I have been a fan of Jim Cramer for quite some time. I have read all of his books and have been very impressed with how easy they are to follow and, more importantly, learn from. My favorite Jim Cramer book is Real Money. It’s a book I would recommend for anybody who is trying to learn about the basics of the stock market.
One of the first ideas he talks about is the idea of stock ownership. While many of us think that we actually own a piece of a company when we own stock, Cramer takes exception to this idea.
While you have a fractional interest in the company, technically, you hold no real rights. If every stockholder were actually an owner that would mean that we also have a debt obligation should the company operate in debt. In theory, if we actually owned a piece of the company, stocks would be able to have a negative valuation. More than buying a piece of the company, we are loaning the company money in exchange for an interest.
From there, this Jim Cramer book talks about buy and homework. The traditional buy and hold mentality, where we buy a stock and put it in our dresser for a decade or more is replaced by Cramer’s buy and homework. He believes that when we buy a stock we have to take an active role in the management of it. Each week we should be spending at least one hour per week researching every stock that we own.
Of course he goes on to tell us what that research is: reading the news articles, looking at the balance sheets, listening to conference calls, and studying the charts. All of this is pivotal to knowing when it’s time to buy or sell.
This Jim Cramer book continues with more easy to understand advice that every investor must read. More of his personal trading rules are talked about as well as which stocks to buy depending on where the economy is.
If you don’t have the time or don’t feel confident that you can make the best investment choices, consider subscribing to a service like Action Alerts Plus where an expert like Jim Cramer is doing your research for you and all you have to do is buy and sell when they tell you to execute the trade. My secret is that I don’t have enough time to do all of my research so I let Action Alert Plus do it for me.
By: Tim Parker