Episode 38 of The James Altucher Show with Jim Cramer. As his wikipedia page would say, Jim is “American television personality, former hedge fund manager, and best-selling author”. He wrote the books Get Rich Carefully and Confessions of a Street Addict (among many others), hosts Mad Money on CNBC and co-founded TheStreet. I guess you’d call him a “finance commentator” – he talks about macroeconomics, the stock market, currencies and what has happened, is happening and will happen in the financial world.

Jim and James have spent a lot of time together in the past, but they hadn’t spoken (other than a few occasional emails) for over four years before doing this interview. This interview was during the promotion and marketing of Jim’s Get Rich Quick book. In this episode, the talk about:

• The “Real” Jim Cramer, as opposed to the “Mad Money” Jim Cramer. When I was in the US on holiday I saw a few episodes of Mad Money. I loved it but could understand why people might hate it – he’s pretty loud and energetic ALL the time, pretty full on.
• The top CEOs tend to act like “coaches” or “managers” or a team. Jim profiles 21 of America’s top CEOs in his book that have made money multiple times for multiple organisations, and he found that the CEO really DOES matter to a company. He highlights many of the commonalities of the best CEOs, including: never lose heart, treat your employees incredibly well, and focus on growth and profit.
• If you’re investing in stocks, know that the market does what it does. You can’t control the market, and usually if you think the market is wrong… you’re wrong.
• A stock price is made up of many layers and forces: global economy, sector (finances, mining, retail etc), CEO, fundamentals, charts, the news cycle and media, etc etc
• The news and media control what we think (there’s sooo much more to say about this, I’m sure I’ll write about it some day).
• Advice for young people (say under 25) who are looking for their passions in life: first, ‘get it all out of your system’ so you can look back and know you had a good time with parties and relationships and stuff, then try a bunch of different jobs so you can ultimately find something that’s ‘fun’ for you and you enjoy doing everyday. “You’ve got to find something fun that if your bosses didn’t know better you’d pay them so that you could do it”. If you can create a company out of your passion, you can help a lot of people that can’t.

It’s a very short episode, only about 20-25 minutes. I like Jim Cramer so liked hearing him talk, and I’m definitely keen to read his book Get Rich Carefully soon!