James...keep up the great work and don't change a thing !!
Regards,
Phil
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By James J. Cramer
12/20/98 10:46 PM ET
I have received more than 1,000 letters of support from you about this
WavePhore (WAVO:Nasdaq) controversy. I have tried to answer
everyone individually, but the feedback is too overwhelming so I have
written this piece to summarize what I see as going on and to thank you for all of your unbridled support in what is a difficult and awkward time for me and my family.
I do not want to let this sideshow derail my commitment to trying to
explain the market, but I also don't want to ignore all of the terrific responses I have received. If you are not interested or involved, please wait for my regular columns about what I see happening. I don't want to bore you. But if you wrote me -- and one out of every 27 subscribers did -- this one is for you.
The people know more than the journalists. They are better educated,
better able to fend for themselves, better able to detect who is a fool and who is a shyster. All they ask is for disclosure, so they can tell where you are coming from. They don't want to be bagged, and they don't want to be misled. They want a fair chance at knowing what the pros are thinking and what they like. They want more, not less, information. And they want it unfiltered and raw, not watered down and vetted. They trust themselves more than they trust their brokers and the analyst who, they have figured out, have to promote their firms' underwriting to advance themselves in the hierarchy.
Above all, the public respects people who put their money where their mouth is -- provided that they disclose the positions they take. They have the least respect for those who would tell them they know nothing and can't be trusted to handle their own money. They despise those who would patronize them and urge them to give the money to others, who, for high fees, will underperform the averages but maintain the facade of expertise. That, in the end, is what the whole online revolution is about, and why, in Year Two of the revolution, the Tories, the journalist/analyst/professorial community, still don't get it.
I come to the keyboard with this mouthful, because in the aftermath of the bogus WavePhore "controversy," where I tried to explain to the nonprofessionals an important element of trading (the "short squeeze"), I find the world divided between two camps: those who support the online revolution of do-it-yourselfers and those who oppose it.
The supporters -- this includes everyone who backs TheStreet.com, at least that I had anything to do with, and most of our readers -- recognize that with information now finally equalized and the playing field leveled by the Net (both in lower commissions and in instant access to information) there really is no good reason why people need to be "protected" from the market.
The contrasts are so great, and the stakes so high in this debate, that those who ignore it, or refuse to acknowledge the changes, will be overrun by the revolution as plainly as those who ignored the role of mechanized armies in an era of cavalry.
I had a brush with the old guard, last week when I was interviewed by a columnist from the Chicago Tribune, who came with this same old patronizing rap that guys like me shouldn't speak out because we fleece the public. I knew I was speaking to an old guarder immediately. The old guard believes that unless you are Wall Street Week with Louis Ruykeyser, you are just another Jerry Springer or Laura Schlesinger, or whoever represents that kind of non-rigorous world of talk that surrounds us everyday.
The columnist was dead certain that if we let money managers speak their minds on TV, people will do stupid things with their money because of that talking. Underlying that old guard premise is the belief, again abhorrent to me, that the people are dopes who can't tell phonies from guys with good credentials. Leaving out the obvious, which is that old-guard columnists quote money managers all of the time without any disclosure, what I found so disgusting was the holier-than-thou aspect of the Chicago columnist's attitude toward me.
I take my role as someone trying to explain the markets seriously. I turned down a high-paying, high-profile correspondent's job on ABC's Good Morning America in order to go on CNBC for free every other week because Mark Haines runs the most serious business show on television. How many other people have foregone a network job to go to cable? I went to cable because I wanted to be in an environment totally dedicated to a rigorous approach to the markets.
I have made millions for a bunch of rich people and have always felt that if that is all I am ever going to do with my life, I have no doubt where I am heading in the next life. So I have used my talent as a communicator to help hasten the online world of do-it-yourselfers, to help give those incredibly smart and talented people a chance to fend for themselves, despite what the professariat and the journalism/broker/mutual fund complex thinks is right. I have tried to share my best ideas of how to make money with people on TV and in my columns because I think it is right. For this belief I initially met with a wall of cynicism from virtually every financial journalist in America.
In fact, I was so sure that I could never convince the prevailing business journalism world of what I thought was right -- that the reader, and not the advertiser or the underwriter or the corporate client, deserved better -- that I decided to start TheStreet.com.
What's so ironic about all of this, is when I did, everyone I know from mainstream business journalism laughed at me -- except for two sympathizers to the cause: Dave Kansas, then at The Wall Street Journal, and Joe Nocera from Fortune. For as long as I was bleeding through the eyeballs with losses from this thing, the journalism community regarded me as some sort of bizarre believer, as a guy maybe bent on revenge for how he was treated by the old journalism guard. But we began to win over people in spades, including some journalists, who are not all blinded by cynicism and do believe that there are some people committed to trying to help others, even if it does not help them.
But now that we are closing in on success, I am detecting a new strain of criticism from the old guard -- that Cramer was only in it for the money after all, that the whole thing, the columns, the TV appearances, was just one giant promotional vehicle for Cramer's financial online bonanza. Talk about revisionist history! This is old-guard propaganda in its most outrageous, repulsive form. Over and over, as I fielded the questions I felt were belligerent from the Chicago Tribune guy, questions dripping with cynicism, I was struck by the fact that this guy really thinks I write all of the articles and do all of this talking to bamboozle the public. His article, which is available by going to his newspaper's Web site and clicking on David Greising's column, contains every ridiculous old-guard canard about how stupid the people are and how guys like me abuse the "system" he helps uphold.
Many times since the WavePhore "controversy," I have had to come to terms with my wife's anger and my dad's sadness about what occurred, the two people, by the way, I care about most when it comes to this ethics stuff, because I know they don't blow with the wind. Why did I have to try to explain a short squeeze? Why did I have to be so passionate about the whole darn thing? Why didn't I adopt my late mom's gospel of "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"? Why don't I just stop "getting in trouble"?
To which I always say the same thing: because I believe what I am doing is right. Because I believe that the people have gotten the short end of the stick in the world of finance, because I believe that we owe the people more than just "go buy this, we underwrote it and we need to see it higher." Because I want to return some of the great riches this market has made for me to people who could do the same if given a fighting chance. Because I believe what I am doing is right.
So old guard, take your best shot. Keep trying. I am not going away and I am not backing down. Heck, I'm just getting started. And, get this, what doesn't kill me, does indeed make me -- and the revolution that we all know is going on -- stronger.
Thanks for bearing with me. Thanks for your support.
DISCLOSURE: I am not short, nor have I ever been short WavePhore, and I have never attempted to sell it short, although I did inquire whether it could be borrowed for the purposes of saying whether there is a short squeeze as part of my duties as a co-host on Squawk.
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