Mad Money Machine

Follow-Up to the Barron’s Article on Cramer

The Columbia Journalism Review has an article entitled Mad Money, Bad Blood in which they follow up on last summer’s story from Barron’s about Jim Cramer’s stock picking performance on Mad Money. The article focuses mainly on the disagreements between Barron’s and CNBC.

But the article’s author concludes that the Barron’s piece is sound. And I particularly agree with the author on this point, something that I have been saying also:

First, and foremost, CNBC is wrong to air a show that is centered on stock picking without tracking its own performance or even keeping a record, using whatever criteria it chooses, of the stocks it picks.

Either that or come out and say, "Do not trade on these recommendations."

Too bad the Barron’s article didn’t use the research we conducted here at the Mad Money Machine in both 2006 and 2007 that showed experimentally that following Jim Cramer’s stock picks lagged the markets.