CNBC Host — Mad Money & Squawk on the Street

Jim Cramer's Apple Watch: "I Believe You Should Be Standing at All Times"

He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, covered homicides for the Tallahassee Democrat, lived out of his car for nine months, paid his Harvard Law tuition from his own trading profits, built a hedge fund to a 24% compounded return over 14 years, co-founded TheStreet, and has hosted Mad Money on CNBC every weeknight since 2005. Jim Cramer is the most kinetic person on financial television. He hates chairs. He monitors everything. The Apple Watch on his wrist is appropriate.

Jim Cramer — Apple Watch on wrist. Source: CNBC

Jim Cramer — host, Mad Money; co-anchor, Squawk on the Street; founder, CNBC Investing Club

James Joseph Cramer was born February 10, 1955, in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, and began tracking stocks in childhood with sufficient accuracy that he has said if he had actually invested in his sixth-grade picks, he would have made several million dollars. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1977, where he served as president and editor-in-chief of The Harvard Crimson. After graduation he worked as a reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, covering a range from homicides to sporting events, before helping Steve Brill launch American Lawyer magazine. He then enrolled at Harvard Law School — and began trading stocks with enough success that he paid his law tuition from the proceeds. During that period, living on minimal income, his apartment was robbed, and he lived out of his car for nine months. He still invested: $100 per month into the Fidelity Magellan Fund.

After earning his law degree in 1984 and passing the New York Bar, Cramer joined Goldman Sachs in sales and trading, writing simultaneously for The New Republic on stock market topics. His first private client — Harvard professor and New Republic owner Martin Peretz, who gave him $500,000 to invest — led to the founding of his own hedge fund in 1987. Cramer Berkowitz compounded at 24% annually over 14 years, through one of the most volatile stretches in market history, including a 36% return in 2000 — the year the dot-com bubble burst. In 1996, Cramer and Peretz co-founded TheStreet, an online financial news and analysis platform that at its peak reached a market capitalisation of $1.7 billion. In 2001, at his wife's urging after years of 18-hour days, Cramer handed the hedge fund to his partner and retired from active management.

He was a CNBC guest commentator through the late 1990s, co-hosted Kudlow & Cramer from 2002 to 2005, and on March 14, 2005, launched Mad Money with Jim Cramer, which has aired on CNBC every weeknight at 6 PM ET since. The format is part market analysis, part performance: Cramer roams a studio with a soundboard of bulls, bears, and foghorns, answers viewer calls with "Booyah," debates himself in segments, and closes every episode with "There's always a bull market somewhere." He co-anchors the 9 AM hour of Squawk on the Street and runs the CNBC Investing Club, a subscription product through which subscribers follow his charitable trust portfolio in real time. He has written eight books on investing. He is 71 years old and shows no intention of slowing down.

"I believe that you should be standing at all times — standing over people, watching things, moving, staying in motion. I never like to be tethered." — Jim Cramer, on why he doesn't use a chair

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The Man Who Cannot Sit Still

Cramer's philosophy of physical posture is not a performance quirk; it is a genuine operational principle. He did not have chairs at his hedge fund. He threw them against the wall at the start of Mad Money for the first two seasons — until it started straining his back. He roams his studio while broadcasting. He has described his approach to market monitoring in terms that could apply equally to physical space: standing over things, watching, staying in motion, never tethered. This is the same man who, having lived out of his car for nine months as a young lawyer, kept putting $100 a month into a mutual fund rather than waiting until circumstances improved.

The Apple Watch is, for this personality type, a near-perfect device. It does not require sitting down to use it. It does not require pulling a phone from a pocket, unlocking a screen, and navigating to the information needed. It delivers what is relevant — a market alert, an incoming message, a health reading — at the moment it is relevant, while the wearer continues to stand, move, and monitor. It is the anti-tethering watch. For Cramer, who has made clear that he finds tethering philosophically objectionable, it is the natural choice.

Always a Bull Market Somewhere

Cramer ends every episode of Mad Money with the same line: "There's always a bull market somewhere, and I promise I'll try to find it for you right here on Mad Money." He has been saying it since 2005. The Apple Watch updates itself over the air, continuously, through each new watchOS release — adding new health monitoring features, new intelligence capabilities, new reasons to keep wearing it. It, too, is always finding something. The watch on Jim Cramer's wrist has a 24-hour battery life, monitors his heart, delivers his messages, and never once suggests that he should consider sitting down. He wouldn't listen anyway.

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