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Title: Trading with the Enemy: Seduction and Betrayal on Jim Cramer's Wall Street by Nicholas W. Maier ISBN: 0-06-008651-3 Publisher: HarperBusiness Pub. Date: 05 March, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.73 (74 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: rare look inside
Comment: Just finished reading this book - makes a good read, could not put it down. Contains pretty good description of methods with which Jim Cramer made his incredible returns. Actually, it is a sad story - the author used his position of being a son of a good friend of the main investor to get this job, and Jim Cramer made a mistake of giving him a job. Both paid dearly - Nick Maier - by working in hell for 5 years, and Cramer - by having him exposed. Usually books like this are not being written because when major Wall Street firms fire people, they make the severance package conditioned on a commitment not to write a book, a movie, etc. Jim Cramer made a mistake, so we can have a look inside.
Rating: 5
Summary: Inside Wall Street "laid bare"...
Comment: 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 of his substance abuse to his walking out the door in only a matter of a few pages. I would have liked him to expand on this a little more.
To be fair, I suppose that one should read Cramer's account of this period ("Confessions of a Street Addict") to get his perspective, but the overwhelming theme won't change I'll bet. For those who want to learn about the inner workings of Wall Street, this book will be a powerful introduction. Fast paced and imminently readable, one comes away from this work with a sort of bitter taste...one that says that it takes this kind of personality (Cramer's) to control the market and to make major money when there could be alternatives that could be equally successful.
Rating: 1
Summary: Book Doesn't Fullfill Title
Comment: Just finished this book and was so disappointed I decided to write this review.
Yes, Cramer is a jerk. Yes he's a nasty boss. That was the basic point of this book. So what? Go work for someone else. I read this book to hear the truth revealed about Cramer's dealings in the stock market and the truth behind the SEC investigations into Cramer's behavior. What I got was: He's a mean, screaming bully and, oh, by the way, the SEC investigated him and he was found innocent (but he did "worry" about the outcome). Hardly revealing or even interesting.
Hardly worth the cost of the book. Also the author seems to have a love - hate relationship going on with Cramer.
Save your money.
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Title: Confessions of a Street Addict by Jim Cramer, James J. Cramer, Jim J. Cramer, James J Cramer ISBN: 0743224876 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 13 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: You Got Screwed! Why Wall Street Tanked and How You Can Prosper by James J. Cramer ISBN: 074324690X Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 05 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Trade Like a Hedge Fund : 20 Successful Uncorrelated Strategies & Techniques to Winning Profits (Wiley Trading) by James Altucher ISBN: 0471484857 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 20 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $59.95 |
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Title: Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis ISBN: 0140143459 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein ISBN: 0375758259 Publisher: Random House Trade Pub. Date: 09 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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