Jim Cramer Blog

You can't become a great investor by watching from the sidelines or giving up after a few losses; you have to be willing to get in the game and stay in it, Jim Cramer told viewers of his "Mad Money" TV show.
Cramer said he knows how hard it can be to keep one's head in the game, and as far as he's concerned there are three "forces" that keep people out of stocks: "boredom, bummers and brokers."
Boredom, said Cramer, is a big problem. If market players are not interested in the stocks they own, they won't pay attention and that can lead to unexpected losses. "That's a recipe for disaster," Cramer said.
But as long as people invest well and stay interested, they could make a fortune, he continued. The one cure for boredom with investing is speculation, said Cramer, who believes people need to speculate if they want to be good investors. Speculation, he explained, means trading in a "high-risk, high-reward" stock and "trying to turn a little money into a whole lot of money in not a lot of time."
Some might consider speculation to be foolhardy and "more immoral than gambling," but Cramer, who has made some of his biggest gains by speculating, believes speculation is good for investors.
"I'm telling you it's OK to speculate and make those risky investments that most of the talking heads frown on," he said. "And not only is it OK -- it's entirely necessary. It's prudent and responsible."
Usually when Cramer talks about diversification he's referring to it across sectors, but the principle is the same here. People who don't own some high-risk stocks are not really diversified, he said.
The Ground Rules
Because speculation can be "really risky," Cramer cautioned that investors should only start once they understand the basic ground rules of speculating.
First, never invest retirement money in speculation, he stressed. And second, don't ever have more than 20% of your non-retirement portfolio in speculative stocks.
Cramer urged very conservative investors to put a tiny bit of their money into a speculative stock. "Make it 1% or 2% of your portfolio if you're that conservative, because trust me, that 1% or 2% will make the whole process of investing a lot more interesting," he said.
What to Look For
Generally speaking, Cramer said, when he talks of speculation he is referring to small-cap stocks, meaning those with a market cap of anywhere from $250 million to $2 billion. For those new to the game, market capitalization represents the number of shares of a company multiplied by its stock price. It's one of the best ways of knowing what the market believes a company is worth, he explained.

Published By TheStreet.com

Labels: Jim Cramer, Mad Money