From Living In His Car to Being a Multimillionaire (w/ Jim Cramer)

Jim Cramer (host of CNBC's Mad Money) joins Haley to discuss his experience as a crime reporter living out of his car in his twenties to becoming a successful trader and television personality, index funds vs. individual stocks, the rampant sexism in finance, and the most money he ever lost. Financial Tea with Mrs. Dow Jones is a Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us at @sonypodcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Haley Sacks?

  Okay. So I just gave my apartment a major refresh and hands down, the hardest thing to get right was the rug. I just couldn't find one that fit right. And I really wanted something that pulled the room together because like a rug is a big deal. But then I found Ernesta and Ernesta's amazing, you guys. It makes designer quality rugs custom cut to the exact size of your space. So it actually fits instead of almost fits and looks great the first time. Like in the past, I've just defaulted to stock sizes when buying rugs. And also like when you're in a New York City apartment, that really just doesn't cut it, but they're all weirdly shaped. But with Ernesta, you can send photos and dimension to Ernesta's design team and they help you get the size exactly right, completely free

• 0:44Haley Sacks?

  of charge. Hand selected by design experts, Ernesto rugs are beautiful, they're durable, and they're made for the way you actually live. Cut, finished and delivered in as little as two weeks. Visit ernesta.com and order five samples for only $10 and you will get $50 toward any rug of your choice. That is E R N E S T A dot com. Okay. We all love to romanticize being your own boss, but even when you have a team, you still end up being the bookkeeper, the marketing department and the person rearranging appointments at 11:00 PM. And that work isn't just annoying, it is expensive and it's especially taxing for businesses that run on appointments. So if you own a business that takes bookings,

• 1:28Haley Sacks?

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• 2:07Speaker 01

  I bought a company called Memorex Telx. It was $2 stock. I said, how much can you lose? How much can you lose on a $2 stock? I lost $200 million.

• 2:15Haley Sacks?

  What?

• 2:18Haley Sacks?

  This is Financial Tea.

• 2:23Haley Sacks?

  What's up sippers? Welcome back to Financial Tea. This is the podcast where I teach you how to build wealth with a side of market drama, money scandals, and of course, financial pop culture. Today, we are joined by the one and only Jim Cramer. He is the host of CNBC's Mad Money. He is the co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk on the Street. He is my favorite financial journalist. I watch him every single morning. He is truly the blueprint when it comes to financial literacy and just putting economic concepts into terms that are actually digestible to people, getting people to invest, getting people to feel confident. And I'm really excited to have him in the studio today. Jim came to Brooklyn. Welcome to Jumbo, Jim

• 3:07Haley Sacks?

  Cramer on the Financial Tea. But first, let's get into the MDJ market report. What's up, rich people? Today's market report is all about patron saint Anne Hathaway, queen of the summer, because it really is Anne's world. We are just living in it. Like, the woman has five movies out this year, including The Odyssey, which just reached over a billion dollars at the box office. Okay, slay. And drumroll please, she is expecting her third child at 43. Oh, and she has been absolutely crushing her red carpet maternity looks like Rihanna who? But the reason I wanted to talk about this was also because

• 3:47Haley Sacks?

  AOC is all over the news because she is freezing her eggs. She's sharing her egg freezing journey online. She's 36. It's been like everywhere. Obviously, like the right is picking up, the left is picking it up. And you know, she said it's really expensive. Like even as a member of Congress, her insurance has covered 0% of the procedure. So she's paying out of pocket over $8,000. So I just was like, these two stories together, like we've got an A-list movie star having a baby at 43, and then this 30 something year old Congresswoman freezing her eggs. And this is what's dominating the news cycle at the exact same time. It feels like this isn't celebrity gossip, even though obviously I

• 4:29Haley Sacks?

  love celebrity gossip. It feels like we are looking at the poster children for basically one of the biggest macroeconomic trends of our generation, which is the delayed motherhood movement, which I talk about a lot. And by the way, I am 35. I have not had kids yet. I have an amazing career and I want to have kids. So I'm part of this. But let's zoom out and talk about how wild the contrast is between generations. Like for our moms, the playbook was so different. It was literally get married as fast as you can. Like you'd be 19, 20, whatever it is, have kids as fast as possible, do it first, and then figure out your career or re-enter the workforce later if you could. And back then, the math

• 5:11Haley Sacks?

  supported it. Like in the eighties and the nineties, a single income household could comfortably buy a house, could comfortably raise three kids and send them to college without taking on crippling debt. The American dream actually sort of worked. But today, the financial sequence has completely flipped. Women aren't delaying pregnancy or freezing their eggs on some random whim. They're doing it as a rational economic response to modern prices. Because let's be real, if you have kids early in your career, you hit what economists call the motherhood penalty. And that is where taking time off during your peak building

• 5:53Haley Sacks?

  years permanently damages your lifetime earning potential. So as a result, modern women are staying in the workforce longer, they're getting promoted, they're securing their damn financial bags, and they are pushing family planning into their mid 30s, into their early 40s. Sienna Miller did it. Aubrey Plaza did it. And as AOC put it, she said that we've effectively turned having kids into a luxury good, which is so true and so sad. Like in the US today, raising a child, zero to 18, costs over 300K. And that is before higher education. And then when you factor in a housing market where the median

• 6:34Haley Sacks?

  home price is nearly six times average income, plus daycare that costs as much as private college tuition, people aren't just delaying kids. Millions of people are realizing that they simply cannot afford them. Like maybe they would have liked to have them, but it just really doesn't make sense financially. It's not responsible. But what's crazy is what this is doing globally. So while delaying or opting out of kids obviously makes financial sense on an individual level, that does have a global impact because to keep a country's population stable without relying heavily on immigration, you basically need a fertility

• 7:11Haley Sacks?

  rate of 2.1 births per woman. And right now, the US birth rate has dropped to around 1.6 and countries like South Korea have plummeted below 0.7. And by the way, this is not on women. This is because the system has made it so hard to have children. So people are opting out. Duh. But fewer babies means a shrinking workforce tomorrow. You know, people are going to retire and then there's not going to be enough workers to take their positions. And economists call this the demographic cliff, which is when you end up with fewer young workers who are paying into tax bases, paying into social security systems. And then at the same time, you have a massive generation of retirees leaving the workforce.

• 7:55Haley Sacks?

  And this creates labor shortages, it drags down GDP growth, and it just like completely flips the economic dependency ratio on its head. And for this, I say, thank G dash D for all the data centers being built because you know, we're not going to have that many children, but we will have AI to take the jobs. Just kidding. But the silver lining of this whole thing is if you're an investor in fertility, because all this capital is aggressively following the shift, because more women are delaying childbearing, we are seeing a massive boom in what they call the fem tech and reproductive longevity market. The global IVF and fertility industry is projected to top 40 billion, which basically

• 8:38Haley Sacks?

  turns egg freezing and fertility preservation from like this niche medical service into a standardized corporate benefit offered by Fortune 500 companies to retain top female talent. Obviously not Congress, though. Sorry, AOC, but you know, other companies. So yeah, whether it is Anne Hathaway starring in five movies while pregnant at 43, or AOC talking about the $8,000 out of pocket price tag of egg freezing, or Aubrey Plaza just had a baby, Sienna Miller, like I said, we just see women prioritizing financial and career security first, and then having families second. And that is forcing the entire global

• 9:22Haley Sacks?

  economy, from labor markets to healthcare tech, to adapt to a totally new timeline. I think that the female autonomy part of this is really exciting. Like as a successful woman, I don't think that I would have the career that I have and be making the money I have if I had children. There's no way. But I also think it's really sad that, you know, people can't afford to have kids anymore. And that really needs to be a priority for the government to work on. Talking about things that are rewriting the rules of modern life, Bumble announced this week that it is officially killing the core feature that it was founded on, which is that women make the first move. So Whitney Wolf heard built Bumble in 2014. It was a direct response to her time at Tinder. She, you know, was

• 10:06Haley Sacks?

  discriminated against there. She wanted women to be in control. And it was very 2010s girl boss feminist empowerment, women take control, send the first message dictate the terms core. And that single feature was the entire brand identity. Like that was the marketing campaign. That was the whole IPO story. That was Bumble. But then as of this week, that rule has been found dead. So now anyone in a match can now send the opening message and Bumble is even stretching the reply window from 24 to 72 hours because men are pigs, but also because users said the pressure to respond fast was

• 10:49Haley Sacks?

  quote stressing them out. But this wasn't like a branding play. It's just that Bumble is broke. Like they are not doing well. According to their Q2 earnings report, total paying users has has fallen over 16% year over year down to 3.16 million. Quarterly revenue has dropped 15% to 210 million. The stock is down more than 90% from its 2021 IPO high, which I always tell you guys not to invest in IPOs. But I will say also this abandonment of ethos always happens when companies are strapped for cash and sort of just like struggling. And this women messaging first was a brand strategy, clearly not an ideology, which is disappointing. And it's just sad that when it stopped delivering

• 11:32Haley Sacks?

  downloads and dollars, it got scrapped because that was sort of the whole thing. Like what is Bumble now? And I just think also when a company loses their brand identity, it becomes easier for them to fall off the map. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's what happens here. Maybe I'll talk to Jim Cramer about that because he is so smart. He's on the episode today. He is a star at CNBC. He's been on air talking about money and stocks for over 20 years. He really is a goat in this game and I adore him. So enjoy the episode and stay rich.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Kelly, first, while I appreciate all those things I said, I that you said about me, those are all par for the course versus what you've done. No, I'm not kidding. There are, there's a cohort of people there. I may back up about 50% of this country who I think are mistreated. I think are regarded as being contemptible at times rather as being, well, let me speak to the man. My own wife was told, look, you're not big enough to be handled by us. And I'm telling you, it was all women because they never would have said it to a guy. And along you come. And people are scared. People are scared.

• 12:41Haley Sacks?

  Ooh.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  The sexist are scared. Thank you.

• 12:44Haley Sacks?

  The sexist are scared.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Well, they should be.

• 12:46Haley Sacks?

  Clip it.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  They should be.

• 12:48Haley Sacks?

  They should be.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Because you have them on the run because you're wise to their game.

• 12:52Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Your family's in the business. You know about all this stuff and you've broken the code. I don't think people, there are a lot, there's a huge percentage of people who wish you go away. There's no, there's no higher, there's no higher.

• 13:03Haley Sacks?

  But for you too.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  There's no higher. Well, yeah, the old days. Now I'm like, ah, vuncular, but you are changing.

• 13:10Haley Sacks?

  About me. We, I love that you want to shine the light on me.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Well, the last, the book.

• 13:14Haley Sacks?

  Today is about you. Let's just start with a few rapid fire questions.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 13:19Haley Sacks?

  So Jim, we always ask our guests, what are your best and worst purchases of the week so far? And how much did they each cost?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Because my stepson's getting married.

• 13:28Haley Sacks?

  Yeah. It's a big week before the wedding. You're spending a lot on the wedding.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  I bought, I went to the bank to get money for the tips.

• 13:34Haley Sacks?

  Okay.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Bought a lot of liquor.

• 13:37Haley Sacks?

  How much did we spend on the liquor? How much? We love a number on the show.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I think, I think the liquor is going to come through. It may come through as high as 10,000.

• 13:44Haley Sacks?

  Okay.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  And the only reason I say that is because the greatest thing in the world about liquor is is that if we don't drink it, it's still good.

• 13:50Haley Sacks?

  Yes.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  These are not flowers. Now, we did go buy flowers and I don't want to comp, flowers are very expensive.

• 13:56Haley Sacks?

  Oh, it's insane.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  And that we.

• 13:58Haley Sacks?

  Since the pandemic too, they've gone up so much.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Holy cow. And I, so then, all right. So, so we have to, we got porta potty, a giant thing. So we decided we're going to rent some trees. Okay. And so we go to my favorite Hampton Bay nurseries, like the greatest guys. My wife's looking to bill and she goes, wait, $1,200 to rent trees to hide the porta potty? Get me some $700 trees. No one know the difference. So that's, that was my negotiation this week. Get me some $700 trees.

• 14:26Haley Sacks?

  So we bought a porta potty. We bought trees. We bought liquor.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And.

• 14:31Haley Sacks?

  That sounds like the week before.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  And I also bought, I bought some, some cone sunflowers because I'm having trouble getting bees. And even those have gone up in price, but not crazy. They gave me a little discount.

• 14:40Haley Sacks?

  Okay, let's take a step back because for people who, I mean, everyone knows you, but where people don't know you, let's just broadly, how many hours a day do you spend on TV? Because I feel like whenever I turn CNBC on, you are there. They should just call it Jim B C.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  I'm on for, for two hours and then I'm on for another 10 minutes for my, for the CNBC investing club. I know it does seem like my wife says, listen, Jim, you're the most overexposed man on TV. And I come back, I say, do you know that all the anchors have two hours? I'm just another anchor with two hours.

• 15:10Haley Sacks?

  Yours just packs a bigger punch.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Well, I, I think that I can be more off the cuff. How about that?

• 15:16Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Like you, we're not.

• 15:17Haley Sacks?

  Love that.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Now, is it that we're not afraid? Or is it that we don't know how to not be afraid?

• 15:22Haley Sacks?

  Don't know how, or that we're impulsive.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  I think it's the latter.

• 15:25Haley Sacks?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. I think we lack some sort of fear around that.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  At one time I had a big fight with a fantastic couple at home where she said, and I love her. She said, you, you have no governor. We're leaving. And I looked at her and I said, you're right. I have no governor. That's a really good tool. So I always use that term.

• 15:44Haley Sacks?

  I love that. And I don't think we need governors.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  We don't have governors.

• 15:46Haley Sacks?

  But so you got into finance 30 years ago. And I sort of want to start the interview just asking like, what are the changes that you've seen and how we actually talk about money?

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Well, I, I think that we've actually regressed. I'll tell you.

• 16:00Haley Sacks?

  Oh, wow.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  I think that we talked a lot about money and the opportunity of making a lot of money by picking good stocks. And somewhere along the line, we were convinced that you shouldn't pick good stocks, you just be in index funds. I don't mind index funds if you have not an ounce of time to be in. But I do think that there are a lot of people, if they had listened or had their eyes open, they would have had Apple, they would have had Meta, they would have had Amazon. And these were much better than the S and P. So I've been recommending a mixture, some S and P and some keep your hand in. And I think that the latter has gone away. So the thing that's changed is the idea that, that anybody with, who works hard can pick individual stocks at the exact same time that we have chat,

• 16:44Speaker 01

  GPT, and we have Claude, and we have Grok, and we have Prox, you know, well, we have pretty much everything that you need to look things up. And yet we're not, we're not availing themselves of it. And I think people should.

• 16:58Haley Sacks?

  So you think that people should buy individual stocks, like, and a mixture with that of index?

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Yes, I do.

• 17:06Haley Sacks?

  So when you started on TV in 2002, were a lot of people talking about stocks on TV at the time? Like how, what was sort of the climate?

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Well, I think this is a great question, Steve, because I first started as a co-host on Squawk. I was, I was in Good Morning America, but that was just doing straight business. Then I was a co-host of Squawk, 1998 to 2000. And that was the heyday.

• 17:29Haley Sacks?

  Oh, that's huge.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  In 2002 was the investigation.

• 17:33Haley Sacks?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  1998, boom, 99, boom, 2002 to 2004, an investigation of everybody who was too bullish.

• 17:40Haley Sacks?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:41Haley Sacks?

  So you were really like right on the front lines.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Well, fortunately I wasn't on air during the two bullish periods. And I did bring a company public, The Street, but I was, you know, very upfront saying, listen, it doesn't belong where it opened.

• 17:54Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  And you weren't supposed to say that. But I said, look, I don't want people to get hurt. You don't want people to get hurt.

• 17:58Haley Sacks?

  No, no.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Our first is like, it's like do no harm, Hippocratic Oath. You don't want people to be in stuff that they can't handle or have the time, but you want them to be, be conscious of their money.

• 18:09Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  And, and to know that they're, what they own and to be aware, or else they're going to get hurt.

• 18:18Haley Sacks?

  How do you encourage someone to gain that knowledge of their money if they've never had it before?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Okay, so my solution, and it's from a thing I needed to do, I needed to do for my father. So I knew where everything was. If you can't put all the things you own in one page, you're doing something wrong. My wife has the one page. It's one page. It's got everything. It's everything, everything you need to know. You know, obviously you don't want to pass from this earth and you got them soon. But I am available at a very easy page that she has where line by line, where it's kept, what it is, and who to talk to. And she knows it. And I'm glad she knows it. And I update it when I, when something changes. One page. Anything else, you're just trying to make it too hard for that person.

• 19:07Haley Sacks?

  Yeah, totally. And you know, you talk about your wife and we talk a lot about, on the show about, you know, money and relationships. And, you know, obviously you've been so successful. And so with your wife, how do you guys handle finances? And how do you, you know, make sure there is that transparency?

• 19:29Speaker 01

  All right. So we're split. I handle, it's not like I handle anything at all. I do the allocation of bonds and index funds. And I think that that's fine. She handles all the businesses. She has a liquor business that I think is going to be very successful. And she has a real estate business that she handles that's running at a cash flow positive. I don't intrude on hers and she doesn't intrude on mine. It's a flashpoint. If I say, can I just ask you about phosphor? What's going on? That's the liquor business. Because it's none of my business. I'm not on the board. And she really doesn't like it. She says, I'll ask you for help when I need it. And I say the same, which is I'll ask you for help. And we recently bought a piece of property in East Quogue.

• 20:13Haley Sacks?

  Oh.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  And we did it because my wife said, this is a good buy. And we'll fix it up and maybe we'll rent it and maybe we'll sell it. But my instinct is to rent it. And I said, look, you know, this market. I don't know this market at all. And she had to go, you know, a couple of closing difficulties, stays very much in touch. And I, and I just say, and not irresponsibly, I think, just tell me where to wire. I went to see the property at her suggestion, but that's all her business. She runs a villa in Italy and she runs a housing project in Mexico. And I don't bother her unless she wants my help. In some ways, I'm more clueless than she is about what I do because I got, she got the one page.

• 20:53Haley Sacks?

  Got it. So, but when it comes to like your household finances, how do you split that?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  She pays the bills. Anything that hits that's too big, she asked me about.

• 21:05Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Like, I just bought her son, my stepson's getting getting married.

• 21:08Haley Sacks?

  Yes, it's so exciting.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  She said, okay, what is this ex at Brioni? And I said, I plead guilty. It was wrong. It was, maybe it was the champagne. Maybe it was how great looking your son is, but yes. And she goes, well, first of all, that was obviously way too much. Second, you look terrible in the pants. So I had the pants taken in yesterday. I had to have that. She, she spots the ones that.

• 21:33Haley Sacks?

  She's the CFO.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Oh, most definitely.

• 21:35Haley Sacks?

  Yes.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Then I have a CFO who is actually CFO.

• 21:39Haley Sacks?

  But of the household finances, she's in charge.

• 21:45Speaker 02

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• 22:43Haley Sacks?

  So back to, you know, you're talking about individual investors.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:49Haley Sacks?

  And how, you know, most people, if they have that curiosity, should try and own individual stocks if they, you know, are interested. But, you know, part of that is getting things wrong. You know, you have to, with an index fund, you have a lot of padding. But with, when you buy an individual stock, you don't have that.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  No, you don't.

• 23:09Haley Sacks?

  You make a ton of predictions on your show, though. So how do you react when you get things right or wrong?

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Well, like yesterday, I said, I'd be, I said, I had really believed in Arvind Krishna. I think he's terrific as a CEO. I thought that they could transcend this problem of, of software getting pushed down. They've got a good hardware business. I did not see that the cost of smaller hardware like DRAMs had gone up so much, semiconductors, that people were saying, you know what? Arvind, we can't buy your heavy machines right now. We have to start, we have to buy these, the DRAMs. And I said, this was a mistake. That was not a rookie mistake, but it was a mistake I believed. And I got it wrong. And you could say, well, Jim, does that mean I shouldn't own individual stocks? And I say, well, look, I want you to own five individual stocks.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  But again, you're going to make mistakes. What I, the work that I've done have shown that if you have one real big win. The book was written in 2023, then I redid it in 24, then I already did it in 25. But I used 1924 to 2024 data.

• 24:15Haley Sacks?

  Okay.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  And I looked at the top 100 stocks. And it's all recognizable names.

• 24:20Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  And if you had bought any of those, you know, Vulcan Materials, it's a company that makes rocks. You've done, Philip Morris, you might have tobacco issues. But there were just too many opportunities that would have made so much more money than an index fund, including owning Berkshire Hathaway. And yet there's, there is Warren Buffett saying, don't you dare own a stock. But you should have owned his stock. You know, I like to, you know, I'm talking about owning Costco, because I like.

• 24:46Haley Sacks?

  So today, though, if someone's watching this and they're like, okay, Jim, I want to expand out of index funds. I want to buy some individual stocks. Do you have any that you recommend?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. I, I happen to think that, let's say you had $10,000. Put, put $7,000 index fund. I like to get, most people I like to get up to $10,000 for index fund before they can own an individual stock.

• 25:10Haley Sacks?

  Okay, I like.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  So my floor is, when you get to $10,000, you can buy stocks. I don't want to exclude anybody, but why not buy 100 shares of Intel at 104? I like Intel a lot. Johnson and Johnson, AAA balance sheet, $250. Really, really good company. I think that that's great. I like UI Lilly. I really. Yeah, it's good. So the kinds of stocks that I'm talking about are not obscure. They're pretty good in terms of like how we view them. I like Amazon, not love, but like Amazon. And so what you do is you try to do it slowly. And maybe you can only own three. I don't know. But the reason why I, I favor individual stocks is because I already have the bedrock. The bedrock is the index fund.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  So I tell everyone, if someone came to me on the street and said, Jim, I want an individual stock, the first thing I say is, do you have an index fund? And if they say no, I said, listen, talk to me when you have $10,000 in your next fund. Then you'll have the bedrock. So then you can start taking some risk with an individual stock. And that's how I view it.

• 26:09Haley Sacks?

  I love that. That's a good, the good boundary. But, you know, you've been trading individual stocks for a long time.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Since 1979.

• 26:15Haley Sacks?

  Since your fourth grade, right?

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Well, I did in fourth and fifth grade, yeah, Mrs. Mixer's class. Because my dad tried to encourage me to understand what a stock was. My father lost everything on a company called National Video. So I'm completely aware about the need to be an index fund and not go too heavy.

• 26:32Haley Sacks?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  National Video was, his brother's tennis player, partner, ran an outfit, an office in Philadelphia and told my father's brother to buy National Video. My father's brother told my father to buy National Video. He kept putting money in it and it was going up and money when it goes down. And I asked Pop, what do they do? And Pop said, they're in the entertainment business. They were not. They were in the vacuum tube TV business. And then along came solid state one day. And they went bankrupt. And my father lost everything. And it was very tough.

• 27:08Haley Sacks?

  What do you think about these moments in life where you do sort of bottom out? Like, I know that you had one like that where you lived in your car.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was bad.

• 27:17Haley Sacks?

  You know, so it's like, we do learn a lot, though, from those moments where we, you know, sort of hit rock bottom a little. Talk to us a little bit about that.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  And talked about the desire to be, and you used the word that's very specific, rich. You want to be rich. I was the only person who said, I want you to be rich, really rich. That's the first line of the book of real money. And it was crass. But I was coming from when I lived in the back of my car. And I said, you know what? I'm sick. I have mono. I have drawn this liver. I'm drinking too much. I'm living in the back of my car with the same clothes. I put baby powder on it every day to make it so you don't know it. And I'm going to get rich.

• 27:55Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  People would laugh, laugh, and laugh.

• 27:58Haley Sacks?

  So how old were you when that, that you were?

• 28:00Speaker 01

  From when I was 21 to when I was 26.

• 28:02Haley Sacks?

  And during that time, you were living in your car?

• 28:04Speaker 01

  For the last year I lived in my car.

• 28:06Haley Sacks?

  Yeah. And so that was, but you said that even while you were living in your car, you were still investing.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  I was, my father said, there's this guy, this Magellan fund. You got to be Magellan. It's pre-Peerto Lynch. He said, you got to send $5, $10. You just go to Security Pacific, now Bankrupt Bank, and just say, here's $10, here's $5, you know, here's $3. And, and, you know, I wanted, you know, like, you know, put it in and save some money. When I had $100, I would then send it to Fidelity. It was important. It was important because I didn't want to be poor. I was embarrassed.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  People feel it's very glamorous. Initially, it was glamorous. It was, it was glamorous. I was covering, covering first page homicide stories. It was a front page every single day. I would meet people and then that was my story. But in the end, I was living in the back of my 1978 Ford Fairmont. And it was just really terrible. So after I left LA and then I moved to New York for $20,000 a year, I worked for Steve Brill, an American lawyer. We started that. And then I was able to start really making some good picks.

• 29:01Haley Sacks?

  So, wait, so you go from living in your car?

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:04Haley Sacks?

  To then you got this job in New York?

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:06Haley Sacks?

  Walk us through sort of how you then found your way into financial media.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Well, I was, I realized, I said, geez, everyone seems to be making money on these takeovers. What they were doing at that point was the credit oil consolidation. So you would look and say.

• 29:20Haley Sacks?

  Because when you were in the car, you were like, I'm going to be rich. Let me figure out how I can get rich. Okay, I'm seeing that people are doing this thing where they're making money with the takeovers. I want to do that. Like you were laser focused.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  10 shares of Nittomas.

• 29:31Haley Sacks?

  Yep, yep, yep.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  You know, five shares of Kermit G. 100 shares of, of, of, of Conoco before the deal with DuPont. And then I realized, I said, you know what? I got to get out of this. I thought I wanted to be a prosecutor. I applied to Harvard Law, I got in, I deferred. I was having too good a time. By that point, I was really getting my act together. Then I went back and at, at Harvard, I was a very, very big option trader. And I had one trade that paid for law school.

• 30:01Haley Sacks?

  Whoa.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, which was.

• 30:02Haley Sacks?

  What was that?

• 30:03Speaker 01

  We think of it as Chevron, but it used to be, it was, it was Southern Cal. It was the Exxon of this, of California. And they merged, they bought Gulf Oil. And Gulf Oil, look, the deal wasn't going to go through. And I was taking an antitrust class and I went up to the professor, Professor Rida. He was the greatest antitrust mind of any generation. And I said, listen, I, I want to ask you a question. You're never in the class. I said, I'm always in the class. Look, you're reading the journal in the class. It's a little disrespectful. I say, okay, absolutely. But will this deal go through? And he said, 100% it'll go through. But no one thinks this is going to go through. No one thinks that Chevron is going to be able to buy Gulf because I don't care about no one. I'm Phil Rida and this is antitrust.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  So I, I just bought the farm. I mean, everything. I put everything on it. Put everything, everything.

• 30:52Haley Sacks?

  How much are we talking?

• 30:54Speaker 01

  I put in enough to be able to make about $80,000.

• 30:56Haley Sacks?

  So, but you don't remember the exact number?

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Well, whatever, it was a, you know, it was a factor of like six.

• 31:01Haley Sacks?

  Oh, wow. Okay, amazing. And how long did it take for you to make the money?

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Like 10 days.

• 31:05Haley Sacks?

  Was 10 days?

• 31:07Speaker 01

  But I was able to, to put a lot of money away. And then I took everything and put it on this because I, I figured, well, Reader knows more than everybody. And it, it wouldn't have been, the strike price that I bought would not have wiped me out. So it wasn't all or nothing.

• 31:20Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  But it did pay for law school.

• 31:23Haley Sacks?

  That is pretty impressive.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  And it paid for my credit cards, which you really, you know, you can't beat the credit.

• 31:27Haley Sacks?

  You cannot.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  That's the grim reaper.

• 31:29Haley Sacks?

  Yeah, that really is. Is there a deal that you didn't make and you regret?

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Oh, God, yeah. You know, I, I sold Conoco way too soon. DuPont went higher and higher. I missed that. That was bad. And I should have bought, there was this period where you had a lot of smaller diamond shamrock. I mean, that was just right there.

• 31:52Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 31:57Speaker 02

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• 32:35Haley Sacks?

  Visit plaid.com/ai to learn more.

• 32:40Haley Sacks?

  I also want to talk to you a little bit about your morning routine because I feel

• 32:44Speaker 01

  It's insane and it's sick.

• 32:46Haley Sacks?

  Yes, we need to know because it's true. I think you might have, you know, now every CEO is like, pretends that they have a morning routine, but I think that Jim Cramer invented it.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Well, look, I mean, when I was at Goldman and I was the hedge fund manager, I had a very hard time getting past 2:47.

• 33:01Haley Sacks?

  Sleeping past 2:47?

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I just decided I'm just going to get up and just go to work. I now go to 3:30, which is much better. And I attribute that to,

• 33:15Speaker 01

  to melatonin and Klonopin.

• 33:16Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Okay. Klonopin, I only take a half. Don't worry. I know it's an empty. But I need to be able to stay asleep for four hours. And then my trainer comes at four and beats the bejesus out of me for an hour and a half.

• 33:27Haley Sacks?

  What do you do?

• 33:28Speaker 01

  What does he do?

• 33:28Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  We do, uh, we do cardio and strength. So it's like, you know, the, the first, the first 40 minutes on the treadmill and then it's just dreadful. And we finish with

• 33:38Haley Sacks?

  It's horrible.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Three sets of 50 pushups, which I still can't believe I do.

• 33:41Haley Sacks?

  That's amazing.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Well, you know, he gives me a little breather in between.

• 33:45Haley Sacks?

  Yeah, that's amazing. I do think one of the best uses of money is a personal trainer because I would never lift a weight on my own if I didn't have a trainer being like, you need to do it. There's a trend right now online of expensive things that are worth the money. What do you think are the five most expensive things that are worth the money for you?

• 34:01Speaker 01

  Okay, candidly, I had some bad problem with my eye.

• 34:05Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  That I now address. I had no peripheral vision and I had a driver

• 34:09Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  For to take me everywhere, not just to work. And now I have to admit candidly, I kept that.

• 34:13Haley Sacks?

  That's amazing.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Even though I've had the operation.

• 34:15Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  That's expensive.

• 34:16Haley Sacks?

  Yeah. But that's, I honestly feel like a driver, especially when you work as much as you.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:20Haley Sacks?

  You can use your car as like a little office.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Yes, and I do. Yes.

• 34:24Haley Sacks?

  How much does that cost per year?

• 34:26Speaker 01

  It's split with the company, but it has been as much as $225,000.

• 34:32Haley Sacks?

  Wow. Okay.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  But I do have an allowance. The company gives me a la- I mean, it's part of my contract that I have a certain amount of money that I can do.

• 34:40Haley Sacks?

  So why do, how much is the allowance?

• 34:42Speaker 01

  I prefer not to say that, but I'd just say it's a, that when I say it's allowance, it means like that, that I said, look, I'd like to have a driver provide. They said, absolutely not. We pay you enough. Why don't you earmark X?

• 34:52Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  As expense for Kramer worldwide. And that's what I can expense it.

• 34:57Haley Sacks?

  Okay. So back to your morning routine. So after you got your ass kicked by your trainer, what's next?

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Then I go back to, we'll get to market. I try to write some thoughts down. I do this memo for our trip, for the, for the CNBC Investing Club of the 10 things I'm watching and I start putting them down. I, and then I go take my shower. I come back and keep doing that. Then I have the driver pick me up and take in. I'm done that memo usually by around 7:15. I meet with my team to talk about what's going on. I meet with Jeff Marks about what we're going to talk about for what we're interested for the club right now, whatnot. Then I really work hard to be ready with Carl, Quintinia and David Faber, two of the greatest partners in the world. Do that from nine to 10, study for the 1020 morning meeting that I do with the investing club. And then I have from 11 to two that literally just to think and write.

• 35:43Haley Sacks?

  So you really clear time to be creative. When it comes to AI though, something I've been reading a lot about with, like I tell everyone to invest in index funds because you're so focused on individual stocks. I'm really focused on just trying to get the most people investing and it's sort of like.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Great. And you know, I love what you do. I do have a product that, an investing club that teaches you how to do it. But I again default to, I mean, should my, my wife have been picking individual stocks? Yes, for what she knows.

• 36:09Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  But she knew that most of her money should be in index fund. And when I saw it, I said, hey, that's great. I didn't say, what, how could you? But she owned Apple. She, I said, why? Just because the kids went up.

• 36:19Haley Sacks?

  So smart. I wish I had bought Apple.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Great idea.

• 36:22Haley Sacks?

  But with, when it comes to index funds now, like the magnificent seven and you know, it's all so heavy with tech. And even if you're not buying individual stocks that are focused on AI, your portfolio is so AI focused.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:40Haley Sacks?

  And so do you think that that puts individual, puts us in danger? People who own index funds?

• 36:47Speaker 01

  You know, I've got to be true to what I've been saying, Haley. And, and I've been saying that you've got to sell tech as it goes higher. I don't want, I want AI proof your

• 36:56Haley Sacks?

  Yes, that's what I'm asking.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Because I need you to be in healthcare.

• 36:59Haley Sacks?

  You own VLO.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  No, you, I want you to be in

• 37:01Haley Sacks?

  BTI, like what should you do?

• 37:03Speaker 01

  You can go and just, S and P is still good. It's not too infected.

• 37:07Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Nasdaq 100, no longer any good, too infected.

• 37:10Haley Sacks?

  Okay.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  But you can own, I'd rather have you in a biotech.

• 37:14Haley Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Index fund for 20, for 10% of your money. Those are doing incredibly well. But I just think that what you want to do is if you're in the, even though I like Micron or in Western Digital, C K T is the hottest stocks of our generation. They're National Video. Okay. Not Micron, but the others, they, they could be, they could be disrupted. Get away from the stuff that can be disrupted and understand why it could be disrupted because they're not that hard to make and someone could come up with something better.

• 37:42Haley Sacks?

  And China already is.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I feel very, look, I really feel strong that healthcare is really undervalued. Banks are really undervalued. Retail is really undervalued. These are whole sections of the economy that are just way too low because of all the money that went into data center.

• 37:58Haley Sacks?

  There you go. Even for someone as fiscally responsible as you are and thoughtful about planning for the future, what is the dumbest thing that you've ever bought?

• 38:08Speaker 01

  I bought a company called Memorex Telx. It was $2 stock. And I said, I bought it at $2, then $1, $1 set in seven eights and then one, two. I said, how much can you lose? How much can you lose on a $2 stock? I lost $2.5 million.

• 38:23Haley Sacks?

  What?

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause I kept buying all the way down and then I went bankrupt.

• 38:26Haley Sacks?

  So you didn't know when to stop?

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Well, I met with the company many times. I thought that they actually had a good business plan. That I just, I lost.

• 38:34Haley Sacks?

  What did that feel like?

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Why does it hurt me right now? It was 40 years.

• 38:37Haley Sacks?

  You never get over it?

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Never. Neither did my former wife, Karen Cramer, who 100% blames me for it and is right.

• 38:46Haley Sacks?

  And do you think that like split you up a little?

• 38:49Speaker 01

  No, she got tired of me though. She just, I mean, she got tired of my, she ran the firm. I worked for her. And there were times like that one and a company called Rexon. She goes, you know, you don't even, these companies are worthless and you're just fooling around. You know, just get smart. She was an unbelievable good trader. She's all in, you can go read Confessions of a Streetak. It's dedicated to her. Didn't necessarily make things better, but I've made, I made, I was doing some, that was a serious mistake that it's at $2, how much can you lose? And I just told you how much you can lose is pretty bad.

• 39:21Haley Sacks?

  That is a lot.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  $2.5 million though.

• 39:22Haley Sacks?

  $2.5 million. That's crazy. So.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  It was idiotic.

• 39:25Haley Sacks?

  Yeah. But I mean, but you learned from it though.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  I, I learned that it doesn't matter what the price is, how low it is, you can still lose everything.

• 39:36Haley Sacks?

  And so now, but you're still in the individual stock game.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Well, like, look, I want to teach, teach people. Look, I, I made a lot more money in stocks than I would have in an index fund. Much, much, much, much more. And people have asked me, well, how do I do it? And I set up a club and people have done well. And you know, people want, people are interested. They want, if, you know, it's like, if you're going to do it and you want to own individual stocks, belong to the club and you at least you'll know how to do it better.

• 40:02Haley Sacks?

  Yes.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  That's what I love.

• 40:03Haley Sacks?

  And we'll, we'll put all the information for Jim's club, which is so amazing in the show notes. Jim Cramer, Financial T. Let us know where we can find you.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Yep. Well, you know, I'm on CNBC all day.

• 40:16Haley Sacks?

  All day, all day.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  CNBC Investing Club, you're going to list that. Uh, I had a book, I have a book that came out. How to Make Money in Any Market. And it's very basic.

• 40:25Haley Sacks?

  All of Jim's books are amazing.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Open an account, IRA, how to open an IRA. Maybe you want to start somewhere, right? IRA, great place to start.

• 40:33Haley Sacks?

  Yep. Love it. Jim, stay rich.

• 40:38Haley Sacks?

  Okay, guys. Jump scare. It's me, Haley. I just wanted to check in after that episode because obviously Jim Cramer is a legend, but also there were some things that we didn't get to discuss that I wanted to just, you know, bookend before you end this episode. First of all, Jim Cramer is not buying individual stocks for his own portfolio. Let's get that straight. He buys them through a charitable trust and he has donated over $5 million to charity through that. So none of the anchors that you see on CNBC who are talking about companies are actually allowed to buy and trade those companies. So I just wanted to clarify that. Um, also I just wanted to talk about his origin story because I think what's so amazing, the part about him living in his car is that he was still investing while he was doing that.

• 41:21Haley Sacks?

  Like no one gave him permission. He wasn't an expert necessarily. He was really interested. But I think that's really good advice for anyone listening because I think that we think that we have to have it all together in order to start our journeys, you know, creating a portfolio. And he's a really good example of that you don't need to, you know, have it all together. You just need to start. And I also think that he's a really good proof of how much access matters. And that investing really shouldn't be for insiders. And I feel like we're really aligned on that too. But now let's talk about the spicy part because I know that if you follow Mrs. Dow Jones, you're probably like, holy shit, Haley has this person on the show who's telling us to buy individual stocks. Does that mean that she likes individual stocks now? She always tells us to buy index funds.

• 42:05Haley Sacks?

  And I am still pro index fund, you guys. Um, I think that stock picking can be amazing if you're someone like Jim who has the time and the skill and the emotional stability to do it. But like, you know, for most of the people that I know in our audience, we are busy. We don't really want to do that. And so index funds make it really easy and keep it really simple to grow wealth in the stock market. And so I think they're a really great place to start. But I do think that like, if you are interested in a stock and you do the research and you can afford to lose the money that you're putting in, it can be a great way to learn more about investing, taking that risk. So I'm sort of between two, I'm between two ferns on my podcast stuff, but also with that.

• 42:48Haley Sacks?

  Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode, make sure that you rate, review and subscribe to the show. It makes such a big difference. We're working so hard to make Financial T great for you. So also email money@missedowjones if you have any questions about your finances or ideas for the show. We always want to hear from you. And yeah, stay rich.

• 43:14Speaker 04

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