TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says observers demand perfection, but the arrows slung at diverse thinking offer lessons in making money.

The level of perfection people demand, the level of performance they say they demand, the insistence on making money in any particular way, these are all part of what it is like to be, well, me.

One of the best calls I have ever had was with Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) (Cramer's Take). It was a happenstance call, as so many really are but pros won't admit that because well, then why pay them? My daughter wanted a second iPod because she had a pink one and needed a blue one. It was that "fashion statement" wakeup call that told me the numbers for iPods in the analysts' reports were way too low.

I pushed the stock hard everywhere. When I got my own show on CNBC, I endlessly lauded Apple in the $70s, $80s and $90s, and made a major statement when I included it in my Four Horsemen of Tech.

At the end of the year I took it off the list, as I did with all the Horsemen except Research In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) (Cramer's Take). The $198 price reeked of greed.

I got back on the stock when it hit the $120s. Again, happenstance. This time the iChat camera in my daughter's room after she insisted I get rid of the Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) (Cramer's Take) and go for the Mac. When word came down that the new iPhone would possibly include iChat, I went out and said, when it was in the $150s, that I didn't care about price, I just cared about the time frame of the launch of the new iPhone and I would sell it into the launch. Some right before, some during and some after, and maybe to leave a quarter on, maybe not. I said last night to sell the last quarter the day after, but it might be worth keeping. I hadn't made up my mind yet.

Why go over this litany? Because yesterday I was accosted by some fellow who was in disbelief that I recommended selling the stock. He wanted to know why I didn't just say buy and hold, because here it is back where I told people to sell it last December -- if they had done nothing, they would have done well.

I had just finished my show, and frankly I wasn't in the mood to debate it. But the guy was insistent that I hadn't done the right thing.

I told him, OK, on at $70, off at $190; on at $120, back to $185. How in heck could you be better than that?

He insisted that all I did was trade it. That trading was really unnecessary. I went through the arithmetic. With my suggestions you picked up 120, (190 minus 70 basis) and then an additional 65, so you got 185 points. With his method, he only got 115.

He suggested my method was riskier. I said that the riskiest thing to do was to ride $190 back to $120 and give up more than half your gain. He said it didn't turn out that way. Buy and hold "kept you in."

Finally, I said, forget Apple. If you can make 185, isn't that better than 115?

He said, "They are both good."

I gave up.

This can be an impossible business.

Most stocks, the vast majority, have stunk for several years now. Stocks have stunk as an investment unless you nailed the sector, and the sectors have been agriculture, infrastructure, minerals, defense and oil and gas, and Apple, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) (Cramer's Take), RIMM and Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) (Cramer's Take).

Some scattered takeovers. Otherwise, that's it.

And even when you nail it, as I did with Apple, it isn't enough.

This weekend a guy came up to me at a restaurant in Allenhurst, N.J. I was minding my own business, trying to eat. The guy told me that he had all oils, that he had made millions of dollars, that he had Chevron (NYSE: CVX) (Cramer's Take), Exxon (NYSE: XOM) (Cramer's Take), Conoco (NYSE: COP) (Cramer's Take), BP (NYSE: BP) (Cramer's Take). I think he may have been implying that I helped him, but I am not sure.

Anyway, I told him that he should sell some, that those gains could not be sustainable. I told him that I had sold my BP.

He told me I didn't know what I was talking about. That these were up stocks.

Here's my conclusion. I know what I am talking about. This is a really horrid, crummy market, where the gains are all hardscrabble and can be ephemeral. Taking them is the only sure thing. You don't have to take all of them but you have to take some of them.

Oh, and here's another take. In the end, nobody cares what anybody else says when they are winning. The Apple guy and the oil guy are winning. They are geniuses. The rest of us are idiots.

Just like we were in March 2000. Maybe we were even more stupid because we liked them in February 2000 (much-reviled mind change when the Nasdaq moved up several thousand points in a couple of months.)

Last conclusion: I like being stupid and an idiot. It is why I have made a lot of money.


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Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer was long ConocoPhillips.