everybody. >> i joined to achieve. financial freedom in retirement. >> jim cramer is the benefit. >> you get that. >> you can't get. >> anywhere else. it's a great value. >> jim cramer. >> gives you much more than you would ever get from any advisor. >> he teaches. >> how to. invest versus. >> just what trades to make. return on investment for. the club pays for itself. >> join the club. new members save with a special offer for a limited time at cnbc.com. join jim. terms and restrictions apply. >> most power players on wall street rated nvidia a strong buy today. yet why, then, are so many legendary investors quietly ignoring that advice and instead selling the stock? hand over fist, every billionaire on your screen has recently sold nvidia. some have offloaded millions of shares. and mark my words, this

is bigger than nvidia. hedge funds are quietly selling all of their tech stocks at the fastest rate we've seen since 2016. it begs the question what do they know that you don't? my name is mark chaikin. i help build three indices for the nasdaq during my 50 years on wall street. that means i know how to recognize these signals from the tech market and exactly what they mean for you and your money. i explain everything in my new market briefing, including the truth of what's going on with nvidia today and the specific stock i recommend you buy. instead, i'll give you its name and ticker when you visit the website below. nvidia has been the most talked about stock in the market, and for good reason. it's led the ai revolution that has taken the us stock market by storm since they announced their ai powered computer chip in 2023. and video stock has been on a history making tear,

officially surpassing microsoft to become the world's most valuable company today. however, many investors are worried the tide is changing. nvidia's day in the sun may soon be coming to a dramatic end. and as a result, i predict a different under the radar stock is primed for big potential gains from this moment on. to get its name and ticker 100% free, simply visit the website below. >> why should. >> you. >> trade options rather than stocks? >> because they. >> offer higher. >> returns. >> are cost. >> effective. >> and can. >> actually reduce risk. >> learn how in our new book. get a free copy today at it's not an option.com. it's not an option.com.

>> life's overwhelming, but i don't stress about meal planning anymore. >> how hungryroot hungryroot delivers healthy groceries with easy four ingredient recipes so you can have a healthy home cooked meal in minutes. hungryroot. join now and get free veggies for life! >> some people. like doing things the hard way, like doing their finances with a spreadsheet instead of using quicken. quicken pulls all your financial info together in one place and updates it automatically. how easy is that? >> we're riding the magical mystery tour tonight. i'm giving you the life lessons i've learned the hard way through decades of investing. right now, i want to tell you how i got started in individual stock picking something you know i love and still believe in, even

after multiple periods of pain, chaos, and chicanery. presumably you believe too, or else you wouldn't be watching. if you're picking stocks, playing with real money, not just with a ledger or with the game of stocks and bonds. you need to open an account. when i got started in 1979, there was no such thing as an online account. i had my money with fidelity, courtesy of my magellan fund account, so i chose to put my individual stock account there too. when i first began, i didn't know where to look for ideas, so i turned to a magazine. i liked forbes. now people, forbes, please don't take this personally, but i read a nifty article about american agronomics, a terrific orange grower in florida. it seemed so compelling that i bought ten shares of it for nine bucks. a week later, frost hit, wiped out the crop, and my investment was more than cut in half. like the plot of trading places, an all time great eddie murphy movie, if you've ever seen it. well, what can i say? pretty similar. i was devastated, but not defeated. i sold it out, took the capital and bought seven shares of bobby brooks, a clothing outfit i'd heard of, which, again, forbes said could be a terrific buy. almost immediately, the company reported bad quarter and my money had to get. fortunately, i

had a decent job at a magazine called american water, which had just started. i was making 20 gs and living in a less than swank studio on 44th street, between first and second near the united nations. the cheap $40 a month rent allowed me to replenish my stock coffers pretty quickly. i was on the road quite a bit back then, and after a particularly hard night on the town researching a story in kentucky, i fell in love with the breakfast at bob evans farms, finding out that it was publicly traded. when i went back, i visited that huge, fabulous midtown manhattan, new york public library, the ones with the big lines in front of it and devoured everything i could find about bob evans. they had magazines with articles, microfiche of four month old financials and investment publications. it would write ups that allowed me to compare bob evans with other companies in the industry, which is what you have to do. i knew i had a good one, so i bought 20 shares. stock went up immediately on a good quarter, the stock split, and i figured out the first component of investing. know what you own. what did i know about growing oranges with american agronomics? i mean, who knew i'd know anything about women's fashion? i mean, certainly not me, but a good play to scrambled eggs and sausage after a hard night on

the town. well, that served an attractive setting. good service, nice enough growth plant, a big plan to expand in the midwest. that was for me. next up, sp technologies. that's the old standard pressed steel, an outfit from my old hometown that made faster screws for airplanes. something that hal met now dominates isps because a buddy of mine from high school catching up with me told me that they were hiring like mad. if i was looking for a job paying good money. well, i already had a job. but back to the library for more research. solid company, no debt, but nothing in print about its hiring push. wow, right? for a trade. sbs doubled not long after and i caught the bug for good. 23 years later, it would be acquired by precision castparts, the preeminent supplier to aircraft builders around the globe, before pcp went on to sell itself to berkshire hathaway in 2016. good bloodlines. so now i'm figuring it out. the best investment ideas come from what, you know, melded with information gleaned from public sources, even if there is late and is hard to access. is taking a surreptitious trip to the new york public library. when i was supposed to be working, i didn't like the random way i was making money. a friend from home called about jobs available at space technologies, a hearty breakfast at bob evans farms. i figured

that'd be a more rigorous approach. right? then it hit me. look around. it works. stupid. at the time, i was covering mergers and acquisitions. i mean, looking at the lawyers who do the deals, profiling some, following the deals they were on, it seemed like every other deal was in the oil patch. one after another, small to midsize oil companies were being acquired, and all i was doing was standing around writing about them. so i went back to the library to get some editions of a thing called value line stock research magazine, and checked out the pages devoted to oil companies. then i cross-referenced them with other research to find out which ones could be acquired without problems, either because they were publicly traded, without a family owning them, or because they seemed to be fit to size the parameters of so many other deals. so i settle this thing called natomas, an oil company with a real gusher in indonesia. oh, i didn't have long to wait. kerr-mcgee struck bottom, almost doubled my money. another lesson learned we wouldn't play takeovers by companies that would do well on their own. natomas was, but it was under managed, which was the consensus i found by reading the articles about the oil enterprise, that meant another oil company with bigger scale could do more with natomas, which was cheaper than

it should be if it simply got rid of the existing management. as much as i hit some winners, though, i was distraught that i'd given up the ghost in those first few trades. at the time, i'd been hanging around the track on weekends, mostly aqueduct nearby, and i learned how to handicap by reading the books of andy beyer, the legendary horse horse racing writer. he is something okay. buyers picking winners is among the best investing books ever written. even as it's betting on the ponies, it teaches discipline how to identify the best thoroughbreds, to bet on how to find the best longshots. going to the out of the way tracks where information was less well known, not betting willy nilly on every horse in each race. find the ones where the payoff was more sure and bet big. cut your losses if you're having a bad run, every one of these lessons could be applied to the stock market, right? i mean, you think you'd swing when you know what you're doing, particularly when others don't? on a less well known stock out of the way track, don't just gamble on stocks for the excitement of it. that is foolish. most important, be disciplined. don't let your losses pile up. after five years of professional journalism, i decided to hang it up and go back to law school. the good

news i saved enough money to pay for my first year on the stock market, as i never would have had enough money to cover the cost of it. i just kept my money in a savings account. so here's the bottom line. you want to get started, go small. invest in what you know. are you sure it intensely? just research, research, research. back then i got old data from public library. now it's as simple as a keystroke. and the information is free, including up to the minute financials, analyst presentations, brokerage, research, and of course, the conference calls that i tell you are a must if you want to actually know what you're doing. simple. no. lucrative. you bet it is. let's go to michael in california, please, michael. >> yes, jim. first of all, thanks for taking. my call. >> of course, i'll. >> try and make this as quick as possible. as i know you got a lot of people to help here. this has to concern my two children. i inherited recently a great deal of money. not $1 million, but a substantial amount. and i'm looking at a 20 to 30 year time frame here. i've been investing for them since the day they were born. they're doing all right, but i want them to

leave them some good, good money. i'm thinking on the lines of. berkshire b, and now this is putting all this money berkshire b and etf, the vanguard etf or some of that. somewhere along those lines. what's your opinion. >> okay i think that s&p 500 fund and the total total return funds are both really good for that kind of situation. vanguard's total return. the one thing i would caution is as much as i like warren buffett, i just think that you have to be you have to have a kind of a basket if you do one stock. but if you do the ones that i just mentioned, you don't need a basket and you don't have to keep track of them every minute. by the way, if you're young enough, maybe you give them something that they actually want to spend some time learning about, and that could be good too, to keep them invested and interested in their money. but thank you for those kind questions. and let's go to loyal arkansas. loyal. >> yes, sir. how are you doing. >> mr. cramer? >> i'm doing well. loyal. how about you? >> i'm doing. >> all right. >> i just want. >> to know. >> getting back into the.

>> market with 11. >> k. >> what's the best. >> way to have a long term. a long. term goal, but get a short term return. >> within a year or two on your investment? >> well, you know, that's it's too risky, frankly. i at one time or another, i think in my earlier years i would have suggested call options. and then also some longer term stocks and mutual funds. but these days i'm just against the short term stuff i can't deliver. and i don't want to encourage trading. but thank you so much. i wish i could do better for you, but it's just not my thing. trading things, not my thing. anyway, if you want to get started in stocks, go small, invest in what you know and intensely. the process may not be simple, but boy, it can be lucrative. all right, much more mad money ahead, including an inside look at what i learned from my time at goldman sachs. plus, i'm taking your investing questions with my investing club colleague, jeff marx. so stay with cramer. >> coming up, how has investing

changed since cramer's hedge fund days. we count the ways. and the answer may surprise you. next. >> good evening, mr. cramer. thank you. thank you for everything you do. >> you've been such a wonderful source of information with your teachings. i have to say thanks. >> thank you for all your advice and saving. >> us from ourselves. >> your advice? >> let me. >> quit a job that i hated. i love you to death. thank you for everything you do. thanks for making us money and more importantly, thanks for keeping us from losing money. >> we know he wants to hold on to the nba. how much more will he have to pay? >> a lot of. >> the revenue streams are guaranteed. >> cnbc sports official nba team valuations available now at cnbc.com. sport. >> hi. my name. is. again this

is janet yellen uyghur. and i'm. want to go. de. to the. >> the 2025 grammy awards are fueling a $106 billion global music industry by 2030 with double digit growth. meet music on the nyse, a global music fund and the first pure play music etf. investing in companies behind artists like taylor swift, sabrina carpenter and billie eilish. from live music to streaming, led by music industry titan david schulhof, formerly with miramax. i am global and bmg dance to the music on the nyse.

>> oh. hi, frank. hey. >> goldie. i'm looking for those. >> reports from yesterday. >> already on your desk, frank. >> of course. >> they are. >> easily isolate phone calls to the driver's seat in the all. >> new three row infiniti qx80. >> running out of money in retirement. >> it's not. >> an option. >> that's why more stock investors are now learning to trade options to boost their returns. look at the return of this option trade versus a stock trade. >> on the same security. >> they can't even compare after years. >> on tv as the go to options experts, we wrote our new book to teach stock investors how to successfully trade options. get your free copy today at. your free copy today at. >> it's

i don't ever see anyone coming out to maintenance anything, so it's very scary for me because i have everything i love in this home. so, we've now implemented drone technology. how is that safe for me? it enhances the inspection, so it allows us to see things faster. your safety is the most important, and if you're feeling unsafe, that's not okay. it doesn't feel like that in our hearts. i mean, it's worrisome. [dog barks] channel. >> and maria already asked for a budget reminder. >> smart buy. >> got it. >> got it. boss otter, you got this.

>> tonight's show is all about you learning from my attendance at what we call the university of financial hard knocks. with a major investment, i've taken you through the importance of getting started early. saving no matter what. i've shown you how to spot winners, avoid losers. stay disciplined. all through looking at my actual examples in my life. now, i want to give you a sense of how you can become a trader. oh, here we go. a good trader and i don't normally recommend this. it's not the direction i like to take the show. mad money has changed time and time again. and after the first few years, i've deliberately skewed it away from trading and trading ideas and much more toward long term investing. and that's because there's so many more obstacles to trading than investing these days. when you're a trader, you have to watch your positions like a hawk during the day, to the point where it's very hard to do your job and follow the market. there are so many people with such a great set of tools and the ability to access information in real time. there are so many different products that allow hedge funds to move stocks around like toys. it's very hard to compete against them. what you can't do the one

on one, especially when you're doing it part time. but there's some advantages you have now that you sure didn't. when i started trading in my law school dorm back in 1981 and i was trading, not investing first, commissions are non-existent for home gamers, so you can get in and get out without much friction. your broker doesn't even take a fee. second, the information you need is on your personal computer or even your smartphone. back in the day, i had to call brokers and watch the ticker on fnn, precursor to cnbc, by the way. and third, trading is lightning fast. back then, i didn't even know what price i paid for stock or when i bought it. market order. whatever. when i was in class, i had to use pay phones. no cell. you often had to wait at one pay phone in the classroom building, while some kid chatted endlessly and aimlessly to his girlfriend. maybe some woman called her mom. at the time, though, i had to go with what i knew. i knew individual stocks. for all the stories about harvard law school, including the movie paper chase, i can tell you there was tons of downtime at law school and terrific business school library that had a lot of sell side research. that's the stuff the brokers churned out, along with up to date microfiche. quarterly reports probably don't know that. for

those of you who are too young to remember microfiche, they miniaturized everything to a little piece of film, and then you had to read it through a machine that was basically a glorified microscope. all things considered, i possessed the best publicly available information at the time for a student that you get in the early 80s. the first thing i decided to do, though, given the circumstances, was to work on finding one trading idea per week. my reasoning was pretty simple you can't be all over the map if you're doing this as a hobby, even a time intensive one. i figured i couldn't take a lot of chances until i really knew what i was doing. a very valuable lesson if you want to start trading. i discarded a ton of ideas looking for stocks that had catalysts, upcoming reports, or possible mergers and stocks that could rally based on the other parts of the newspaper. an article on the front page might be talking about some breakthrough in medicine. a brokerage report might discuss the potential for a new oil fund. i got on a roll. i started my first writing about the market. it was a newsletter called mr. bullish, which i mailed only to my parents once a week, since no one else cared about what i thought, and it clearly articulated the thesis by any trade i did. i did not

trade. if i couldn't explain exactly what the company did and why i liked it, and what would happen to the to the stock. what was the catalyst to buy? no buying of anything that didn't have a clear exit strategy. from the moment i put the trade on. again, important lesson made disciplined by the insistence of written thesis before i pulled the trigger. when you trade, you got to trade with confidence. otherwise you can easily be shaken out by the broader market you want to trade with confidence? well, ask yourself, would you be willing to put a stock recommendation on your voicemail? yeah, we used to have those and update it every week. well, at that point it was a quarter. it was something like this for me. hi this is jim cramer. i'm not here right now, but i like monolithic memories at $32 ahead of the next quarter. yeah i actually did that. that's the level of conviction i had about my picks of the week. of course, i was putting my money where my mouth was and managed to augment the winnings with work i got from my old employer, american lawyer, along with some freelance work for the new york times and some legal work for a professor who moonlighted during doing these criminal defense cases. it's kind of a famous guy, but we won't go into that. it wasn't

before long that a fellow by the name of marty peretz, at that point the publisher for the new republic, also professor teacher at harvard, tried to get me to write a piece. i neglected to call him back, so he inadvertently got three weeks worth of trades from my answering machine, all successful, and he told me to meet him at a coffee house nearby. when i did, he said that he'd made more money from my answering machine than he had with years of professional money managers, and he wanted to give me a half million dollars to manage. i said i didn't think i was capable of handling that amount. he said he had confidence in me. and shortly thereafter, when we're having a cup of coffee, he pulled out a check for a half million bucks. that was real money back then. i ran out of fidelity with the money and set up an account and went right to work trading. almost immediately. i lost a ton of it, and i could see how i might have to wash dishes. marty's house, maybe mow his lawn for about like 100 years to make back the 70 g's i just blown to smithereens. my mistake. as clint eastwood told us in that seminal movie magnum force, a man's got to know his own limitations. you see, you can't trade a huge chunk of money all at once. it's total

violation of all my weekly discipline, right? can't put it all to work at once. you have to do some soul. you can only do that after you've done a huge amount of work. you have to have a chance to pan out an entry point. you had to come up with a reasonable entry point and an exit. in other words, you had to know how to trade. and i didn't, and i had no discipline. i violated my own rules and i blew it. i confess my sins to marty, he said. i said, please take the money back. instead, he wanted me to have more money betting that i'd learned my lesson. you know what? he was right. i reverted to my old style, trying to be right about one idea at a time, keeping the r in cash, doing a huge amount of homework, going big when i had the most conviction the way any good trader would, i slowly but surely made it back, while i also paper invested a more active but not truly trading portfolio to get a better feel of things that would become the beginning of my actual professional investing career. and we made a huge amount of money together. don't mind saying that. so here's the bottom line. if you're trying to trade, make sure you have a catalyst, an exit point where something's supposed to happen and then get out of the stock.

even if the idea doesn't pan out because you're trading, not investing, you need conviction. and you have to ask yourself, would you be willing for the world to hear? hi. it's me. i'm not here right now, but i want you to take a big swing at disney ahead of the analyst meeting. if you believe these things. start small. give it a try. nobody's back. >> booyah! jim. i love you, man. i've been watching you from day one. >> thank you for all the wonderful advice that you provide us. >> i'm learning so much watching your show. >> watch your program. >> every day. >> love it. >> always wanted. >> to. >> say booyah on. >> your show. >> thank you for. >> being the greatest. >> in. >> the world. >> we consider you the money market. >> maker and we. >> thank you for all you do. i love your show. a long. >> time fan. >> of your show. >> and we think it's the most entertaining program on tv. >> get invested. join the club. >> the value you're. >> going to. >> get from making. >> better. >> investments more than outweighs whatever the cost of the membership is. >> join the club. new members save with a special offer for a limited time at cnbc.com. terms and restrictions apply. when

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ambitiously. >> welcome back to this special edition of mad money, where i've been teaching you life lessons in investing from my life. now we're up to the professional grade. when i started at goldman sachs, i've been courted by goldman for three years before i got a job in what was then the security sales department, helping individuals and small institutions manage their money. i've got a ton of history from those years. and if you want to know more about it, i suggest you read confessions of a street addict, my autobiography. but tonight's show, like every show, is about learning how to trade and invest. so i'll dispense with the anecdotes and try to teach you how to make money. from the events that transpired from my time at goldman. first, that's when i began understanding the process of actual money, managing the ability to build a portfolio from the ground up. and i had the best teachers in the world. one of the great hedge fund

managers of our time, lee cooperman. he was the research director at goldman, and he put on investing clinics almost daily. but you know who i learned most from? my customers, chiefly wealthy individuals from all walks of life. at goldman, i learned something that to this day can't be understood by so many professionals in this business. individuals can and do beat the market quite regularly. i have what's known as non-discretionary accounts, meaning that i wasn't allowed to invest anyone else's money with my own ideas unless i could win them over to make the purchase. remember, i was on commission and made money only with the buys or sells i could convince people to act on. that's where i learned how important it was to talk over a story with an individual, and be able to articulate it in a way that made sense to them. can you do that to someone when you're picking a stock? you had to know your stuff. i often ask my clients questions about whether they knew enough about the stocks that they wanted to buy. i wanted them to be as educated as possible, too. that's because i knew that if the stock went up, it would be their idea. but if

it went down, it'd be mine. come on. that's human nature. what else did i learn? how about you? military. it was at goldman sachs that i first figured out how humbling this business could be. the great 80s bull market had just started not long before i'd been hired. almost all stocks had tremendous tailwinds. but when one of your ideas went against you, you had to get on the horn and explain either why the person should buy more, or why they should cut their losses. 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 didn't really know that much about stocks. they just been fabulous at running their own enterprises. i had a real cantankerous client, a real estate tycoon who i worked hard to get trying to win him over for ages. i told him i'd be judicious, work hard and get it right for him. he said he didn't want trades. he wanted long term investments. at the time, i happened to like the stock of kimberly-clark. i told him that i thought this one would be a terrific addition to his portfolio. he agreed, and i bought him 1000 shares. almost immediately, the stock went up

eight points. oh, i had a winner. so i called him and i said, bob, i want to ring the register and sell the 1000 shares of kimberly-clark. i thought he would thank me, but he was furious at me. he told me that i had said that kimberly would be a good long term position, that it could have great gains over time, and that he wasn't the least bit interested in only making $8,000. then he questioned my integrity and wanted to know if i was churning him a horrible charge, meaning i was just trying to generate commissions off his account. you know what? i was scorched. i was burned. but it taught me a terrific lesson. just as you don't want to turn a trade into investment, because that's usually a sign that you're embracing a loss and trying to invent reasons to stick with it. you also don't want to turn an investment into a trade when you have a good one. let it run, for heaven's sake. bob was right. kimberly-clark will be doubled. and i was vindicated despite myself. finally, i learned the science behind building a portfolio and understanding how to create long term wealth. a lot of my business involves contacting people who just came into a great deal of cash,

either through inheritance or through the sale of a business. i regarded my first job as listening to their needs, trying to figure out what they wanted, where they conservative. did they want capital preservation? were they aggressive? did they want capital appreciation? i tried to get them to try to get to know them and urge them to get to know themselves. just as you should know yourself. can you handle the pain of a market decline? would you prefer your money to appreciate slowly get most of it from fixed income, meaning bonds or from dividends? do you want to participate in new issues? do you want to try to hit it out of the park with some of your capital? of course, many of your familiar that you're familiar with these lessons. i know that you've heard me say them time and again on air, preaching them constantly to the cnbc investing club. i try to teach you how to know yourself to know what you can handle and what you can't. finally, this is what i learned the value of diversification. when i first got to goldman sachs, the oils were hot as a pistol. i mean, you understand those were different days. you could have an oil companies double and then double again in a short time as they struck oil.

we figure out how big those fines must be. so everyone got caught up in the oils. the families i work for wanted oils. i wanted oils for my personal account. every day seemed like another great day in the oil patch services, drillers, you name it. then one day, oil plummeted. the saudis started pumping like mad. some global tensions that had up. the prices were settled. next thing you know, the bull morphed into a bear. those who own nothing but oil stocks, including yours truly, were crushed. i learned firsthand the concept of diversification, and while it occasionally violated some of my rules, i never again intentionally avoided diversification. so here's the bottom line. from my early days at goldman sachs, i learned the core principles of investing, finding solid ideas to build a diversified portfolio to create long term wealth in a way that suits the customer. consider yourself the customer of this show. stick with it. >> coming up, wall street's most reliable tag team squares off to answer your questions. keep in

touch. mad money will be right back. >> booyah, jim. your integrity. >> makes you. >> the booyah. >> saint of wall street. >> hurry up jimmy. chill. >> booyah jimmy. >> chill. booyah jim. >> quadruple. that's a lot of booyah. >> machine learning is advancing. but businesses wonder if some machines can keep up. >> let's welcome our new coworker jeff. >> copier has a. >> great idea. >> i wonder if it's the. >> same idea as yesterday. >> it's a performance issue. really. i know people. >> push. >> your buttons, but you still have to deliver. >> anything can change. >> the world of work. atp assist is informed by workplace data and designed for the next anything.

>> life's overwhelming, but i don't stress about meal planning anymore. >> how hungryroot hungryroot delivers healthy groceries with easy four ingredient recipes so easy four ingredient recipes so you can have a healthy when i started walton goggins goggle glasses, i had no idea what i was doing. but godaddy airo does. using ai to build a logo, website and social content. so i can let the world know, if your goggles ain't goggins, they don't belong on your noggins! a beast lurks between. >> the numbers. some watch from the. safety of the sidelines, but others saddle up and ride that one ton rowdy ribeye for all. >> he's got. >> if that's you, join us on tastytrade named luxe.com.

>> give me. >> the money. give me the money. some people will do anything for money. who can you trust? american greed next cnbc. >> get vested. join the club. >> one of the key benefits for me is knowing where jim is going to buy or sell before he does it. >> join the club. new member save with a special offer for a limited time at cnbc.com. jim. terms and restrictions apply. >> to this entire show tonight. you've heard me pound the table on how investing in the stock market is a long term contest. emphasize the long term so you're never too young to start investing. just like you're never too old to learn new things about the market. i love to teach my viewers and also learn from them, which is why i always say my favorite part of the show is answering questions directly from you. so tonight i have jeff marx here, my portfolio analyst partner in

crime at the cbc investing club. we're going to answer some of your most burning questions, which are always amazing. frankly, i learned so much. i also give you an inside look at what we do in the club. by the way, if you're not a member of the club, you can scan the code behind me or go to cnbc.com investing club to sign up. i sure hope you will. all right let's take our first question. first up we have a question from sandy who asks. my husband and i are at retirement age. he likes dividend stocks, but i don't like holding them when they lose value and my original investment is in the negative. i prefer solid growth stocks to continue to build our portfolio, keep or sell these losers. now i'm going to start by by telling you right here retirement age okay. that's the eye of the beholder i have been a big believer, contrary to the entire industry, and saying there may not be a retirement age when it comes to stocks. i think that people should always be investing for growth and some for dividend and then some for bonds. so my answer to this one is that i you have to kind of at

times take the risk, but you just use smaller amounts of your capital. >> yeah i think. >> that there's always a balance to everything. right. >> one thing i would point out is without knowing the stock, if. >> the dividend investment. >> is in the red. >> well, maybe. >> they're not growing. >> their cash. >> flow, their earnings. >> maybe they're not growing. >> their dividends. and that could be a red flag. >> that something's wrong about the company. >> i mean, for instance, you know, that we got involved with foot locker and their cash flow decline and what looked like a good dividend stock became a non dividend stock. so sandy i think that unfortunately you have to do a level of homework of course join the club and we will point them out. but then you can say listen we missed foot locker. you're going to miss things. but what matters is i want you to have more exposure to the stocks than people expect, because retirement age may be something that turns out to be 20 years before you, when you need to grow capital for that 20 years. all right. next up is bruce, and he's in michigan. and he says, how do you set price targets?

i'm going to defer to my colleague who does a lot of the price target setting. >> well. >> look. i think it's. >> an art and. >> a science, right? there's no. >> one standard. >> rule. >> of thumb. >> to apply. but what i will say, though, when. >> looking for price targets, what you can do is look at some historical multiples of where stocks trade at. and try and. >> figure out how much. >> you think the stock. >> will earn. >> out in the future and apply that. but another key considerations, too, is that if the company is improving its margins, maybe taking share, then it would deserve to. >> trade. >> at a. >> premium versus its historical levels. or maybe at least catch. >> up. >> so to speak. >> the multiple rerate closer to some peers. >> in this, during the great runs that were lily and nvidia, how did you go about setting price targets? >> well, i. >> mean. >> look, those are also some of the great momentum. >> stocks in the. >> last couple of years too. so that i would say is a little bit of an art. but again, stocks like that, you also have to look. >> out years out in.

>> advance too, especially in the case of eli lilly. where it's more. >> towards the end. >> of. >> the decade is where its. >> glp one sales were. really just. >> so people know they we take it very seriously. yeah. okay. now let's go to lindsay in oregon, where my daughter had her formative years. who asked, well, how do you trim a position? do you sell shares with the lowest cost basis or the highest cost basis? well, this is actually this is an accounting issue. yeah. there are rules on what you can and what you can't do. we are just people. no, we send everything out. all our capital gains out and all our dividends out. and we often want to try to get rid of the of the ones that has the worst basis. that's been our kind of stock and trade. >> yeah. >> i mean look, this is always a. >> question of tax considerations. >> right. because if you're taking a profit and you're selling a lower tax basis, you'll trigger a higher realized gain. and on the other hand, if it's for a loss and you sell that lower basis, it's a it's a smaller loss. so it's tax considerations. >> now. just so you know my

accountant says jim just take it as they come last in first out. and why is that. don't ever get in trouble. that's there's my lesson before the irs and you i like to say there's always a bull market somewhere. i promise. try to find it just for promise. try to find it just for you right here on mad money narrator: in this episode of "american greed"... reynolds: our mission is to lift the spirits and gladden the heart. narrator: ...jim reynolds and his family raise $187 million promising to help cancer victims. he's not a big fella, but, boy, he has a big heart. it's a pitch that pulls at the heartstrings, but it's all a lie. taylor: a lot of good people gave a lot of good money for a lot of good reasons, and it just went nowhere positive. narrator: the reynolds family uses donated money to live the good life, and suffering victims seeking comfort get junk instead. rasmusson: we got a box and it said "cancer fund of america" on it. but when we opened it up, we were all in shock. narrator: and later, all across the country,