Cramer's bellyaching..........Founder of TheStreet.com
blames media for 'trashing'
of stock
USA Today
NEW YORK - Jim Cramer, the high-energy trader, Wall Street
commentator and co-founder of TheStreet.com, says the media is
to blame for the trashing his company's stock has taken in the
market.
``The stock price of TheStreet.com is set by what I call the
chattering financial classes. The financial media reports every day
on every wrong move that we make and a lot of wrong moves that
we don't make,' Cramer said. ``Everything we've done right gets
deep-sixed because it is in no one's interest to mention it.'
He was speaking to about 200 professional and well-to-do
investors at a conference here to raise money for a charity, the Tomorrows Children's Fund at
Hackensack University Medical Center.
Shares of TheStreet, of which Cramer owns the most with 3.3 million shares, set a record low of
$6 earlier this week. The shares were issued at $19 in May and shot up to a high of $71.25. By
August they were back to their IPO price.
TheStreet.com sells subscriptions and advertising to its site of stock news and commentary. It has a
joint venture with the New York Times to operate an online newsroom and a new London-based
site. The company is losing money and recently announced that it would begin offering three-fourths
of its site free of charge and raise prices for premium content on the rest. The web site has 104,000
subscribers.
Cramer is the site's chief columnist and fires off several dispatches a day from the trading desk of
his hedge fund. His magazine columns have appeared in Time and SmartMoney.
He offered the stock as the most passionate of three recommendations to the conference. He said
he had never before recommended the stock publicly because he did not want to be criticized if it
turned out to be a loser.
``I'm speaking up about what I think, because I feel like the risk from $6 to zero is a lot less than
from $70,' Cramer said. He called Wall Street's original excitement for the stock ``a crime against
humanity.'
Cramer argued that the stock is cheap because the company has about $4.70 per share of cash.
Thus, he said, the market is wrongly implying that there is virtually no value in the site's brand name,
growing subscriber list and new ventures.
However, the company recently announced that it does not expect to begin taking in more cash
than it is spending until next year.
Reached at his office Thursday, Cramer first protested, ``I didn't know that was an on-the-record
discussion.' Then he, added, ``I stand by everything I said.'
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