Jim Cramer is one of the famous personalities of Television, who was born on 10th February 1955. He was a Manager of the hedge fund and Co-founder of TheStreet.com. He is also a best-selling author. He has done B.A from Harvard College and during that time, he started showing his interest in journalism. He was born in Jewish Family in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania. At the age of 11, he sold ice creams, just to make money. His first book was "Confessions of a Street Addict". After that, he wrote many books on various topics like “Sane Investing in an Insane World”, “Watch TV, Get Rich" by Jim and Cliff Mason” etc. His famous television show is known as Mad Money with Jim and is aired on CNBC.


Personal Life

In 1988, while working for Michael Steinhardt’s hedge fund, he met Karen Backfisch-Olufsen. Both fell in the love and got married, the same year. After their marriage, they decided to leave Michael Steinhardt’s and started working for Cramer and Co. They both supported each other, and he portrays his wife Karen as the world’s best wife. She helped her husband at the time of his popularity demise and stood beside him in every problem. In his book, he mentioned that his wife is aspiring to be a stock broker. He is very emotional about stocks, he has taken a few wrong decisions. However, his wife is always there and stood by his side and guided him. Her advice makes him strong and also helps him to recover from downfall.

In 1999, they were not allowed to convert their driveway to a yard from the zoning board. They sold their house in New Jersey and bought a new house. In his every book, he gave the credit to his wife for all the success, he achieved in his life. There were times even when he lost all his money. Karen was the only motivating factor for his husband. She is the perfect soul mate for him (made for each other).

There were rumors about the divorce of Jim, but the rumors proved to be false. It is well-known fact that there are many jealous people in the TV industry, who try to insult the people who are very successful. Thus, Jim can be considered as a victim of success. Thus, some people are wanting to break down the progress Jim is making and thus, spreading the news of his divorce and also saying that she had cheated on him for the sake of money, among other things. They complimented each other very well and Jim’s success has been credited to his tough and intelligent wife.

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To add more credits to his wife Karen, Jim had modified the clause of permission to his wife on to engage in extensive securities. Jim is supported by a very loving and caring wife and thus, is on the verge of being a very successful man. After all, as the adage goes ‘behind every successful man is a woman’. Overall she is the backbone for Jim.

Career

Jim worked on many entry-level reporting jobs as a rookie reporter after graduating government studies from prestigious Harvard College. But, his very first reporting job was at his alma mater Harvard College, where he was reporting and writing for The Harvard Crimson. He was a journalist there and research reporter alongside Alan Dershowitz. As a rookie reporter employed at “Tallahassee Democrat”, he proved himself as an excellent reporter; he was covering the serial murders of Ted Bundy. The executive editor of “Tallahassee Democrat”, Richard Oppel said that Jim, he was still a rookie at the time he covered Ted Bundy murder, will become one of the most successful reporters ever and worked for a short period of time for the “Los Angeles Herald Examiner”. 

Jim was also one of the first reporters “American Lawyers” had. Jim also proved himself as a successful economist at the time when he was attending Harvard Law school; he helped the owner of “The New Republic”, Martin Peretz, accumulate an enormous profit from his stock investments.After the graduation from Harvard Law School, Jim worked a short period of time at a law firm. After the law firm, he was employed at Goldman & Sachs in their Securities Sales Department. He worked at Securities Sales Department for 3 years long. In 1987, Jim unsatisfied with Goldman & Sachs wages decides to found his hedge fund company. He founded Cramer & Co. Some of Jim’s earliest clients at his fund company were his long-time friends, Elliot Spitzer and Martin Peretz. 

Together with Martin Peretz, Jim found website TheStreet.com, Inc. in the year of 1996. This website was one of his biggest achievements in life. Over the following years, successful financial website TheStreet.com got twin sites, such as MainStreet.com, Stockpickr, and bankingmyway.com. Jim retired from his career as an owner of Cramer & Co. in 2014. After he had signed off the position of CEO at Cramer & Co. his friend Berkowitz became company’s CEO. The company was renamed as Cramer, Berkowitz & Co.

CNBC Career

In 2005, Jim got a call from CNBC to be the host of their new television show “Mad Money”, where Jim would discuss and talk about financial investments and speculations about recently traded stocks. The show’s main character was to entertain and educate new investors in stock market. Mad Money was an interesting show for investors and was split into several show segments such as The Lightning Round, Game Plan, Execution Decision, Off the Charts and many other segments to educate investors.

Education

Jim's primary education was in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. After primary school education, Cramer attended Springfield Township High School in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Jim attended Harvard University twice, after graduating from Springfield Township High School. Jim got himself two degrees from Harvard University. First, he gained Bachelor of Arts degree in government, as magna cum laude student. After the Bachelor of Arts degree in government, He got another degree from Harvard Law School as Juris Doctor.

Last Modified: Apr 8, 2020


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