Meet CNBC's Mad Money Man
With just seconds to go before his top-rated cable tv show begins taping, Jim Cramer, the maniacal host of CNBC's Mad Money, and his crew frantically search for the perfect prop to drive home his first stock pick of the day.
"Yes!" he finally shouts as an assistant hands him an electric screwdriver, and Cramer feigns the crazed dentist of Marathon Man.
"Let's roll!" shouts the producer.
Heavy-metal guitar blasts through the studio as the 52-year-old former hedge fund manager hunches over his laptop, taking a last sip of hot tea as he psyches himself up for a daily rant that—between throwing books, swinging baseball bats, and slamming fists on a panel full of campy sound-effects buttons—will melt a pound or more off his sweaty, 173-pound frame and knock a decibel or more off his already creaky voice.
"Pull this one out of the closet!! It's been left for dead! But I think it could make you some mad money!!!" he yells into the camera as a four-paragraph-long disclaimer warning of the perils of following his advice scrolls down the TV screen.
"Hey! I'm Cramer! Welcome to Cramerica!" he jabbers. "Other people want to make friends! I'm sure you and I both know that's a poor use of my time. I just want to make you money!"
It's a conceit, of course. Over the next hour, the stock trader turned tv star will attempt to do both: proffering the fruits of his stock-picking prowess to help his 350,000 or so daily viewers better invest their cash, while at the same time endearing himself with a blathering, stream-of-consciousness, WWE SmackDown-meets-Dr. Phil-meets-John Madden routine so daffy that it's sometimes hard to tell where insight ends and madness begins.
In truth, it's a bit of both. With a Harvard education, a Goldman Sachs pedigree, and upwards of $100 million in hard-earned net worth to prove it, Cramer's financial genius has not only helped make Mad Money the most-watched show on cnbc but also ensured that his is among the most influential voices on Wall Street today. Yet like the markets he obsesses over, that voice regularly swings between manic enthusiasm and utter pessimism, an admittedly bipolar state of affairs that has occasionally wreaked havoc on his mental health and sent him in search of a life that better balances work and family.
In the swim. Since walking away from his $450 million hedge fund six years ago, Cramer has dropped 30 pounds, works out every day, and now trades only on behalf of a charitable trust he created. He recently stopped throwing chairs on the Mad Money set (after his trainer told him he was hurting his back), pulled out of his syndicated radio show, Real Money, and now all but reserves his evenings and weekends for his two daughters, whom he shuttles to swim practices and soccer matches. He even asked his producer to swap out a recent taping for a prerecorded version so he could escort the girls to a concert.
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