Performance Can Be a Wicked Taskmaster
By James J. Cramer
Two years ago, I woke up one Saturday morning to a vicious attack of me and my performance in Barron's. The lead writer of the weekly, Alan Abelson, devoted a whole column to discussing my poor performance in 1998, where I was up 2%, and how I had become a threat to my own investors.
Made for a tough Saturday. I tried to play with the kids, but I felt miserable about it all day. I carried the article around like a steamer trunk strapped to my back. But I said nothing. I said nothing, to quote Hyman Roth in The Godfather II, "because this is the business we have chosen." We are in the performance business. If you underperform, you are fair game to anybody. Is that fair or right? That's not the proper question. I don't think it even matters.
What matters is that, if you make great money, you are a hero and, if you lose big money, you are a bum. I said nothing about Abelson's screed because I had held myself out as a critic of underperforming managers and now I had underperformed. Or, as my wife, who had no sympathy for me whatsoever after the Abelson attack, said, as I moped around the house that day, "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen."
Yesterday's wild exchange in the Columnist Conversation that culminated in Don Luskin resigning from RealMoney.com, is yet more evidence of what a vicious taskmaster performance can be -- and of just how hot the kitchen can get. A brief summary for those of you who are just catching up now: I wrote a piece in which I critiqued poorly perfoming fund managers who write for or want to write for RealMoney.com (by implication, Don Luskin). He immediately took his bat and ball and went home. And, yes, he attacked me for the stock price of TheStreet.com (TSCM:Nasdaq - news - boards). I am willing to forgive the latter. Heck, our stock has been an awful investment, although the idea of attributing that all to me seemed a bit of a stretch, I can take that heat.
2001 has been a tough year. The markets have been getting to everybody. It must be doubly difficult to have the cameras whirling and every move you make be visible (Luskin's fund, MetaMarkets, is a transparent fund). That said, this is a game of winners and losers. The best thing Luskin can do is figure out a way to make back that money and get back in the game. If he can do that, he will be a hero. In the meantime, I am going to keep doing what I have always done, that is, say what I think needs to be said to make you money and keep the game honest and lively.
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