David Swensen has led Yale's endowment to phenomenal results since taking charge in 1988. According to the New York Times, his advice for individual investors is simple: "use index funds, exchange-traded funds and other low-cost instruments, and stick to your long-term asset allocation -- even when the markets are in tumult."

What's interesting about the Times interview is that Mr. Swensen decided to use it as an opportunity to take some shots at Mad Money host Jim Cramer: "There is nothing that Cramer says that can help people make intelligent decisions. He takes something that is very serious and turns it into a game. If you want to have fun, go to Disney World."

Mr. Swensen sure did manage to come across as an aristocratic snob. But I'm actually inclined to agree with him to a certain extent: I would never follow Cramer's stock picks. I think he gives way, way too many tips. But I do watch Mad Money regularly because Jim Cramer is a really smart guy and has been down in the trenches of money management. Some of his broader ideas are useful, and let's face it: his is one of the few really entertaining shows on CNBC.

Ted Allrich is the founder of The Online Investor and author of the just released book: Comfort Zone Investing: Build Wealth And Sleep Well At Night. In this weekly column, he'll offer advice to investors who are just getting started.

Try this exercise: The next time the stock market rockets higher, look at your portfolio and sell part of a position in a stock where you have a profit, a stock you know is overvalued. This action takes only a few minutes to do and allows you to put money in the bank. Done on a regular basis, this is a sure way to lock up gains, have money for investing in stocks that are underpriced, and make yourself feel great.

This is an excellent exercise for investors. It puts discipline into investing. Just like regular exercising, discipline is the key to success. Trading is not the goal here. Rather, you're looking to take advantage of "irrational exuberance" in a stock that has gone well beyond a decent valuation, such as a P/E (price to earnings) ratio that is much higher than the growth rate. Also, you're not looking to sell all your position. In fact, you may want to buy your full position back when a more rational valuation returns. If the stock continues on its irrational way, you still own shares and can sell those at an even higher price.

Wall Street, financial arbiter in the capital of the world, has amassed dozens of adages since the dawn of publicly-traded companies. Adages that -- while not proving to be 100% accurate for every historical case study -- nevertheless do contain substantial amounts of truth.

And one of Wall Street's adages is: "No one ever went broke, holding Coke."

That's The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO), not the bottler. Coke's shares closed Friday at $48.24 up 14 cents.

Sluggish sales, as well as competition from generic colas, and the U.S.'s trend toward the consumption of health-oriented, non-carbonated sports drinks, like Gatorade, have created a substantially different soft drink sector than a generation ago, when KO was dominant both domestically and internationally.

And that sluggishness has been reflected in Coke's stock price, which, for the most part, has been stuck in a $40-$55 range for about 6 years.

What happens if you miss a show? Yesterday I wrote about investment strategist and "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer changing his opinion so swiftly (see: Cramer pumps tech, then hates it days later). I started thinking about the repercussions of missing the second show. Suppose you had seen the show promoting technology stocks last week and missed the show where he did an about face, trashing the sector in the blink of an eye? If you chose to act on last weeks supremely confident push into tech and were still buying when Cramer was telling everyone to dump tech stocks -- that could definitely cost you big!

I oppose rapid fire trading. I oppose short term trading as speculation, not investing. Cramer has every right to change his mind and he is usually honest when it comes to admitting his mistakes. He does get you to think; that's a good thing. And he does have some good ideas given so much experience on Wall Street to share; there is no question about that either. But as time passes his show continues to move more in the direction of entertainment and further from investment guidance. So watch it with that in mind.

Cramer has attracted a strong following. Not only has he started a media empire but he has inspired many websites that are tracking his commentary and stock picks. It is well understood now that a Cramer bump takes effect after he makes a buy recomendation. A new level of sophistication to tracking his picks and pans would be to figure out what happens if you miss a show? What happens if you only watch every other show? What happens if you only watch the first half or the last half? Is it possible to create an algorithm to monitor the time and frequency of Cramer viewing so that you could hedge in favor of better results? Alas, this would this be the unauthorized new "Cramer Hedge Fund" for the 21st century....now I'm being silly....bring me back to earth.

I would like to express my sympathy to all of you investment advisors out there throughout the country and throughout the world perhaps, that each day must now respond to your clients inquiries and comments about what Cramer said. This must be getting old fast. It must be particularly tough when you are trying to help someone establish long term goals and understand issues of portfolio asset allocation and having to repond to daily play-by-play heckling stimulated by a television show.

As for Cramer's recent tech swings, I think he was wrong in both cases. I think the tech sector will be jumping all over the place all year. You should pick companies, not sectors, to invest in.

Check out my other posts for BloggingStocks here. Be sure and read You don't have to be 007 to find the best picks for 2007!

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm.

Jonathan Clements has a piece [subscription] in yesterday's Wall Street Journal about how some financial advisers manipulate their current and prospective clients. He talks about tactics such as asking for a large investment first, so that a smaller investment will seem reasonable when it might not have originally. (In psychology, this is known at the door-in-face technique.) He also talks about how advisers will feign friendship or attempt to rush clients into investing with a "scarcity pitch."

One thing he doesn't discuss: Why use a financial adviser at all, since they are all basically salespeople? After the large fees that they extract and the strong unlikelihood of their providing superior returns, most investors would be better off picking index funds for themselves. Bottom line: Rather than trying to find ways to deal with their sales pitches (such as giving yourself time and avoiding snap decisions), why not just avoid them all together?

Investment advisers are business-people who seek to maximize their own profits. (For an excellent piece by John Bogle about how many mutual funds work, click here.) The single largest factor in determining your returns is the expense ratio, and advisers simply tack on another set of fees, which reduces your return. Enterprising investors willing to do minimal research can probably do better without them.

From my perspective Jim Cramer has gone from Wall Street trader, to hedge fund manager, to stock market analyst and media guru -- and finally reached the stage of TV buffoon.

I used to appreciate his investment sensibilities and still find him entertaining on occasion (on radio) but now he has gone too far. For those of you Baby Boomer's who watched children's television as I did you will remember Soupy Sales and all the props and gags, but none more vivid than the whipped cream pie-in-the-face!

That's about all Cramer is missing at this stage. His antics are no different than a carnival sideshow. If you track his stock market advice lately you will see poor results, and if you follow his advice your chances of "winning" will resemble your chances at the carnival games. You can't deny the sights and sounds are similar, and if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....?

There you have it folks, Cramer has created a stock market carnival on television!