Listen to Jim Cramer’s personal guide through the confusing jungle of Wall Street investing, navigating through opportunities and pitfalls with one goal in mind - to help you make money.
Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer
Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 6/21/24
Building a portfolio with Fidelity Basket Profolios is kinda like making a sandwich. It's as simple as picking your stocks and ETFs, sort of like your meats and other topics, and managing it as one big, juicy investment. That's pretty good. Learn more at Fidelity.com/baskets. Investing involves risks including risk of loss, Fidelity Brokers Services LLC, member NYSESIPC. Homes.com knows that when it comes to home shopping, it's never just about the house or condo, it's about the home, and what makes a home is more than just the house or property. It's the location and neighborhood. If you have kids, it's also schools, nearby parks and transportation options. That's why homes.com goes above and beyond to bring home shoppers the in-depth information they need to find the right home. And when I say in-depth, I am talking deep. Each listing features comprehensive information about the neighborhood complete with a video guide. They also have details about local schools with test scores, state rankings and student-to-teacher ratio. They even have an agent directory with a sales history of each agent. So when it comes to finding a home, not just a house, this is everything you need to know, all in one place. Homes.com, we've done your homework. My mission is simple, to make you money. I'm here to level the playing field for all investors. There's always a more market summer, and I promise to help you find it. Mad money starts now. Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Kramer, America. I'm going to make friends. I'm just trying to make you a little money. Now my job is not just to entertain, but to teach you. And that's what we're doing tonight. So call me at 1-800-743-CMC, or tweet me at Jim Kramer. Yes, tonight I'm letting you in on something big. The method to my mind. I believe that you can do everything I do at home, but you're willing to put in the time and effort. Investing, swiftly investing in individual stocks, running your own portfolio rather than dumping your money in some buy and forget index fund, is something I am confident all of you can do by yourselves. I always emphasize the homework, and I hope you do the homework for my travel trust stocks if you join the CMC Investing Club. In the old days, my rule was that you needed one hour per week per stock. These days, though, the research is so readily available online that I'm willing to count in less than an hour or a week for a portfolio of five stocks, say a few hours of your own ten stocks unless you belong to the club itself, and you have too much easier time and you cut down how much well homework you have to do because we do it with you. Investing is more in more than just ten stocks, and then I get worried, because that can be difficult unless you're managing money full-time. Of course, if you don't have the time worth the inclination of big stocks, then you are better off parking your money in a low-cost index fund than there is the SB500, and I like those. They're good. I'm in some, but if you're willing to put in the work, regular people can trounce the averages as long as you're disciplined, and you follow the rules, rules we constantly highlight as part of the CMC Investing Club. How do you start? Well, that's what we're talking about tonight. Like I said, the show is all about the method or methods to break from strictly quoting the bar to my madness. How do I pick stocks? What gets on the show? How do I tell you some stocks are worth buying and dip some aren't? Those are the questions that people constantly ask me. Tonight, you're going to get a piece of the answers. The truth is that I've got far too many methods, far too many ways of picking up great stocks to ever cover all of them on the show, but I want to give you some of the tools of my trade, enough so that you can start to pick stocks like me on your own. Remember, I want you to be a manager, a great manager of your own money, because you can focus on a smaller number of names while I have to file practically evidence, particularly for the lighting round. Then the day this show is about educating you, giving you the ultimate insider's perspective on how the market works and how it can help you try to make money. I'm not here just to dole out stock picks, like the proverbial fish you give a man, if you're too lazy to teach him to shop for fish at Whole Foods. What I really like to do is empower you, and that starts with me teaching you all the many tricks I use to pick up great stocks and invest in them like a pro. Methods that have served me well for more than four decades, and that allowed me to generate a 24% annual return after fees for 14 years of my old hedge fund. Not bad, because it's better than a market. These skills are what refresh this show and guide me as I manage my own travel trust now. I'll learn the exercise that you can follow, of course, by joining the club. One of the easiest ways to identify potential Kramer names, the stocks that I should possibly own, but not necessarily end up on the show, is by watching a list that comes out every day. It's called the New Highlist. Stocks in that illustrious list, the highest of the high, obviously is something going for them, and that's especially true when the market's in bad shape, as only the best of the best can hit new highs when the averages are falling apart. So what does it tell you when a stock's in the New Highlist? Whether that is part of a broader bull market because it's sectors own fire, or the company itself has some serious earnings or sales momentum. No matter how they get there, many stocks in the New Highlist often keep going higher, because it's kind of a list of A students that are worth betting on. They tend to keep getting straight A's on every quarter, just like the real smart kids in school. In a way, bull market will receive this over and over and over again. The same stocks will hit new high after new high after new high, and following them was a terrific way to make money, even as the Bears claimed endlessly that the bull market was false and couldn't be trusted. What seems to the Bears has cost you to miss out on some of the greatest rallies in history. Of course, I'm not saying you can just chase any stock that's hitting new highs, because they'll keep going higher. That would be the ultimate and foolishness, true boast of the clown behavior. I am saying that if you want to identify potential winners, unless there's been a stunning sea change in the market caused by changing interest rates, possibly the political environment, then a good place to start. A wonderful place to start is the new high list, and this is a start. See, that's the thing about the market. It's not always that hard to play once you understand that there's often more continuity than change. Things pretty much keep going the way they were going until something made your shifts, and then you have to order your course. Those courses, of course, changes, they can be pretty radical though, and that's why you always have to be reevaluating your ideas, and you should never dig in your heels when the facts change, something I emphasize over and over again when I send out these investment club bullets. Now, I rarely recommend buying stocks straight off the new high list, unless there's some special circumstances. The circumstances that we're talking about later tonight. What I like to do when I'm hunting for stocks, and what you should do, is wait for something to pull back from the new high list, because that is the best place to start by the buying. When you're buying, new high list is not a shop list, it's an inspiration list. You keep an eye on those names, then wait for them to come down so that you can pull the trigger. The pullback, ideally five to eight percent, five to eight percent, gives you a good lower price entry point, and a stock that likely has a lot of positives going forward. That maybe has been pulled down by an overall move in the stock market. That's been the optimal level I found less than five percent. You're probably too early, more than eight percent, and it's more likely that something's going wrong, very wrong, maybe even with the underlying company. Pouring over the new high list is a fabulous way to identify potential, and I stress that we're potential stocks to buy. You only buy stocks that have pulled back from the new high list, if you're confident they'll make a comeback for substantive reasons unrelated to the broader market. Unrelated to the broader market but related to your stock. You need to do all the same homework you ordinarily do before buying a stock. You absolutely must have conviction, even if it's a cynical conviction that the stock's going higher, that it deserves to go higher. And the biggest caveat of all, when you're shopping for stocks that have pulled back from their highs, make sure they haven't pulled back for a good reason. The sell-off needs to be extraneous to their business. Don't go buying a home builder that's down because interest rates flew up, because that could generally hurt the numbers. But if a big pharma stock gets hurt by higher rates, there's nothing to do with earnings, so maybe it's worth buying. Be certain you're dealing with a momentarily damaged stock and not a troubled company that's going down, down, down. How can you tell the difference between a damaged company, damaged stock? The fundamentals haven't changed. The stock probably hasn't pulled through grace. It's pulled back from a category since profit-taking or some panic in the market in general. Now more than ever, stocks are traded like commodities by ultra-leverage fund. Head, hit, hit, ultra-levered hedge funds, really causing huge sell-offs that make no sense whatsoever. So you'll see high-quality stocks pull back off their highs for unrelated reasons to their core business. But if the fundamental picture changes and whatever made that stock attractive as it climbed its way up to the new high list goes away, then that stock is no longer a candidate for your portfolio. The story has to be intact when this method won't work. Here's the bottom line. That's the first method of payments managers. Watch for stocks that have pulled back from a pre-selected list, the new high list. Especially because a broad market sell-off is sometimes a great opportunity. Some of my best picks for the club have come out of the process and hopefully some of yours can too. Let's take some calls. Let's go to Andrew in Georgia. Andrew. Hey, Mr. Kramer. How's it going today? Good day. How about you, Andrew? I'm doing well. Thank you for asking. So I'm a fairly new investor. I've only been investing for about three years. One, I just want to say I appreciate everything to do for the new guys. We don't really know what they're doing. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. That's terrific. How can I help you? My question is about earnings and not videos. I want to know, after earnings analysis, how long typically late, like when you say it's smoke clear and when it comes to the idea of the same thing and what it looks like, what do you look for when it comes to the top of the flag? Okay. How long? Wait, after an idea. Okay. So, you know, I find that after an IPO, you really have to be very careful because what you've got are a lot of analysts who kind of want to say positive things and they tend to lose their critical faculties. My advice is very clear that when you get a stock that stands substantially from where it opened, that's how you look at it. Because a lot of times the opening is controlled by people who are just way too enthusiastic. A company with actual earnings and a good balance sheet that trades at a premium to the stock market but has a premium growth rate, that might be okay. But otherwise, no thank you. I'll find better stocks. How about Dreda in West Virginia? Dreda? Well, good evening. Good evening, Andrew. First of all, for everything that you do, I think you're a national treasure. I have learned so much from looking to your show. You're very fine. Thank you. Oh, when you want to generate cash, how do you decide what stocks to sell? Okay, we talk about this a lot on the club and I tend to rate my stocks one to four following their fundamentals. Always willing to sell a four or even a three on any live. What I try to look at is I look at like paintings. I'm like Katie in collection. I don't want to buy a new painting without selling an old painting. I don't want to have a museum. And what I look for are companies that reported a bad quarter, okay, that was disappointing to me, that have a little bit of lift that I can start lightening up from. Because I don't want to sell a company that just reported a good quarter. I'm looking for companies that disappoint. They're always there and you have to have the discipline too. Sell, sell, sell. As hard as it might be. Timothy in New York. Timothy. Yeah. Hi, Mr. Kramer. Thanks for taking my question. Sure. I want your opinion on quants. My understanding of quants is that they screen dozens of parameters on thousands of stocks and use algorithms to rank them in terms of valuation growth, momentum, profitability, revisions and so on. Outcomes are graded by hold or sell recommendation. Some quant portfolios have a very good acceptable performance. It seems to me that at a bare minimum, these are a valuable tool. On the other end, why wouldn't an investor use them exclusively? That's a great question. Look, I think that a lot of times the quants go up and down, trade too much. They recommend stocks and then the chart says no or the numbers say no. I like to buy great companies with great management that have good secular tailwinds behind them. And the quants don't necessarily catch those, but I do think that everything and whether it be quants, whether it be charts, whether it be everything that is from research. I like to include it all. And if some quants have some great records and they share us with what they share us data that they're using, I'm a buyer too. Okay, so now you know the first method that Kramer's made is watch for stocks that have pulled back from that pre-selected list of good companies called the New Eyeless. It's best because of a broad market self and not because of something happening at the company itself. Some of my best picks have come out of this process. I hope some of yours came too. All man tonight, I'm giving you an in-depth look at many more methods my man is. From watching short, sit trading around, keep positions. If you want a better, more well-rounded sense of how to cure at your own stock portfolio, you do not want to miss the rest of this show. So stick with Kramer. Don't miss a second of Mad Money. Follow @chimcramer on X. Have a question? Tweet Kramer. #MadMensions. Send Jim an email to madmoney@cnbc.com or give us a call at 1-800-743-cnbc. Miss something, head to madmoney.cnbc.com. Welcome back to tonight's methods to man in this special. I'm reviewing some of my best tricks for buying and selling stocks. I'm trying to give you the real sure ones. You can call it truly tireless investing wisdom for the ages, but I'm too humble to say that. If my audience were older, I tell you to think of me as the pen and teller of the stock market, or the physique that's a whole lot more like teller than pen. I want to pull back to curtain to show you how professional looks for stocks to buy and knows what to sell. There's no magic, there's no hidden talent, just a bunch of disciplines. They can help you try to make mad money if you master them. You don't have to be a genius, you don't even have to be all that smart to be completely honest. You just need to know what the heck you're doing and put in some homework. And that's where Kramer of the Sav of Wise clown comes in, maybe less of a sad clown these days, and more like the Fool from King Learr. Something to think about, enough Shakespeare. Let's move on to more important things, like how to find stocks that are great buys. Now, earlier I was talking about picking up off some stocks that are pulled back from the new highless, because you get a cheaper entry point, something that's already been approved in winter. I said you rarely want to buy names right off the new highless, because you're paying too much for them. You usually get a better chance, better deal, if you're patient and wait for some, oh, wait this, you know, five day percent. Given how volatile the market can be, even when things are going well, there are very few occasions when buying a stock right off the new highless can be justified. You have some patience. But sometimes the stock's so hot that you got to buy it, even whenever you can. As soon as you can, because it's not heading lower anytime soon, I've felt that and you've felt it. You won't find these often. But when you find them, you have to remember not to buy all at once. You want to buy a hundred shares of a stock. You think it's got so much mojo that it won't get it pulled back from the high? Hey, how about this? Buy 25 shares. Worst that happens, it goes higher still, and you don't get to buy more, so you grab a quick profit and find the next one. Believe me, there is always another one coming down the bike. No, I got one exception, where it's okay to buy stock that's hitting a new high. If you see insiders buying the stock, when it's already up a great deal, that's a total green light. Don't laugh. It does happen. It's rare, but it does happen. In my experience, it's rare still that this method of picking stocks doesn't work out. I love it when I see insider buying after a decent run. That is a terrific side of the confidence that the insiders have that the rally may be just beginning or that there's a big runway ahead, and they sure think it's going to be a long-lasting FYI. Insiders can't flip a stock that they buy immediately. They have to wait at least six months. Otherwise, the government takes away the gains. That's the law. So these people are seeing positive things that likely aren't going to disappear in six months' time. Boy, do I like that. Normally, insider buying ranges from meaningless to a small, but it's better on its own insufficient reason to buy a stock. Sometimes you'll catch insiders buying their stock because they want to give the impression of confidence, creating an illusion that they're doing better than they really are. Insiders aren't stupid. They're noticing that they're seen buying their own stock, even small amounts, and the market will smile upon them. So occasionally, they game the system. That's fair, but it means we ignore most insider buying that is not substantial because it could be pure flim-flam. That's a word. That's that. When you get truly colossal insider buying, even if it's not at the high, then you might want to take another look at the stock from question. When the insiders buy a whole lot of shares, what a powerful endorsement. Crucially, the volume of the insider buying that really does declare its sincerity. Well, we're only focusing on one sort of insider buying right now, the kind you see in stocks that have been running and aren't perceived as being historically cheap or low-dollar workplace. Those sometimes can be down there for a reason. See, there's nothing more arrogant and yet telling than when an insider backs up the truck for their own stock when it's been rolling along at a good clip. Think about it. What they're saying is, yeah, we know we rock. Our stock has been in Fuego, and we're so darn confident it'll keep going higher that we're going to buy shares right now handed for FEST. That arrogant? Sure. But this, it's rare, but it is bankable Ubers. Corporate insiders aren't fools, but some notable exceptions are probably the man-money wolf, shame. Plus, if their stocks are already on the tear, there's probably a good chance the executives know what they're doing. Of course, not everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt in this business, and after so many investors got burned by the 2021 boom in IPOs and SPACS. I know that a lot of people assume most CEOs and execs are really a bunch of liars for all its crooks, mouth banks. But look, that's the wrong lesson to draw from the IPO implosion. Healthy skepticism, one thing. A total unwillingness to believe anything positive is something else entirely. If you're going to invest in the stock bar, you need to be willing to extend some measure of trust to the people who run the companies that you own shares, and otherwise, why bother? Just go buy the index fund. What else could be going on in this burn-sided buy? Even when the FTC and the Just Department and the Trust Division are hostile to mergers, you still get some takeovers. Sometimes executives will buy their own stock because they hear footsteps of a potential acquirer. They've been told by bankers there's a lot of companies interested in them without anything specific. Maybe they've been contacted by companies and they turn those companies down. Spurned overtures happen all the time. And if executives expect that they may be next, well, it's a healthy and honest reason to buy. Or maybe they realize that the business is indeed worth more than they thought and can be broken up by bringing out some value. We've seen tons of these break-ups over the years, and they genuinely produce long-term gains because Wall Street likes more, more straightforward companies that are easier to get your head around. Think about carrier, about Otis, about the old United Technologies. Maybe the executives see the ability to create value, and they want it on themselves. Or maybe the stocks run just a bit, but they don't think the run is over because they recognize how much better the business will be once it's broken up. For me, buying after a big rally can certainly feel a little reckless and even lazy. Most investors are smart enough to wait for a pullback before they pull the trigger. But, insider buying after a decent run tells me that one of the people who knows the business best doesn't believe there will be a pullback, and there's nothing more bullish than that. I'm sure I do want to wait until the stock sells off after the insiders have bought, but that's the best of all possible worlds. It doesn't happen all that often. I've seen it happen in some red-hot tech stocks that cool up very momentarily, and that's a terrific sign to buy. Bottom line, one more method of Kramer's Mantis. When you see insider buying in a stock that has already had a solid run, admittedly a rarity, you might want to do some buying, too. My money's back after the break. Coming up, need another tool in your belt to help identify the right time to buy a stock? Kramer's revealing how short interest in a name could be your telltale sign to buy it. Next. When you're hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search. Match. With Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Use Indeed for scheduling, screening, and messaging to connect with candidates faster. 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And with Bluehost Cloud, your sites can handle surges in traffic no matter how big. Plus, you automatically get daily backups in world-class security. Get started now at Bluehost.com. Breaking news, the peanut butter group and Chocolatey Corp have merged to create PBC Inc. And the byproduct of the merger is the new delicious JIF peanut butter and chocolate-flavored spread. I got the press release and get this. Critics tried to say it creates a monopoly on cravability. But obviously, it's not illegal to be irresistible. Calling it now, this will revolutionize the snack industry and the contents of my pantry. Visit pbcincorporated.com to try the flavor merger of the century, JIF PB&C. You're in luck because you call Kramer on a good night. I'm not going home to sit that cheap scotch on my dirty linoleum floor. And by the way, I apologize to doers, which I once suggested was linoleum floor scotch of choice. It's actually pretty good stuff. It's been that boutique, 18-year-old. Hey, have you guys ever tried the 18-year-old, Jamison? Sweet. All right, don't waste that while I'm in the dirty linoleum floor, either. Nope, I'm in a great mood. A manic mood, even, which is me at my best because, well, let's just say I'm pretty darn productive in pressure when I'm in high here. I'm so rev-duck that I'm revealing many of my secrets, the methods to my madness. Better than give me a stock pace. I'm giving you some of the best ways I know to pick stocks. I'm teaching you invest in trade like Kramer, if not to be like me, because I have some emotional issues that, frankly, you probably would prefer not to emulate someone off track. So far, I've given away two of my precious secrets, two of the tools that I used in my hedge fund, and still use my travel trust, which, of course, you can follow by joining the CBC investing club. Where, unlike Lady Gaga, I play with an open hand, not a poker face, allowing subscribers to see all my trades before they happen. What I'm teaching you tonight are really what I call "tells." There are signals that a stock might be worth owning, that it's worth your time and effort to go through the often boring process of reading through the conference call transcripts and quarterly filings to do the necessary homework. There are thousands of stocks out there, and any method we can use to narrow down the ones that might be attractive to us is a method worth having. I've talked about insider buying near the high, and while I don't usually use insider buying, it's the only way to determine whether or not a stock has got it going. There's one other scenario where insider buying makes for an incredibly bullish tell, and that's when the stock has a heavy short position. Meaning a lot of people out there have borrowed shares, sold those shares, and are now waiting for those shares to go lower before they buy back the stock, return them to the bank they borrowed them from, and collect the difference between the price they sold them at first, and the price they bought the stock back later. You can think of shorting as like regular investing, only in reverse. We try to buy low and sell high, right? It's not what we do. Shorts just turn it around. They try to sell high, and then buy low. When a stock has a high short position, that means a lot of smart people have serious conviction that the stock's headed lower. In fact, it takes more conviction to short a stock than it does to go long, because when you're short, the potential downside is infinite. When you're long, a stock stops losing money when it hits zero. Shorts lose money when stocks go higher, and there's no littler, right? The other thing about short sellers is that if there's a lot of them, then a stock all of a sudden gets some great news. We get what's called a short squeeze, and it sounds exactly like what it is. In order to close out the positions, the shorts have to buy. This is called short covering. When a lot of shorts cover at the same time in a panic, the stock will surge, because what you really have is a lot of people desperate to buy the stock to cut down their losses. A lot of demand. They have to buy unless they want the performance to be wiped out. This process is so predictable that sometimes, concerted buyers will foment a short squeeze. Hey, listen, that's what GameStop was all about. That's what AMC was all about. That's what the meme stocks were all about. So where does insider buying fit in the short selling equation? Okay, let's say you have a stock with a high short interest, then some of the people who run the company start buying shares for themselves. Or maybe an outsider takes up more than 10% stake in the business, and indicates it wants more. It's almost like drawing a line in the sand for the short saying, our stock goes this low and no lower. This is an explosive combination, people. And one that often leads to a short squeeze that sends the stocks much higher. Shorts are smart. In fact, they often tend to be smarter than regular long side investors, but they usually don't know more about a business than the insiders who run it. If a lot of people are shorting a stock, and management starts buying it in sizable amounts, you start doing your homework right then, right there, feeling. So usually it makes sense to side with management. Then you can ride it higher and higher in true Jackie Wilson style, higher and up, lifting the up. As the shorts panic and push shares higher, in their desperation to cover their positions, cut their losses and move on. Similarly, when a company with a heavily shorted stock announces a jig-gun to buy back, better than any previous one, that's another line in the sand situation where management is contradicting the shorts. Companies often repurchase their own shares, and while not all buybacks are more, some of them are just outright waste of money. A substantial new buyback in the face of the shorts is often a good reason to take a closer look. Now, a note of caution, you need to be very careful when dealing with a company that's in the crosshairs of the short sellers, especially when people are nervous in the markets in bad shape. Know the landscape. The shorts have the ability to wreck a stock. Even if the fundamentals of the underlying business are fantastic. These days, stock owners no longer have the benefit of rules. They used to slow down short selling and make it harder to create bear raids. When I got started in this business, it was much harder to bet against stocks, but the SEC gutted those rules under both Democratic and Republican administrations, all the way of creating more efficient markets. Without these protections where you can't smash the stock down, the shorts can easily assassinate stocks and they smash them down. Anytime something goes wrong, we see it during the financial crisis back in 2008. Oh my God, that was such a horrible period. And we saw a smaller version of that during the many banking crisis of 2023. For the shorts, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. So many regional banks traded like they're going backward, but other than a few near wells like the First Republic, they were fine. Of course, in recent years, the short sellers have found themselves targeted by bull raids, facilitated by social media platforms, so they have to be careful. But all the way in the meme stock crowd goes after them in force, and you never know when that's going to surface. These are highly unusual situations though. You can still find great opportunities in stocks where the shorts have overreached and the insiders are buying, but before going into one of those situations, I have to warn you that the balance of power still favors the short sellers. That means even if the short sellers are wrong about a company's prospects, they can still demolish its stock, especially if they mount highly visible campaigns against the stock. And look, many times the shorts are right. The stock deserves to be slaughtered. Just don't underestimate the amount of damage the shorts can do to the stock. In the end, the best protection against bear raids are stocks that pay good, solid dividends, because when you short a stock, you have to pay those dividends to wherever you borrow the stock from. That's a terrific deterrent. When you see a stock with a big dividend that's being attacked by shorts and yields going higher, that's often a terrific place to be, especially when the insiders are snapping up stock too. So maybe the bottom line here. Insider buying plus heavy short interest can equal ranging bull buy as long as you avoid situations where the shorts are determined to crush the stock at any cost. Let's go to Debbie in Colorado. Debbie. Hey, Jim. My husband and I are proud members of the club. We absolutely love being members. It's so much fun. Thank you. Jeff Marks, I'll piss it on to Jeff Marks by my colleague. That's fantastic. My question for you today is I have a 31 year old son and he's finally starting to listen to me. So I was wondering if you had some tips and tricks for us to get him involved in the market. You've got a goodly some of money to spend and he's really excited about getting involved. Well, that's fantastic. If he has a science ban, I mean, there's so much he can do. I would first look at biotech, which has got some amazing, amazing situations. By the way, like Dan and her because that serves the biotech companies. I like Vertex. I think you should look at Vertex. That's a terrific company. And yeah, well, let's just not forget. You do want to have a diversified portfolio. It's okay to be able to take a look at some of the stocks that you and I both know. Like a Honeywell is still really incredibly cheap that we have. Maybe you have a stock that's a bit of a flyer like a footlocker. So build a diversified portfolio, but emphasize the science that I think you'll be in good shape. Now we're going to go to Vincent in New York, Vincent. Hey, Kramer, how are you? I'm good, Vincent. How are you? I'm well. What advice would you give a 26 year old that's been day trading for about two years and is looking to, you know, do better and go as far with this as you can? Well, let's look. If you're day trading, it's a full-time occupation. So what you want to do is put some money in the Vanguard Total Return Fund and put some money in the Vanguard S&P 500 Fund. And just keep putting money away every single month. If you have some good day trades and you've made a lot of money, take off some of that capital and put it in those Vanguard accounts. That's the way I would suggest to it because I want you to have exposure to the broader market, not just to the stock you're trading. All right, look, in most cases, the stock with insider buying and heavy short interest equals buy. As long as you can avoid situations where the shorts are determined and crushed, the stock that you owe. Much more made money ahead. I saw some tools in my belt that I want to share with you, including my method of trading around a core position to stick around. Right there, viewers know that this shows all about investing. Or any stocks for the long haul, not really short-term trading, because it's much easier to be a good investor than to be a good trader, especially when you're doing it part-time. However, knowing how to trade makes you a better investor. And trading around a core position is one of the most basic and useful disciplines out there, especially in markets that often get hit by wild swings. And that's most markets in recent years. So what does it mean to trade around a core position? Okay, let's go through it step by step. First, you need a stock. Pick one that you like, one that you had an opinion about. One where you have a bias, a stock you believe is headed higher over the long term. What you're really searching for here is a great company with shares that might get tossed around by market volatility, even as you believe they'll ultimately go higher if you're patient. Now, if you were just investing, then you just have to position the stock. Buying gradual increments, because we all know that buying all at once, it's just pure arrogance, and that'd be it. By the way, this whole process of buying in increments is something that we're constantly showing you how to do if you belong to the CNBC investing club. We also talked about trading around positions. Take something like NVIDIA. That's a chip maker with a fantastic long term story. It doesn't make the most powerful, saving conductors on Earth. They'll be needed for cutting edge applications like artificial intelligence. I love NVIDIA for the long haul, but it's got insanely volatile stock. Now, let's say you want to own a hundred shares of NVIDIA over time. Then the way to set a position would be by 25 shares four times over a period of weeks, or even months, and that's your core position as an investor. But let's say you want to trade, something that's hard to do, but also cheaper than it's ever been, because home gamers can now fit in, yeah, you can fit it in and fill it out. There's no stock commissions. Now, I wouldn't recommend pure trading something like NVIDIA. My stance is on it, don't trade it. But trading around a core position is a different story. So let's go back. You own the hundred shares of NVIDIA, and let's assume it's sitting at, I don't know, about $500 for the purpose of it. It's $500. Every time the stock jumps another 5%, you could sell 25 shares, a quarter of your position. You shave a little off to bring in some profits. So once NVIDIA hits 5.25, you don't own 75 shares. Keep scaling out of the same way as on the way up, but don't ever sell the final 25, because that is your core position. Then you wait until something happens to knock the stock back down, and as long as nothing's changed with the underlying thesis, you use that week, this is stock a couple more NVIDIA. We've done this for the chart with Trust. It's going to happen pretty often, because since we're in a world where stocks can get crushed by all kinds of factors, nothing to do with fundamentals, that's what happens. Now, as the stock comes down, the original cost basis, you buy it back in increments. Since we started with 100 shares, let's keep using increments of 25 to buy it back. On every 5.5% decline, you can go beyond 100 shares if it comes down low enough too. Now, this might bear me small potatoes, up 5% sell 25 shares, down where you started by 25 shares, and repeat the process of the way back up. But over time, your profits will add up, and that's what trading around a core position is all about. Now, a lot of people think trading is incredibly exciting, and it can be, but if you're good at trading around a core position, you should be pretty bored. All you're really doing is watching the stock move and then trimming or adding your position accordingly. Contrary to the image of trading as something that's reckless and irresponsible, trading around a core position is really the height of prudent portfolio adjustment. Worrying, by the way, is good in this business, exciting, stated for the stadium. Obviously, you can scale these numbers depending on how big your position is, but the basic idea is to avoid putting yourself in a spot where you have too much on the table in case the stock gets swatted down or too little on the table to take advantage of any upside that comes your way. Trading around a core position is an important basic strategy that everyone can use, even those of you who find a notion of trading totally abhorrent, because it's less trading and more just a supplement to investing. So, here's the bottom line. Now, you know the basics of how to trade around a core position. Yet another method to my madness, one that allows you to generate lots of small gains that I am telling you will add up over time. Yeah, money is back after the break. Coming up, Kramer's revealed his tools to the trade of buying a stock. But what about selling them? Kramer's breaking down how to get out of a stock at the right time, when mad money returns. I've got one more trick to teach you tonight. One more method to my madness, and this time I wanted to talk about selling. How do you know when it's all hot stock? Yes, we have that all the time. How do you get out before the party ends? So that you're not one of the last people around who gets stuck cleaning up the mess. Now, this is a question that is being answered because there's a lot of money to be made by owning hot stocks with lots of momentum. But when you play the momentum game, you need to know when it's time to leave the table. There are always naysayers, and eventually the naysayers are almost always proven, right? Because sooner or later, versus all hot stocks, implode momentum with the hot stocks here. Remember everything at Warden 2021, Claps to 2022? That's what I'm talking about. But the collapse usually occurs later rather than sooner. And all the negative talking heads who kept you out of momentum stocks with the recklessness, disguises, prudence, actually cost you a great opportunity to make money. People shy away from these stocks because they don't know where they're going to stop. They don't know whether they're going to top out. It's understandable. And I'd be afraid to buy them, too, if I didn't have a discipline. That let me know when to get out. I'll give you, I do have one, and you're about to learn it. First, when I'm talking about hot stocks, I really mean hot speculative stocks. Stocks of companies up with fairly low market capitalizations. Usually these stocks begin with very little research covers from major Wall Street Brothers houses. They often don't even have earnings. They may not even have sales. I would never buy these for the travel trust. We're not talking about that. These names can go up for a very long time. They can catch fire and stay on fire for years when they have the wind at their back. The key to figuring out when interest is peak and it's time to sell. It's not from the stock. It's by watching the analyst coverage. You have to use your own judgment here. But a good rule of thumb is that once one of these hot stocks has at least a half dozen analysts covering it, the run is going to peter out because the stocking question is becoming too well known. It's the rare speculative winner that can keep winning after it gets big. You can find out how many guys are on a stock by looking it up online. This isn't hard to find information. This formula has worked for me for as long as I can remember. As far as I can tell, it works because the number of analysts on a stock is a good gauge of how much awareness and interest there is in the name. Hot stocks get tapped out when there's nobody left to be attracted to them to go buy more. When all the people would be interested in buying have already bought. They come out of nowhere tracking more and more attention. More and more backers and eventually everyone who wants a piece of this stock has a piece of it array. And that happens. It runs over and it's time to go home. Oh, and if the meme stock guys get their hands on it, take advantage of their enthusiasm to ring the register. That's a great sign that you want out because they can only push a stock up so much before they run out of firepower. Of course, there are other situations where speculative stocks go out of favor all at once. Regardless of how much attention you get it. In 2021, we had a huge run in anything related to electric vehicles. Think car makers, battery plays, charging stations. Same goes for enterprise software stocks. Now, a lot of this was fueled by an easy money environment with near zero interest rates. There was a lot of liquidity kicking around back then. And it had to go somewhere, which is why so many money losing companies had red hot stocks. But then the Federal Reserve declared war on inflation in November of 2021. Letting you know that the age of near zero interest rates has come to an end. At that point, we knew that the speculative force was about to be drained out of the entire market because that's what always occur when they tighten rates. Now, a very quick thing told you we're in a new environment where anything speculative was toast. And instead, you wanted to own real companies that make things or do stuff out of profit. Now, I know it wasn't the most elegant way to phrase it, but these names held up much better than speculative plays. They got obliterated in 2022. But putting aside the interest rates issue, when the Fed is not tightening and it's safe to speculate, you need to watch how many analysts are following these little speculative stocks to know when the run is going to end. Bottom line, once a red hot speculative stock gets too much attention, it means the rally's likely on its last legs. Because there are only so many people who are willing to buy these things, and eventually the bulls, they run out of firepower. Stick with Kramer. I always say we have some of the smartest viewers in television, and I love taking your questions, listening to your pitches and hearing what Kramer Americans want to know about. So joining me today, just to do this, is Jeff Marks, portfolio director for CMBC Investment Club, we're answering some of your burning questions and your hashtag #MadMensions. Jeff does a great job helping out with the trust, tossing around ideas, doing some great analysis from Mad Money viewers, and members of the trust. If you're not a member already, I mean, what are you waiting for? So let's start right now with Tim and Alabama. And I think his really question goes, how do you decide whether to take profit rather than keep a stock longer to receive capital gains tax treatment? These are always hard issues, because I think that you have to worry about that kind of thing with your accounting professional. Because what I care about is whether the stock's going to go up or down. And I believe that if the stock's going to go down, you should take it off the table, even if you have a big game. That's what matters to me. Of course, you want to see qualified advice for something like that. But for the charitable trust that you could follow along with at home, we don't really play the tax game too much because everything gets donated to the gains. It's donated to charity at the end of the year. Yeah, I mean, look, I think I've always felt, from real money, my first book about investing, that never fear the tax man, fear the losses. All right, next up we're taking a question from Russell, who asked, I always try to follow your advice to buy stocks in portions rather than all at once. Very good. Often these stocks never pull back enough to buy more. I end up with small positions in lots of different stocks making it hard to match. What would you recommend? Okay, this is another one where this is a discipline that I came up with, which says that it's a way to figure out whether you missed the move or not. Like if you come in and the stock keeps going on, there's no doubt about it that you are late. There's just nothing you can do if you don't get it all in. I've accepted that consequence. If I'm late, then all I do is I have a small gain. That's just the way I look at it. Yeah, it's a high quality problem to have. If you're able to continue to do the homework, then you can still hold them, especially if the prospects are quite good. But yeah, it's a challenge because you don't want to spread yourself too thin with a whole different number of stocks. But if they're going higher, it's a quality issue that we deal with sometimes. It's a discipline. What happens if you buy it all once and it goes down? It's a good chance that that could happen. And we're trying to avoid that. That's the real worry. Now, let's take a question from Randy in Ohio asks, I know that when bonds sell off, the rate goes up. If bonds do so, why would it impact stocks? Okay, there are many different ways you can answer this. One is that if interest rates go up for something that is risk-free a bond, then that has greater appeal than a dividend, which may be equal because the dividend, well, you know what? That's only part of the equation of what a stock returns. And if the stock goes down big, then you wipe out whatever gain you get from the dividend. And then, of course, there's long-term considerations, as you know, just about the value of a bond versus stock further out. It's competition for dollars like you brought up, but you mentioned, but interest rates are also used in a discounted cash flow model where investors, they look at the cash flows out, they estimate them, they discount them back. And when the interest rates higher, they get discounted at a higher rate. That lowers the present value, that lowers the value of stocks. But there's also things like financing costs, if it's used, if a company relies on financing to sell their products, higher rates might hurt their business as well. You just have to just think stocks aren't as competitive in many different ways than bonds if rates go up. I mean, it's really, that's the way you have to look at it. Even if you don't finally actually understand discounted cash flows, you kind of have to take it for granted that that's what occurs. Next, Lynn in Virginia wants to know, if I only have five shares of something remaining and you recommend taking some profits, should I close out the position or let it ride? These are just questions that are so hard because, you know, five shares reminds me of like the tail end of when we have some wind. You know, it's like a tail end, and what do you do? And the five shares is really so that if the stock goes down, you can buy more. So if the stock goes up and we recommend sell, I would just get rid of it. I really would. I would just say, let's move on and find something better because there's always something better. No, it's absolutely a fair debate. If they are growing the dividend, growing profits, the outlooks are bright, maybe you could sell one or two, but you also don't want to fall into that trap of from the earlier question that we just had about managing too many positions. So there's always cross disciplines happening right now. And that's one of the things that people don't understand about investment is that there is no right to wrong. There's often two rights that compete against each other. Now, I have a question from Kyle who asks, do you have a similar approach to investing in index funds as you do stocks where you would wait until the oscillator is very oversold? Or would you just dollar cost average in index funds? Now, this is very funny because this is where I've got two disciplines. What I like to do, if I'm putting money in every month, if there's a month that's down more than 10%, I double. And let's say August is down 10%. I take July's contribution, keep that, August's contribution, and then I take September's contribution, and I take September and August together. And I just feel like that's a good level. So you might be, let's say you have 1/12, 1/12, 1/12, 2/12. Well, there you go. Well, I mean, stocks generally should be more attractive as the prices come in. You wouldn't run from a sale at a department store. But on the other hand, what I would say if it's in index funds, it's more about time in the market than necessarily trying to time it oversold, over bought. You just want to be invested in that. Absolutely. And I think that that's a really important issue. We do not, by my method, try to imply that we're necessarily timing the market, just trying to put a little more money in it at that one level. Right. But certainly do the rest. 1/12. Yeah. Just the way you should do it. What can I say? Like I said, there's always more market somewhere. I promise I'll find it just for you. Right here, I may have money. I'm Jim Kramer, and we're going to see you next time. All opinions expressed by Jim Kramer on this podcast are solely Kramer's opinions and do not reflect the opinions of CNBC, NBC, Universal, or their parent company or affiliates. And may have been previously disseminated by Kramer on television, radio, internet, or another medium. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Jim Kramer as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. Kramer's opinions are based upon information he considers reliable, but neither CNBC nor its affiliates and/or subsidiaries warrant its completeness or accuracy, and it should not be relied upon as such. To view the full Mad Money disclaimer, please visit cnbc.com/madmoneydisclaimer. Imagine earning a degree that prepares you with real skills for the real world. 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