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Cramer versus Cramer

Why do I have financial pundit James Cramer on "ignore" these days? Read on.

Charles Cooper Former Executive Editor / News
Charles Cooper was an executive editor at CNET News. He has covered technology and business for more than 25 years, working at CBSNews.com, the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet.
Charles Cooper

What with the five-year anniversary of the dotcom bubble a couple of days away, I happened across this gem by James Cramer in today's TheStreet.com:

"When I went bearish in March 2000, I received a huge amount of angry email from people who felt aggrieved. They had bought, I don't know, Redback Networks or InfoSpace because of me, because of something I wrote, and now they were being told to sell it."

Bearish? Here's what Cramer published nearly five years ago on March 13, 2000:

"Let me give you five that we are putting in our basket, five that we think are candidates to be huge. Before I did this, I bounced these five off my staff. The comments of my friend and partner Jeff Berkowitz control. He did not know whether any one of these companies would be big five years from now, but if one is, that stock will make up for the rest. In spades. So, without further ado, here goes:"

•  724 Solutions

•  InfoSpace

•  Inktomi: No longer exists. Bought for chicken feed by Yahoo.

•  Yahoo!

•  VeriSign

Check out the five-year charts on each of those stocks. If you'd taken Cramer's advice back then, you'd still be in the red today. Yet another reason for me to put Cramer on "ignore."