Mad Money w/ Jim Cramer 7/10/26

Which are America's top states for business? Get all the data and complete state-by-state analysis. See how your state measures up. America's top states for business. See the full list now at topstates.cnbc.com. My mission is simple, to make you money. I'm here to level the playing field for all investors. There's always a boom market somewhere, and I promise to help you find it. Mad Money starts now. Hey, I'm Kramer. Welcome to Mad Money. Welcome to Kramerica. Other than my friends, I'm just trying to make you a little bit of money. My job is not just to entertain, but I'm doing some teaching tonight. So call me at 1-800-743-CBC. Tweet me at Jim Kramer. Let me tell you why I do this show and why I wrote How to Make Money in Any Market. For most of my life, pretty much everybody in America recognized that picking individual stocks was a fantastic way to get rich. As long as you did it right, not everybody agreed on the right way to do it. But practically everyone accepted that it was certainly worth doing. Then the dot-com bubble burst in year 2000, and picking individual stocks suddenly went out of style, at least for regular people. Suddenly, there was a new conventional wisdom on Wall Street, the conventional wisdom of index fund supremacy. Almost overnight, legions of experts, backed up by an endless parade of non-investing journalists, came out of the woodwork making a pernicious argument that you are either too stupid or too imprudent to manage your own money. They claim that it's more or less impossible to consistently beat the market, so you might just as well park all of your money in an index fund that mirrors one of the major averages, like the S&P 500. The more extreme index fund absolutists like to say that no one can consistently beat the market, And if anyone looks like they can or say they can, it's pure luck. That means picking individual stocks is nothing more than gambling, where you have no edge. So why not settle for an index fund that can consistently give you 8% to 10% annual return? Sure, you won't get rich, but you'll steadily make money over time. I like that. After the dot-com bust and then the financial crisis, that argument became pretty darn compelling. This is the ideology, though, that is absolutist. And for that, I think it's wrong. I've been fighting it since Mad Money first went on the air. Why? Because as I explain how to make money in any market, it doesn't work. If you're willing to do the homework and it's never been easier to learn about the companies behind your stocks, individual stocks can change your life. They can make you rich in a way that no index fund ever could. And it happens. I have seen it endlessly with my own eyes. And, hey, it's absolutely possible to beat the averages. Take the S&P 500, the benchmark of all benchmarks. There are 500 stocks in the S&P. Most of them are not all that good. In fact, at any given moment, I don't think there are 500 good stocks in the entire market. So when you buy an S&P 500 index fund like this SPY, the SPY, you're buying the good with the bad, which brings me to the unvarnished truth. You will most likely not get rich just by owning index funds. That's why I still recommend putting 50 percent of your savings in index fund. I'm a believer. But that's purely as a hedge against the mistakes that do inevitably occur when you manage your own money. Picking stocks is higher risk than owning an index fund, so you need the index half as backup. But at the end of the day, an S&P 500 index fund is merely an amalgamation of a few good stocks with a lot of mediocre ones and plenty of flat-out bad ones. The stocks of fresh-faced wonders regularly get added to the index, but they're still outweighed by everything else. And that's the crux of my argument. If you follow your nose, eyes, and ears, if you know how to look for opportunities, then I believe you can trounce the indices. But if that's the case, how did index fund supremacy become the conventional wisdom? Simple. There's a whole industry of financial advisors who can't afford to waste time focusing on you, focusing on regular people. That's not where they make their money. So the most responsible thing they can do is tell you to park your money in an index fund. You'll do okay. Certainly better than you would keep it in cash or a checking account or a money market fund. And the financial advisor never has to hear from you again. I'm not saying this to blame those guys. I was one of them. It's not like the professionals are out to get you. Even if they wanted to help you, they can't because, you see, you're not rich enough. In my years at Goldman Sachs, I spent a lot more time trying to find billionaires to advise than helping regular people with their money. We called it elephant hunting. We were looking not for families with hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, But with hundreds of millions of dollars, and this was back in the 80s when a million bucks went a lot further than it does now, it takes just as much time to service someone with a small pot of gold as it does to help the oligarchs, which is why these firms devote so much time to helping the extraordinary wealthy, so little time to help everyone else. Unfortunately, our financial regime in this country is actually a lot like our health care system. It's impenetrable and it caters to the wealthy. Anybody else has to hope that their provider has an ounce of knowledge and enough empathy to share it with you. The difference is that it takes years to become a doctor, but it's much easier to become your own portfolio manager. An index fund is what the financial doctors prescribe when you don't have top-tier insurers. It's the best they can do under the circumstances. But you can do better on your own as long as you're willing to put the work in. While I respect index funds for what they are, they'll never give you enough juice to get you to really where you need to go. Consider them insurance against your individual stock portfolio blowing up in your face. They're a bit of a safety net. Your real gains, though, will come from the other half of your holdings, which I recommend putting in five individual growth stocks across a diversified set of industries and one non-stock hedge, like maybe gold or even crypto. The S&P 500 is the average choice. The stocks in the index are not selected for their greatness. They're selected because they mirror American business. The keepers in the index don't put a premium on growth stocks, even though growth stocks have historically been the best performers. Again, I don't blame them because that's not the point of the S&P 500. But I do blame the people who insist that index funds are the best you can do. While there are some growth indices out there, I don't want you to own good growth and bad growth. I only want you to try to find the best growth companies. Those are the ones that, historically speaking, are most likely to make you rich. Sticking purely with the index funds will only make you average. Of course, it's better to be average than broke, which is why I still advise putting half of your savings in an index fund like the SPY. But you need to use the other half to go after bigger gains. Unlike most professionals, I see the world is divided between two kinds of risks. The very real risk that comes from losing money in a bad stock and the just as real risk of missing out on a great stock that could give you a 1000 percent return over time and transform your entire life. Unlike the index funds evangelists, I think you can walk with an index fund and chew bubble gum with individual stocks at the same time. Here's the bottom line. Like I explained in How to Make Money in Any Market, putting some money in an index fund isn't bad advice. It's a good way to play it safe. But most people can't afford to purely play it safe unless they're already rich, which is why you have to put the other half of your holdings in the mix of individual stocks that you choose and a non-stock hedge. how to pick them? Stay tuned, and you'll find out. Let's go to Jacob in New York, please. Jacob. Hope all is well. My name is Jacob Green. I've been a fan of the show for a long time now. I'm from Long Island, New York. I'm in my sophomore year at Penn State as a finance and accounting major at the Smeel Business School. I'm hoping to bring him to Wall Street one day. That's fantastic. You were the one that got me excited to start investing, actually. Well, Mr. Smeel got me excited to invest in. I'm sorry, but he was a great man. He was a great man. How can I help? Yeah, so I have a question for you. I want to hear your advice on how should a young retail investor structure their portfolio to take advantage of long-term growth through ETFs and solid stocks while still leaving some room for riskier short-term trading to keep things exciting. Okay, I'm not so interested in short-term trading. I understand you might want to do that. I think you go with the highest-growth stocks. You just really have your whole life ahead of you to be. It'll make a lot of money. So let's load up with an index fund, but then highest-growth stocks, and then pick one stock that you think is really speculative and it doesn't work, you get another one. But we're going to go for gusto. We're going to go for the best early on and let them compound. I want to go to Glenn, Illinois. Glenn. Jim, my question is, a number of times in the past I've heard you say that you really like buying individual stocks and you seem to kind of dismiss the idea of being in mutual funds or ETFs. I was curious why you feel that way. Okay, well, let's be sure. I have a huge amount of money in index funds and ETFs. I am not against them. I am saying that I am a throwback to the way it always was before people went nuts with index funds. I like to have a mixture of both. I can't own stocks myself, so of course I own mutual funds and I own ETFs. But I just think they're part of the mosaic, not all. That's my bias. The people who like only index funds, I call them into question. I am willing to coexist with them, but they're not willing to coexist with me. Kelly in Florida. Kelly. Yes. Yes, sir. You're up. Sure. Go ahead. OK, Jim Kelly. Thank you for taking my call, Mr. Kramer. I have a question on your philosophy on stop sell orders and trailing stop orders. When do you use them and what percentage you should set them at? Well, I am always reluctant to use stop orders because sometimes what happens is you just blow right through your levels and end up with the worst price of the day. You're at the mercy of the market. I like to do set limit orders. And I think that that way you will never come up with something that says, how the heck did that happen to me? Right. I'm not saying owning an index fund isn't a good idea. I love it. But you'll only make real money if you pair that index fund with some high-quality stocks like we used to do before people went nuts owning just mutual funds that lever only to the index. On Mad Money Tonight, I'm teaching you all about how to make money in any market, starting with how I came up with my famous investing acronyms and how you can find out some of these on your own. Then if you pick your own stocks, you have to have an edge. I'm giving you one mantra to keep in mind that'll save you from embarrassment and losses. And there's plenty of stocks you can buy, but there are definitely others you should avoid. I'm running through the list of pitfalls that you should stay away from when looking for names to add to your portfolio. So stay with Cramer. Don't miss a second of Mad Money. Follow at Jim Cramer on X. Have a question? Tweet Cramer. Hashtag Mad Mentions. Send Jim an email to madmoneyatcnbc or give us a call at 1 Miss something Head to madmoney Which are America's top states for business? Get all the data and complete state-by-state analysis. See how your state measures up. America's top states for business. See the full list now at topstates.cnbc.com. Like I told you before the break, we live in a time where picking stocks is stigmatized. The most respected experts in the industry are always telling you to own index funds. And for the most part, the big boosters of individual stocks often love to promote the most speculative stocks in existence. Insanely high-risk stuff that often blows up in your face. Tonight, I'm coming out here to advocate something very different. Good old-fashioned growth stock investing. Today, this is widely considered heretical, but for most of my lifetime, it was the most orthodox opinion on investing, and it did well. I'm just trying to teach you what generations of investors knew to be self-evident. Unfortunately, these days, the sophisticated operators love to tell you that people are too stupid to manage their own money. I find it insulting. But I've got to tell you, when you look at the history, it's not that hard as long as you know how to stick to your guns. This is my thesis, by the way, in how to make money in any market. In every market, there are leaders. These are what I call hero players. We must strive to find and man, sometimes they're incredibly obvious to find. Of course, I've had plenty of clunkers in my day, but with the power of observation, some curiosity. Those are the two things you need. You can absolutely identify some of these phenomenal winners. And when you find a hero player, even if it's just one stock in your five stock portfolio, that's enough to produce some tremendous life changing returns and maybe far off pace in the S&P 500. Let me give you a little history, Russ. Back on February 5th, 2013, on this program, I introduced the term FANG. That was Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. And I urged people to invest in the four FANG stocks right then and there. And I really pushed it so hard. I pushed it many, many days. Many, many years. The acronym was the culmination of an idea I developed with a trader and analyst, Bob Lange, who worked with me at thestreet.com. We were searching for a way to shine a spotlight on the best growth stocks of the time we wanted everyone to buy. A decade later, when Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett coined the term Magnificent Seven for the slightly expanded and adjusted group of Alphabet, which is the old Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta platforms, that's the old Facebook, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Tesla, I went all in. I share Apple trusted Oreo and six of the seven saved Tesla, so it seemed only sensible. You can now follow the trust by joining the CBC Investing Club. So you have to ask, how did I spot Fang or Fang, which was how I integrated Apple? And why was I so quick to embrace six of the magnificent seven years before the term was coined? Simple. My eyes were open. I'm always hunting, not just for Amazon, but for the next Amazon or the next Netflix, next NVIDIA. Once the magnificent seven lose their magnificence, then there are another seven out there, believe me, that are just waiting to be found. And they, too, could be very obvious. But as long as I think these proven winners can stay strong and deliver, I'll stick with them. That said, look, I'm confident there are many, many more amazing growth companies with incredible stocks around. I hear about that every day. I hear them from you in the lightning round. Here's the thing about Fang and the Magnificent Seven. They were obvious. They were in your face. You could see them moving higher day after day for years. Your kids can tell you all about them. In some cases, these went up for more than a decade. You didn't have to be a genius to make money in these things. In fact, being a genius might have hurt you. A lot of people in this business are too clever by half. They see a good thing and then they overthink it, scaring themselves away from phenomenal winners. Let's say that on the day I introduced FANG, the FANG acronym. Remember, this is when these companies were already established, already the big ones you knew about. No incredible discovery required. You decide to put $1,000 into each of the four. Let's do the math here. And then you put an equal amount, $4,000, right, because there's four, into an S&P 500 index fund. Now, from that day in early 2013 to the end of 2024, your $4,000 in the S&P would have been terrific. It would have turned in $19,400. That's a 14.2% annual return. Not bad. Let me ask you. What if you invested $1,000 in each of the four FAANG stocks like I suggested? Adding a lot, FAANG would have given you your four grand $82,655 from 2013 to the end. You would have had rather. Which would you prefer? 82,000 in those four-year-old stocks are less than 20 grand in the S&P 500 index fund. It is a choice. It's your choice. It really is. Oh, and Apple, which hadn't been added to FAANG at that point, would have turned $1,000 into $17,994. So AA FAANG was also a winner. Does this prove anything? I'm sure that some people say, hey, listen, it's backdated. Others be saying it's cherry-picking because those are five of the greatest stocks of all time. Yet here's the deal why that's not true. I was coming on air practically every night and recommending FANG. They were hiding in plain sight like Edgar Allan Poe's purloined letter. They were companies that you probably interacted with every day. Why can't you find them? They were there for you. You knew them. They were available and obvious to anyone who cared to pay attention. In fact, before I aired this segment on FANG way back in 2013, do you know what I did? I wonder if it was a waste of time because these four stocks were so obvious. Everyone knew them. Was I really bringing anything new to the table by highlighting them? In retrospect, it was good to pay attention. Still is. But let's put my personal examples aside for a minute. A couple of years ago, an economist from Arizona State University, a fellow by the name of Hendrick Bessenbinder, published a paper on the difficulty of picking individual stocks. He's another apostle of index funds because he found that only a small number of individual stocks produced the vast bulk of the market's gains. I look at the same numbers and come to a very different conclusion. Looking at data from December 31, 1925 until December 31, 2023, Bess and Bender sought to examine how well you could do with stocks, provided you reinvested dividends and didn't sell. His first finding historically, the majority of the 29,078 stocks he looked at did not make money. Now, it shouldn't shock you. I'm not telling you to invest in just any old stock. Most stocks have zero pedigree, and their gains are often the product of an over-enthusiastic public and greedy investment bankers trying to feed the maddening law. His second finding, there were thousands of stocks that would have absolutely made you money, but perhaps not enough to justify investing in them instead of an index fund. Now, a decent return, but an average return for average investors who want to see average gains. Index funds, they're fine, but they're not the heroes we're looking for. And remember, I still advocate them. His third finding, 17 stocks deliver cumulative returns of more than 5 million percent, or $50,000 per dollar invested. That means a $1,000 investment would have yielded upward of $50 million. All right, these were all relatively well-known companies. Boeing, IBM, Coca-Cola, Deere, Johnson & Johnson. They could have made you a fortune. Best and Binder thinks that that's like finding a needle in a haystack. Do you think that? Do you really? The bottom line, it's only hard to find these hero stocks if you're picking randomly. For anyone with eyes to see, we're talking about obvious winners that tend to keep winning for years and years. Those are the stocks I'm always looking for. And when I find them, I'm never going to shut up the back. MidBunny's back after the break. Hey, Jim, your mission has been very successful in our family. I listen to your show multiple times a week for investing knowledge. I just want to say thanks. I love your show. Thanks for always looking up for the world back. A huge thank you for all you've done to make me a better investor. I got to call Kramer because I can't make a move without this guy. I want to make people better investors. If they make money, fantastic. Let's go to work. Which are America's top states for business? Get all the data and complete state-by-state analysis. See how your state measures up. America's top states for business. See the full list now at topstates.cnbc.com. All night I've been making the case for picking individual stocks rather than parking all of your money in an index fund that mirrors the S&P 500. As I point out in How to Make Money in Any Market, very few stocks generate tremendous long-term outperformance, but the ones that do rarely come out of nowhere. They tend to be obvious, high-profile, usually in the kind of business that you regularly interact with in your everyday life. But this is a big but. If you're going to pick your own stocks, you need to have an edge. When I got started in this game, it was much harder to access information, which made investing a real headache, very time consuming. At the same time, though, it was also much easier to get an edge to know something that other investors don't because there was all sorts of data buried in places that no one would ever look. These days, everything is on the Internet. A few search queries, maybe a little dialogue with one of the chatbots, and you can access most of what's relevant that you need to pick a stock. You barely even need to think about it. In my day, it was very different. When I first started picking stocks, I was working at a thing called the American Lawyer in New York City. I moved from the backseat of my Ford Fairmont to my sister's couch. I was able to put away a little money, so I opened a brokerage account and started reading articles and business publications. Back then, I was always keeping an eye on stocks with low dollar prices, single-digit names, because I assumed I'd get more bang for my buck if I could buy more shares at once. God, I was young. But back then, you had to speak to a human when you placed an order, and I didn't want to embarrass myself by saying I wanted to buy seven shares or something. I could imagine the broker on the other and snickering to herself, laughing at me while I was paying my 2% of the trade during commission. A couple bucks, perhaps. Now, most brokers just charge you no commission at all, and you can do it all without ever speaking to a human. Of course, I had no idea what I was doing when I got started. My first stock, a stock called American Agronomics. It was a Florida-based company built around orange groves. The American lawyer had Forbes sent to its library, and I figured nobody knew stocks better than Forbes, right? Forbes recommended the stock. What could be better than owning an orange grove? People are always going to be drinking orange juice, right? Keep in mind, this was a few years before Trading Places, an all-time great comedy with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd, where the bad guys lose a fortune trading orange juice futures. But I don't think Eddie Murphy was even on Saturday Night Live at that point. So I bought 10 shares of American Agronomics for $10 each. Then I sat back to watch the magic happen. Well, almost immediately, Florida had a rare flash frost, and the stock almost went to zero. Desperate to make money, I dug deeper until I could find a stock that sold for an even lower price again, so I could buy even more shares. I returned to Forbes, and this time I found a stock called Bobby Brooks. It was a women's fashion company. As little as I knew about growing oranges, I knew even less about women's fashion. Didn't matter. at just two bucks a piece. I mean, I bought 100 shares. How much could I lose? How about everything? Soon after I bought the stock and started slinking lower and then lower again. Bad selling season, wrong clothes, bankruptcy. Yikes. I remember thinking that the saving grace of the stock market was that a declining stock can go below zero In retrospect given that I knew nothing about women fashion I deserved to lose everything didn I And that's why I decided my mistake was not knowing more, much more, about these companies than what I read in Forbes. These articles were meant to be a starting point, yet I was treating them as an end point, the last thing I looked at before I pulled the trigger. I'd done no research on either stock and I couldn't figure out where to start. I was close to giving up until I got a call from a childhood friend who told me that there's some hiring going on in the neighborhood. I was in Philadelphia. He told me that a local fastener company, Screws Bolts, was looking for workers. It was called Standard Press Steel SPS. Almost 80 years in business at the time, he suggested maybe I should take the job. It was much better than money I was making as a journalist, although that's a low bar. I didn't take the job. But you know what? I recognized what my friend was telling me is useful information. Standard-pressed steel was hiring. That must be doing well. The stock was at 35. I had to wait until I could replenish my coffers enough to buy five shares. Before pulling the trigger this time, I decided to learn a little more about the company. Was it making money? Was it losing money? Here's a simple lesson. When a company's got so much business that it needs to hire more workers to meet demand, that's a good sign. But that was all I knew, so I decided to hit the books. I found a kind librarian in New York City's giant flagship library who passed me off to a second librarian who knew something about business. She explained to me that public companies had to file anything important that they did with the Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC. She sent me to a separate library in a separate building that had those filings. There was no central index of anything back then. No search query, no recent information. I was flying blind. All I knew was this company, SPS, needed more workers. I decided, you know what, that's enough. I bought my five shares. Stock immediately jumped. And I made 15 bucks. That didn't make up for my previous losses. But I decided it was terrific to make some money in stocks. I sold it. Looking back, I should have stuck with SPS was eventually bought by Precision Cashports, which in turn was bought by Berkshire Hathaway. After I sold my shares, I analyzed what I'd done right and what I'd done wrong in these first three trades. Something that's become a ritual for me on every trade. On the first two American Agronomics and Bobby Brooks, I was basically just relying on journalists who were relying on sources who wrote articles that they thought were right. I liked the orange growth stock because I figured that people would always drink orange juice. What kind of edge was that? I also like that it was only $10, but that was irrelevant. As for the flash frost that wiped out the orange harvest, I lived in Florida. I'd even covered a couple of these freezers for the Tallahassee Democrat. I ran out of school. No excuses there. My bobbing books trade was a pure revenge trade because I was trying to make back the money I'd lost, but it turned out to be revenge against myself. I knew nothing about women's clothes, nothing about the cutting, nothing at all. I didn't even know how to read the numbers. Not that I looked at them. What did I know to win an SPS? I knew something that wasn't widely known, at least back then. I knew they had more business than they expected. It wasn't everything, but it was something that few outside my neighborhood would have known. I had an edge. Which brings me to the bottom line. As I explained in how to make money in any market, you should never buy anything that you don't have some personal knowledge about unless the stock in question belongs to a well-known best of breed operator. But for the vast majority of stocks, don't even think about buying them unless you actually know something about the underlying company. And remember, it's never been easier to find out. Let's go to Lois in Massachusetts. Lois. Hello, Jim. Hi, Lois. How are you? I'm good. Good. Do you like the 529 plan to save for college? And should I wait for the stock market to go down before we invest? Okay. I like any plan that gives you any tax benefit. I talk about that and how to make money. It's really important to take advantage of anything that the government does that makes it so you pay lower taxes. And that's why I like that plan. Let's go to Dean in Florida, please. Dean. Hey, Jim. Big booyah from the southwest coast of Florida. Excellent. Been there. Loved it. Thank you. So I had a question for you. You've always said there's a difference between retirement money and mad money. How should I invest in each bucket? Well, I have a list of stocks in how to make money in any market, which is a switch from companies that are growth companies and companies that have some growth with a very nice shield. And that's what you have to switch with. What's really important is you don't just go into cash because cash won't earn you enough and you'll end up having to work until the day you die. I'm trying to prevent that with a group of stocks that can give you growth, but not at a cost to you. growth with yield. That's what I like. Alright, everybody, never buy something that you don't have any personal knowledge about. Don't even think about even buying a stock unless you actually know something about the underlying company. And you can explain it to someone. Watch where I made money at. I'm giving you my criteria pitfall stocks to avoid when you're building a portfolio. Then there's two key words to keep in mind when you're looking for a stock that can make money in any market. I'm revealing what they are. And later, I'm opening my tweets and texts and emails and taking some of your questions. So stay with Kramer. Ba-ba-ba-booyah! Jimmy Kill! Your wisdom in teaching has been amazing. You have a talent that is superior plus educational. Yours stands out as being one of the best. I can't help but say thanks for all the good years of teaching. You know why your show is top around the world? It's because you do your homework. And that's why you make everybody money. You do your homework. All night, I've been making the case for my new investing playbook. Put half your money in a cheap index fund and then put the other half in a portfolio of five individual stocks and one non-stock hedge like gold or Bitcoin. This is all laid out, by the way, on how to make money in any market. So far, we've been talking about why it's worth picking individual stocks. But now I want to talk how you do it, as in what the heck are you supposed to identify the five stocks that are worth owning in your portfolio out of thousands of stocks that trade in the United States? What you want, big picture, are stocks that meet two criteria. They need to be observable, meaning you can see what the companies do. And they need to be doing something that you're genuinely curious about. Is it really that easy? Of course not. But those are the first two questions you need to ask, because if it's not observable and it's not something you're curious about, then how will you ever put in the time to find out if it's even worth owning? Believe me, you'll stop. Now, say you're getting started and you spot a company that jumps out as a winner. You can feel it in your bones. But let me be blunt. Odds are you're wrong. Right here is where most people make the worst mistake. They somehow feel that they know more than the market does about a given stock without doing any research whatsoever. However, the truth is you'll never know more than the market does unless you have inside information. But if you trade on this information, you're going to go to prison. Like I mentioned before the break, though, you should have an edge when you invest in something. But these days, that edge likely won't come from knowing information that others don't. So, again, you're never going to know more than the market. But that's not necessarily because the market is constantly making mistakes and judgments. See, your edge comes from being right about something that Wall Street is wrong about. Before we dive into the details, though, I want to help you steer clear of some pitfalls. Frankly, you can make the process of stock picking a lot easier by first filtering out what's not worth owning. And at any given time, there are a lot of groups that simply don't make the cut. For example, you've got these cyclicals. Those are the boom and bust companies that are more or less hostage to the broader economy. Their earnings fluctuate like crazy. Think the full price retailers or the suppliers of building materials or discretionary entertainment companies. If the economy is good, they thrive, right? But in bad times, look at the materials companies, the ones that make steel or copper or chemicals or paper. Their earnings per share are incredibly volatile because they're joined at the hip with a broader economy. I don't like that. The stocks in these cyclical companies are worth buying when the economy is real ugly and then worth selling when the economy is red hot. In the end, though, I see them as two-way stocks. And as I explained how to make money in any market, we want one-way stocks that can thrive even in a bad economy. Even the best of the cyclicals are hostage to these economic forces. They're not what we're looking for long term. Second group, companies that are meant to go up slowly over time but might be overcome by sudden churns and interest rates of the Fed policy. Think the banks, insurance companies, lenders. We call them the financials. Again, there are times when the financials can make you big money, but they can also be overthrown by events that they have no control over. Financial institutions can vanish overnight. Like they said, somebody did during the SNL crisis from 1988 to 1992. They're the first stocks to get crushed in a downturn because they have exposure to credit risk and can suffer a crippling defaults when borrowers lose their jobs and can't afford repay. They're the first to sink during an inflation scare, too, because that causes the Fed to slam the brakes in the economy. In other words, the financials are not stocks that can make you money in any market. Third group to avoid, fleeting companies with no earnings that are strictly conceptual. Typically, a third of the stocks I get asked about fall into this category. Most of them lose gobs of money and will never amount to anything. But when Wall Street's in love with speculation, their stocks can soar. Unfortunately, these ultra-specular plays always come right back to earth when the stock market takes a turn for the worse. They are stocks that work only in bull markets. Fourth group of stocks that present themselves as growth vehicles but suffer from a severe case of what I call LSD. Not the drug LSD. LSD is Wall Street's peak for low single-digit, as in low single-digit growth rate. Many consumer packaged goods companies fall into this category. In the old days, we called them safety stocks because they tend to have high dividends that would protect you during a downturn. These days, though, they don't seem to give you much protection at all. All you get is mediocrity. Finally, there are companies with fixed costs that are so darn high, it takes a perfect storm of positivity for them to make good money. Here I'm talking about the department store chains, the automakers, the airlines. The automakers and the airlines especially have insanely expensive labor contracts and a lot of heavy duty machinery. Again, there are times when these stocks work, but they only work temporarily. And you always know that you'll have to completely ring the register before the business peaks. So here's the bottom line. As I said before, the only real defense in the stock market is consistent growth. So when you're building a portfolio for the long haul, you want to steer clear of companies that can be derailed by inconsistency. And honestly, that is most of the market. You take those groups off the table and it's much easier to find something that you can stick with for years and years. Ned Money's back after the break. Booyah for the Emperor of Kramerica. Honorable James J. Kramer. You got me jumping around my office right now. Thank you so much for all you do for us. I enjoy your show and I find it very entertaining and informative. I watched your first ever episode of Mad Money back in 2005 and I've been watching every single episode ever since. Don't miss Mad Money every night at 6 p.m. Eastern. Plus, join the CNBC Investing Club and stick with Kramer around the clock. Like I told you before the break there are all sorts of stocks that only work under certain situations There's nothing wrong with that. But when I wrote How to Make Money in Any Market, I meant that title literally. For example, the boom and bust cyclicals that are hostage to the broader economy have an expiration date. When they can make you good money in expansion for a year or two or even three, sooner or later, the economy is going to peak and you need to sell. Because owning the cyclicals into a recession is a recipe for disaster. So what cohort can make money in any market? What we're looking for is something called secular growth. Now, that has nothing to do with separation of church and state. It's an economic or scientific context. Secular just means extremely long term. You want companies that can put up strong revenue growth year after year after year with expanding gross margins that translate into terrific earnings. You want something that can do that for years, for even decades, regardless of the economic backdrop. These are the companies that can survive a dramatic uptick in interest rates or a severe slowdown in the economy, which is what usually comes after those rate hikes. What exactly allows a business to survive a massive rise in interest rates? Simple. If your company doesn't need to borrow money and its customers don't depend on financing to make the purchases, then it doesn't have to worry about interest rates. When the meme stock guys pushed AMC, the movie theater chain, as a turnaround play, I knew the stock would have a limited shelf life because the balance sheet was heinous and the company needed to borrow too much money to get back into growth mode. That doesn't mean I'm against all companies that borrow money. That would be absurd. Amazon and Tesla borrowed vast sums of money when they were getting started, but they both had massive opportunities in front of them. Very different from, say, an AMC, which was borrowing money just to stay afloat. For that, you need to examine the balance sheet and the cash flows. You can look this stuff up yourself. But honestly, if you ask the AI chatbots, they're surprisingly helpful when it comes to doing just that, to balance sheet questions. That said, better ask more than one chatbot to play it safe because even the best of them still are totally, they're not totally reliable. I find that to be the case every day. That aside, I told you secular growth stocks need two things. the ability to survive high interest rates, and the ability to survive and even thrive during a recession. So let's talk about the recession side of the story. If you want to know how business handles the slowdown, just check the history. How did it do during the Great Recession, the financial crisis? How did it do during the brief COVID recession that came along when the Fed started aggressively raising interest rates in March of 2022? Even if the stock in question got clobbered, I'm not too worried. as long as it was able to bounce back rapidly once the stock market found its footing. And look, once you find a company that can handle higher rates or weaker economy like the Magnificent Seven, you've got my blessing to buy those stocks even if they look expensive with high-priced earnings multiples. Wall Street's willing to pay through the nose for consistently strong earnings growth. And you know what? You should, too. Finally, when you identify a company that's rate-proof, rate-hike-proof and recession-proof, You want more quality, the ability to scale, meaning does it have the capacity to grow into a much, much larger enterprise? Let me give you my favorite example here because it's where I got my viewers in on the ground floor, and it's really emblematic of what I'm talking about. It's a company called Regeneron. When CEO Len Schleifer came on MadMoney in April of 2005, he was one of our first guests. At the time, Regeneron was an early-stage biotech that was developing potential cancer treatments that might maybe have been useful for age-related macular degeneration, too. Back then, the stock was trading at less than $5, and I told you it was worth speculating on. Hey, maybe better than an index fund. Turns out Regeneron's macular degeneration drug was a blockbuster, eventually doing nearly $10 billion in annual sales at its peak. This is the great thing about Biotex. When they hit it big, they can transform a tiny development stage company into a pharmaceutical powerhouse. So here's the bottom line. When you're searching for stock picks, as I tell you, in How to Make Money in Any Market, you want great secular growth stories that can handle high interest rates or a weak economy and have the ability to scale, meaning you can see how they might eventually grow into something enormous. Those are the kinds of stocks you can own for years or even decades, racking up tremendous gains as long as you regularly do the homework so that you can fail if something ever goes really wrong or stay long for the glorious compounding ride. Stick with Kramer. Booyah, Jim Kramer. I'm a first-time caller, a happy club member. I want to thank you for being the biggest champion of investing. Thank you for helping me become a millionaire. I always say my favorite part of the show is answering questions directly from you. Tonight, I'm cracking up my emails from investing club members answering all your investing questions. If you like this, please don't forget to join the CBC Investing Club. First up, we have a question from James, who asks, Jim, I'm 65 years old and investing my portfolio for growth and income for the next 25 years. Is it time to start allocating more investment dollars into dividend-paying stocks or stay with 65% growth value and 35% dividend equities. My total equity portfolio is $4.5 million. Well, first of all, congratulations. You've invested very well. Second, because of that amount, what we're going to do is we're going to put 50-50. We're going to make it so that you've got some great, slower growth, high dividend plays that can compound and generate that income you need. And I agree with you. Let's keep the growth for the rest. But you do have to cut back on pure growth because I like the idea with that amount of money that you have that you never lose it. Once you get rich, well, let's just say you only need to get rich once. Next up, we have a question from Albert who asks, when, if ever, might it be appropriate to protect multi-year upside gains that are significant but unrealized with protective calls or other options strategies? Let's not fool around with them. I know a lot of people want to do that. A lot of people want to sell covered calls. A lot of people want to get involved in the options market. I like to keep it simple, especially because, you know what, you don't want to ever have, let's say, all your stuff more than one piece of paper. I am a firm believer that one piece of paper is the way to go. And you can't do that if you kind of mess it up with a lot of option strategies that I don't think are going to do that much for you. Now, let's go to Thomas, who wants to know, how can we strike the proper balance between building a new position while respecting a cost basis on a profitable and fundamentally sound stock headed higher? OK, you always have to think, should I sell one to buy another? I don't like to have a huge number of stocks. I don't want you to be a mutual fund. So what you have to do is you have to look at your portfolio. You have to say, this one's come to fruition. There's not that much more. And I'd like to put a new one on. But don't put a new one on until you sell another. Now, let's go to Zachary in Nevada who asks, with a five core stock portfolio, thank you. That's what we do. That's what we recommend. What should we do when stocks are all outperforming the market? Do we keep buying them on a set schedule even though they are consistently going up? or adjust new deposit allocations from 20% evenly to a more weighted allocation. I like to be a little bit more on autopilot when it puts more money to work. All the studies that I did, we at Ben Stoto and Jeff Marshall went over and over and over again. The best thing to do is just to continue to put money in those stocks unless something's wrong, and then you can change up. Our next question is from Michael in New York, who asks, why do stocks tank when a company barely misses earnings? For example, estimates say $2 billion in revenue. They post $1.9 billion. Stock gets smoked. In the grand scheme of things, does a tiny miss like that really matter? And why does Wall Street punish those severely? Wall Street has what's known as a whisper, OK? There's another set of numbers that are far better than the ones you're looking at. And when a company can't do those far better ones, if they overpromise and underdeliver, then there's just no place for them. And the big institutions will sell. Is it right to do that? There are some times they throw out babies with bathwater. But for the most part, I've got to tell you, if they can't hit the whisper, they can't hit the higher number. You know, sometimes you do have to take action. I'm not against what they do. Next, we have a question from Mimi in California. We ask, what is the best way to avoid riding a long term investment all the way up and then all the way down? Look what we do in the club. When we have a parabolic move, when we have a stock that is well above our basis, we trim. That gives us the flexibility to be able to buy back. I call it trading around a position. Is it something I do very often when we get a parabolic move? The answer is yes, always. Now, on to Dave in Arkansas, who asks, I am fortunate to retire in my mid-50s with significant IRA and taxable accounts. What's the best investment strategy? Hold high growth in beta stocks in my IRA to avoid capital gains. Hold them taxable, so if they drop, I can take the loss. Appreciate your advice in this. It's the former, not the latter. You want to keep them in the IRA, and I like your spirit. I want you to keep investing for the long term and don't feel like when you get to 60 or something, it's time to cash out. We don't like that. Next question is from John of Virginia. How often do you review targets and what makes you sell at a target versus raising the target? This is something that I go very closely with Jeff Marks and Zefuma. And any time we have to raise the target, we all talk about it and try to figure out exactly whether it makes sense. We don't want to overpromise ourselves and then under deliver. But we also know that there are a lot of situations where it's just not worth it to raise it. if we think that there is some hesitation for us, we want to wait until the stock comes back down before we take from a two to a one. Our last question comes from Jack, who asks, when does it make sense to buy dividend stocks versus growth stocks? OK, depends. I mean, look, there are some there's some dividend stocks I just love, like growth stocks and their dividends. There's lots of growth stocks that pay dividends. But as we get older, I do want to have more income coming in. And that's something you consider. And by the way, I address that directly. and I think I don't want to cut it short, but I address it directly in how to make money in any market. And I really try to give you a list of the types of stocks you need to switch to as you get older. I'd like to say there's always a bone rocking somewhere. I promise I'll find it just for you right here on Mad Money. I'm Jim Cramer. See you next time. on television, radio, internet, or another medium. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Kramer as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. 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