Thursday, August 23, 2007

Jim Cramer beats Monkey in Stock Picking Contest!

UPDATE: Here.
Original post:
(for one week only, the monkey is ahead on performance: see below)
"...You know what – I don’t work for Murdoch”

Cramer; Aug. 20 show. Then he said let Cramer be Cramer or something, I wasn't paying attention, I was reading Warren Buffett's story about arbitraging cocoa beans against an equity.

Turns out Cramer was responding to the Barron's story
"Shorting Cramer" which had this line:

When we asked Cramer and CNBC for their own records of Mad Money's stock-picking performance, they had more excuses than a Tour de France cyclist dodging a blood test. They complained that the list from YourMoneyWatch.com contained some stocks from the program's "Lightning Round," in which Cramer gives a quick analysis and a buy or sell decision on stocks phoned in live by viewers. These, they argued, shouldn't count in our tally.


I've been following Cramer via CramerWatch.org where they put his picks up against those of Leonard the Wonder Monkey.

Methodology:
Our method of evaluating Jim Cramer's stock recommendations is simple. We record his Lightning Round recommendations as he makes them on TV, and then we have our monkey make recomendations at random on the same stocks. We then wait 30 days, and see who came out on top.

Results to date:

Since November 1, 2005, Jim and Leonard's overall records are:

Jim Cramer - 138 wins, 138 losses, 48 ties
Leonard the Wonder Monkey - 138 wins, 138 losses, 48 ties

Ongoing Stats:
Jim Cramer is right 49.27% of the time.
Jim Cramer's picks average a 0.24% ROI after 30 days.

Leonard the Wonder Monkey is right 49.95% of the time.
Leonard's picks average a 0.43% ROI after 30 days.

Since Cramer seems to have decided to stop manipulating stocks

Cramer's comments surprised lawyers and regulators. "I think that the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Attorney are likely going to have to decide whether Cramer is just a braggart, or just confessed," says Gidon Caine at law firm Jones Day.

he may want to look at this:

Monkeys learn to do arithmetic for peanuts

...Addessi, a researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies in Rome, Italy, tested whether her capuchins could understand the value of monkey money, and then use it to buy the greatest amount of food.


From NewScientist
UPDATE: We've got a related post above.