Herb Greenberg talks about the Cramer controversy

Posted Mar 29th 2007 4:49PM by Zac Bissonnette
Filed under: Television, Scandals

In a film clip taped for Marketwach, Herb Greenberg, known for his scathing pieces on companies in trouble, added his voice to the world of reactions to Jim Cramer's interview on TheStreet.com in which he talked about manipulating stocks.

In his interview, Cramer described feeding negative information to the media about companies in which he had taken short positions. As a journalist who frequently speaks with short sellers, Herb Greenberg dismissed the scandal surrounding this, saying that it was no less legitimate than a bull talking about a stock to the media.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Herb Greenberg. His intelligent analysis penetrates far deeper than just about any other market commentator, and he seems to be right more often than he's wrong. Investors who listened to his warnings on Novastar could have saved a lot of money, or gotten rich on the short-side.

Watch Greenberg's piece on Marketwatch (by clicking the read link below), and, if you don't already, start reading the blog one of Wall Street's best journalists.

Tags: Herb Greenberg, HerbGreenberg, Jim Cramer, JimCramer, Short-selling, TheStreet.com

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

3-29-2007 @ 9:10PM

CrossProfit said...

Herb Greenberg (HG) is more often negative than positive. As the market tends to go up about 66% of the time, HG is playing against the wishes of the majority of investors. Now I'm not saying that HG is a good or bad journalist (I think he is excellent). I am trying to point out that he gets a bad rap, at times, for being associated with the 33% - downside of the markets.

You mention that HG is associated with short sellers; in your words "frequently speaks with short sellers". This, I believe, is not accurate. During the Overstock (OSTK) episode when HG was accused of collaborating with Dark Lords in manipulating the downward trend of the stock, the accused may have contacted short seller gurus to prove that the accusations were ridiculous. Aside from that, the vast majority of HG's work is done by scrutinizing financial statements, reading in between the lines of press releases and emails from insiders (workers or ex-workers) that he never discloses.

The old fashion way of gathering intelligent insight & material seems to work well in this age of high tech.

Disclosure: This comment was written by a CrossProfit analyst. This is a personal view and may not reflect the opinion of CrossProfit.com.
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