What I learned from Jim Cramer

James Altucher writes Monday for The Wall Street Journal what 10 lessons he learned from CNBC “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer.

Here are two:

4)  Commentary belongs in financial journalism. Cramer changed everything when he started thestreet.com and added commentary from professional investors into the mix. The negative argument was then (and still is) that there is a conflict of interest if someone owns a stock to be then talking about it on a platform meant for serious journalism. But that’s nonsense. Who better to write about a company than someone who has serious resources and used those resources to dig under every rock and uncover as much as they can before putting hard-earned money to work? Journalism has changed over the past 15 years to accept this and move the needle even further but at the time it was a contentious issue.

5)  Know everything. I was standing by a TV with Jim once and the ticker was running by at the bottom of the CNBC screen. He started doing a lightning round on every stock going by, telling why each stock was up or down a nickel, a penny, a whatever. He knew every earnings report, every news item that was relevant that day. He doesn’t know every stock (see below) but he does know everything he needs to know for THAT DAY.  Whatever field I’ve been in, I’ve always tried to know everything about the competition, the technology, the subtleties and the nuances of the field. Jim has dominated financial media for 20 years by doing this.

Read the rest here.