One last Cramer Revision for 2009

Posted by Ray on December 31, 2009 under Main | Be the First to Comment

I was a bit desperate tonight for entertainment before the ball drops and happened to tune into Mad Money, I am sure Cramer is please as I single handedly increased his ratings from 1 to 2. Regardless, tonight I realized why I stopped watching this guy. He has no sense of decency, memory or humility whatsoever. In fact, all he does is revise his picks, his history and track record all the time. I will post videos to prove it in a little bit.

Tonight he was talking about retirement, which is a joke since he ignored what I rightfully pointed out is the most important thing in retirement planning, the sequence of returns, oh well, why let the facts, oh forget it. Anyhow, here is what you need to remember about good old Jim, he invested in the greatest bull market ever, yes he was a hell of a fund manager, but regardless it was also the greatest bull market ever, and he rarely held positions for very long. If you doubt this then go read Trading with the Enemy which was written by a guy who worked for Jim, apparently Jim is not a nice guy, go figure.

My point is Jim knows nothing about retirement planning because it is a totally different ballgame than trading stocks. It involves a complex range of skills sets and knowledge that not just any person has, sorry, but it’s true. This does not mean I am not a guru and I am not claiming this, but I do consult in this area and speak with experts all the time so I have a good grasp on the topic. Anyhow, tonight Jim claims that he “loves” index funds, but does he really?

It is true he used to tell people to invest in these funds until they built up $10K to trade stocks. However, earlier this year he got rather upset at a guest on CNBC, I am searching for the video, where he went off on the guy saying that anyone who invested and held, i.e. buy and hold investing in index type funds, were losers, literally, because they got killed over the last 12 years. At that time the markets were at historic lows so we were at levels not seen in over a decade. At that time he advocated being active in your account and moving money, which has always been my belief as I believe that passive and active management performance is cyclical. I guess he changed his mind since the market recovered though because now you should own index funds and then add stocks after awhile.

This man must confuse the hell out of his viewers. I mean, one day he is telling you to buy dividend stocks, then buy internet stocks, wait, now buy Best Buy before the earnings and the next day he is saying never buy a stock before the quarterly earnings and now he is saying that your core holdings should be index funds? If you are confused, so am I, but that is what the man said, so don’t blame me. The kicker is his disclaimer is that he is merely trying to entertain you, but here is what I just cannot figure out. If he is entertaining us and we really should not take him seriously, you should never take an entertainer seriously in my book, then why is he dispensing buy and sell recommendations on stocks?

Worse yet, why is the advice he’s giving one night in direct conflict with the advice he has given the night before? Honestly, I am not trying to give him a hard time, but I have a real problem with people revising their history, especially when it is on TV and it is easily searchable. If a broker or a financial advisor acted like that or dispensed advise like that FINRA would slap them so hard it would not be funny, but not commentators, even though the history of what they said is recorded. It is just unreal that this type of behavior can continue and no one says anything about it. I don’t care if the advice is bad, hell Suze Orman says lose your house before you even think about tapping your IRA for an emergency, yeah, that makes sense, everyone gives bad advice, but don’t cover it up.

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They Just Don’t Get It…

Posted by Ray on October 28, 2008 under Main | Be the First to Comment

Nope, they have not and they will not understand the benefits of variable annuities. This market which has devastated retirement savings has had nothing that has gone up. Even gold has now declined in value, bonds are a no go, especially corporate bonds and stocks have been horrible.

However, a variable annuity with a living benefit has done something that no other investment has done, guaranteed retirement income without annuitization. All the financial writers in the world tell you to buy index funds and to stay away from those bad variable annuities. If you listened to them you would be sucking wind in the S&P 500 with 24% or more exposure to financial stocks – pre-market meltdown – and another 20% or so in technology which as also suffered badly.

Even with reality hitting them right in the face they still deny variable annuities their rightful place as a good investment alternative. They, the financial guru’s, just don’t get it. They do not understand that the Democrats will more than likely take the Whitehouse and Congress which will ultimately raise taxes, specifically the capital gains tax.

A complete Republican controlled government did not do well, spending went through the roof along with other questionable behavior, what makes them think that Democrats will do any better when they have a much stronger history of raising taxes. Actually Obama is the only political candidate that we have ever known to be, possibly, elected on the premise that he is actually going to raise taxes.

Your political affiliation does not matter, all you need to know is what we have been saying about the 15% capital gains tax is correct, it’s going higher. Regardless of who would have been elected taxes would need to be increased given the massive debt the US has, we just never had such stark honesty from a politician who is advocating higher taxes.

So, income taxes will go up for those “wealthy” Americans, we will see what the term wealthy means after the election, and capital gains taxes will go up. This means that all distributions from mutual funds will be taxed higher and it blows the argument right out of the water for the Suze’s, Liz Pullman’s and Scott Burn’s of the world.

Oh, did we mention your retirement income is also guaranteed?

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