Trading with the Enemy: Seduction and Betrayal on Jim Cramer's Wall Street

by Josh Fund and Nicholas W. Maier

Book Overview

Employed by Cramer & Company for five years, the author tells the story of life within Jim Cramer's hedge fund, which at one time had almost half a billion dollars under management, and exposes the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060086513
• ISBN13: 9780060086510
• Release Date: March 2002
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Inside Wall Street "laid bare"...

To say that Jim Cramer is "intense" masks the true nature of this man's character...if what Nicholas Maier tells us is true, the general public should be very worried that people like Cramer are handling billions of dollars of assets and have an important say in the country's financial security. I was literally appalled at the nature of the day trading depicted in the fast-moving world of hedge funds and can think of no reason why the SEC let this continue when they had a chance to stop it. This is the type of emotion, I'd wager, that Maier solicited when he wrote this otherwise fine account of life on Wall Street. "Trading with the Enemy" is a fast-paced and wide-open telling of what it was like to work at Wall Street for Cramer and Co. in the mid 90's under the psychotic oversight of Jim Cramer and a testament to the abuses of money and power that this type of environment sows.The story starts innocently enough with a young, seemingly un-motivated recent college grad who's interested in the American dream of making it rich in the stock market. Nicholas Maier uses his connections to procure a job at Cramer and Co., then the leading hedge fund on Wall Street. Once in, Maier learns very quickly just how this high octane world operates and starts a 5 year period of constant self-justification working for a maniacal, but otherwise brilliant stock market trader. The reader is led down the path of insider trading and we learn all about the ins and outs of trading thousands of shares of stock for major profit. We also learn that to make this kind of money, it requires an almost insane boss who's insecurities abound as he's able to dismantle the complex world of stock trading and see the market as others don't. Mental and sometimes physical abuses (he has to avoid flying computer monitors on more than one occasion) are the norm that Maier has to endure in this company, but so is the high-energy environment that he craves and becomes addicted to. Slowly, the mental anguish overtakes the addiction and Maier becomes one of the many casualties that Cramer lays waste to in his career. What this results in is an almost unbelievable story of being subjugated to a character that often refuses to take his medication (much needed I might add) and one that assumes the attitude of a general going to war...frought with all the tactics and betrayals that "everything is fair in war" surmises. Cramer knows no bounds (mentally or physically) in getting what he wants and goes berserk at something as comparetively trivial as selling thousands of shares at an eighth of a point lower than he thought.To compensate, Maier turns to drugs and finally decides that he's had enough...fortunately for us, he majored in Writing and Literature in college and pens a revealing expository that should be required reading for all young brokers. In fact, the only criticism of this work that I can come up with is that the story ends too quickly...we go from hearing about the initial stages o

A Great Book for Cramer-Haters

If you are not familiar with James Cramer, you will likley find this book to be a short, boring story written by a hack writer desperate for money and/or attention.However, if you are one of the millions who has lost money taking Cramer's advice and then had to listen as he revised history and bragged about what a great call he made, you will love this book. The author knows what the Cramer-haters want to hear and he gives it to them. It is an awesome skewering of the despicable Cramer.If you ever wondered why Cramer showed no class when Dave Kansas and Adam Lachinsky left thestreet.com, you'll find out. If you ever wondered why Luskin, Holmes, Wolff et al were fired after disagreeing with Cramer, you'll find out. Not the specifics of these cases, but what type of human garbage Cramer really is.Whenever you are tempted to take Cramer's advice, just refer back to this book.

Required Reading for Everyone in the Business World!

I read this book in a day -- I could not put it down. Besides being extremely well written and at times down right hysterical (I had to set it down twice while I could not stop laughing!), it drives home a major point that too many people in the business world have only started thinking about since September 11 -- is it worth it? I hardly knew who Jim Cramer was and it doesn't matter. There are a million other business executives that "model" the kind of behavior Jim Cramer exhibited in this book. I know firsthand after 20+ years in Fortune 500 companies. But why do we sit back and tolerate, promote and enrich people who scream at their secretaries and copier repairmen, turn the air blue with their foul language, entertain themselves by belittling others and value money far above fundamental ethics or concern for fellow human beings? Maier's book is the perfect reading material for those who need a laugh over the ridiculous corporate cultures we've come to rationalize as acceptable -- and who may need the courage to walk away.

Explains a lot, if it's true.

I have no idea whether the allegations in the book are true. However, it would explain a lot of things.Ever since Cramer "retired" from the hedge fund in December 2000, his stock picks have been almost universally wrong. Every stock he recommended seemed to subsequently fall by 50% (Q,CEG,TYC,HAL,MER,EMC to name a few). Every time he screamed about his "naked affection" for the tape, stocks fell. Every time he got bearish and negative, stocks soared. It was uncanny. Cramer tried to revise history, hide his previous stock picks etc. but every new pick was just as bad. Cramer became a national joke. The highly reputable Kiplinger's said taking Cramer seriously was analogous to taking Danny Devito seriously in a slam-dunk competition. Even the NY Post jumped on the Cramer-bashing bandwagon.All the time, Cramer defended himself by bragging about his hedge-fund track record, allegedly 24%/yr from 1986-2000. Maybe Maier is right about how Cramer achieved that track record because it certainly wasn't his stock picking prowess.Or maybe the track record is a lie too. The NY Times exposed that Cramer's fund returned a pathetic 2% in 1999, a year when the Nasdaq was up 61% and Cramer was marketing himself as a tech genius. Cramer tried to stop the NY Times from printing the truth but to no avail. Same situation here? I don't know but it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Psycho Trader!!

If you're naive enough to think that Wall Street is anything but an insider's game, read TRADING WITH THE ENEMY and have your illusions shattered once and for all. This brief rip puts you in the seat next to Jim Cramer as he screams and threatens his way to a fortune. As you'll see, this is one cat who'll do anything to make a buck. And, while it's extremely entertaining to read about a guy who smashes computer equipment, throws pencils at secretaries, insults colleagues and manipulates stock prices, you come away feeling that he's the kind of toxic human being you'd never want to spend more than five minutes with in real life. How Maier spent five years with him, I'll never know.At least he got a terrific book out of it.