You Got Screwed: Why Wall Street Tanked and How You Can Prosper [Hardcover]

I took this book with me on a 7 day Caribbean cruise and had a great time reading it under the coconut trees of St. Maarten and Antigua. Being away from CNBC, Wall Street Week, and the constant media attention to the stock market was a welcome reprise.

And so was this book.

At first glance this book may seem a little bit light on information. It's only 117 pages long at a time when we expect about 300 pages from a typical John Wiley-type finance book. But it's not the number of pages that counts, it's the information, personal interpretations by Cramer, and solid financial wisdom that matter.

By the time I actually got around to reading this book (on those great beaches), I must say that I truly enjoyed it!

The book is divided into 3 very distinct parts.

The first part is about how the public got totally used by Enron, Worldcom, and Rhythms Net type scandals. Since all of these events were so recent it doesn't take long before you start recalling all the pieces of information that came out about these cases. Mr. Cramer does a nice job of taking us all back to those days and recapping what went wrong. Each one was revealing in its own unique way. And yes, we got used!

The second part pinpoints the other culprits in the stock market's two and a half year demise (and giant NASDAQ crash!). Cramer reminds as of the all-stocks-all-the-time mentality that came to be at the market's peak. Also the potential danger of executive options, shady accounting, too many one-way mutual funds, and always bullish brokerage firms. And by the way, these culprits are still at today!!!

And finally, there is the last section about what to do. Here is current advice and simple guidelines to avoid getting used again in the future. Some of the gems are:

1) Have some bonds for income
2) Have some cash for annual buying opportunities
3) Buy stocks in incremental "get your feet wet" amounts
4) Buy at least 5 stocks from 5 different industries
5) It's okay to sell
6) Sell some on the way up
7) Sell your losers because bad stocks may not go up at all
8) Know your stocks and how they make money so you have a feeling of their value.
9) Buy index funds for diversification and low expenses
10) Hedge funds are better than mutual funds in concept. Here's something to research more on. Mutual funds are financial products who's time has gone.

For those readers who want an enjoyable read, who watch CNBC, have an interest in tech stocks, and feel like they were used and want to avoid it in the future, here's a book for you. It's a reminder of how to keep your head when things get too crazy on either the upside or downside.

A very timely piece!

P.S.: As a fellow author I can understand Mr. Cramer's disappointment in the reviewing process. Some people think it's a sign of brilliance to degrade intellectual property when it's simply a matter of them just not getting it. My advice to these negative types is to stand aside if you're not going to be fair. Let the reader have a chance to appreciate the author's work....the content and the spirit.

Now that the greatest bear market is (probably) over, and I lost my share of money in it, I understand what Cramer was saying back then. I mean in 2000. In March. In 2001.

This book is small, and I had missed a lot of games that wcom and enron played with unsuspecting people. I was already out of markets as I could not survive earlier waves of selling.

I went back and read Cramer's writings in March, 2000. Most people think he is just a pumper - I was surprised that he repeatedly urged people to get out of markets - "cash is king" was his mantra during the bearish cycle. And he nailed it both, the great bull ride and the bear ride, with almost correct timing.

You can hate him, he did what he had to do at his hedge fund, a lot of what may be immoral - he had to, it his job. But his writing has been on the mark - you can't deny that.
As for the plug, he mentions thestreet.com few times which is a FREE news site. I do not recall him mentioning realmoney.com ever in this book, which is paid content. At the end, he just "mentions" his own investment product "alerts", but that is only if you want to do it with him. His first choice is always a seasoned investment adviser whom you can trust.

I am not his employee, just a general trader. I would now trust Cramer more than any other Wall St analyst or a journalist who doesn't know a thing about the markets.

This tome simply reeks of hypocrisy. Yes, Jack Grubman is due for some criticism. But when The Wall Street Journal attempted to subject grubman to some accountability at a time that it might have saved the little guy some money, it was Cramer who came to Grubman's defense and proclaimed him a great moneymaker through his little fiefdom at The Street.com.

That is just one example of Cramer trying to cast himself as the great savior of the individual investor while refusing to even acknowledge his own vast role in destroying the wealth of anyone who paid for his advice over the past few years. It is easy for Cramer to fault Ken Lay after the fact, but harder to confront his own repeated calls for new bull markets that never appeared. It is easy for Cramer to feign indignance over Worldcom, but much harder to admit that his own model portfolios have probably cost people millions. It is easy for Cramer to cast aspersions on the behavior of institutions during the bubble, but harder to face the fact that people who bought his IPO on the first day near $70 might now still be siting with a $3 stock.

This book is 117 pages of after-the-fact finger pointing by a man who has as much to be sorry for as anyone who was in the Wall Street game in the last few years. But to be Cramer is to never say you are sorry, to sublimate your own role in the financial destruction of the individual investor in a fury of cynical indignation and obnoxious bluster.