Well, Cramer can make for good Entertainment, and occassionally he hits on something. However, most that do their even limited homework can see trends.

He reminds me of the first and really only financial analyst I ever listened too, before I went on my own 22 years ago. "You can go in and out all day, but steady monthly investments over the long term is better"

I left for dividend stocks, other than a few risky plays, almost 2 years ago. But, if your bored, Cramer can add to your "sin stock" picks, as he is in the entertainment business.

Any media personality has the right to change an opinion. If individuals are going to construct a portfolio based upon a television show - or any one and only source-they are confirming P.T. Barnum's famous observation:"There's a sucker born every minute".

Competent bloggers and other web sites help you obtain information from multiple sources. Use us.

I find it extremely frustrating to put in the time and effort to try to be a disciplined and successful investor, and had already planned on some "seasonal" selling of some of my tech stocks at the right time and price of each one, at my discretion, only to catch Cramer's sell-sell-sell-"all your tech stocks" now performance Wed night,except for his select 5 techs, of course. You may not feel that his theatrics had any "significant" contribution to the disproportionate drop in techs relative to the rest of the market today, but I certainly do. I did not sell any tech today, as I hope he will only have a short term effect, as is frequently the case with his individual stock advice.
I think he can definitely affect the performance of an individual stock, or even a whole sector to some extent, especially during perods of light volume overall.I noticed today that the streaming quotes showed WCI up .90 while he was still talking about the stock before he moved on to DNA. I have read other blogs as well that have noted the price moves of his picks the very next day after his show.Not so different from pump and dump "hot stock" picks I get every day in junk mail and spam.

Does the name Dorfman come to mind? Cramer is nothing more than the new age Dorfman who by the way was eventually banned from touting all his crapola. If Cramer was really anygood at this, don't yah think he would be sitting behind a screen pressing buttons instead?? Cramer sent all his followers to the financial death trap in 2000/2001. And now he is back at it. Enjoy him for waht he is, a comedian!

Agree w/Scott. Just buy and hold. Time will take care of the rest. I have an account where I track how successful my different investing styles have been over the past 10+ years. Whether it's blindly following analyst recommendations, playing the momentum game, or just random picks, I would have gotten 80-120% returns if I simply held everything forever, instead of dipping in and out.

Cramer is an academy award performer. His remarkable memory makes him very impressive when answering questions on the fly, and no one can deny he's a walking "dictionary" on the market. He has a powerful short-term effect with his picks, because so many want to make quick bucks. I've followed him for years now, and have concluded in my mind that Cramer is maybe slightly better than average on his picks. Too many times I have watched him drum his "best of breed" stocks, just to see him change later and scream his dreaded "sell, sell, sell." (Would someone care to venture where Cramer will be standing on Intel next week?) This recent episode of flip-flop is not new. Cramer changes with the news just as other analysts. Maybe now people are finally beginning to realize that he is not any better than the others--he just has a dazzling delivery second to none.

To Mr. Liber and the previous commentators of this blog item:

I've said it before in these opinion spaces and I'll say it again. It's very simple to understand what's going on with Cramer and his picks. James Cramer is a hedgefund trader by background and he's preaching to an audience of investors. Cramer is very bright and knowledgable about the markets, but no self respecting long term investor (and especially value driven investors) should ever read his columns or listen to his broadcasts except for entertainment value. His picks and pans have literally no value to the classic Dodd-Graham school of investing. Moreover, even momentum players looking for growth stocks are going to get burned if they follow the mercurial picks of a guy who should have never left his hedge fund.