Edit: What I mean to say is that I cost myself 10 years of work by following his advice - my fault - obviously he did not hold a gun to my head. Back then he was not a clown with a show... he was a fund manager just like the fund managers you see as guests on shows today (there was less internet and info back in 2000). Many of his strategies crashed too fast to get out in one piece and he was still recommending to buy more when they started to fall. Since then I have earned more money and invested in ETFs slowly working my way to retired. My goal is to let younger folks chasing 10x at high CAPE know that the individual recommendations did poorly when the bubble burst but the ETFs slowly and steady got to retirement goal.
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In 2000 Jim Cramer went viral with his 'only 10 stocks to buy/own for the future'. He said he was buying them every day, especially if they went down, valuations were old fashioned... they were guaranteed 10-20x.
# Jim Cramer's 'only 10 stocks to own for the future'
1. **724 Solutions**
2. **Ariba**
3. **Digital Island**
4. **Exodus Communications**
5. **InfoSpace**
6. **Inktomi**
7. **Mercury Interactive**
8. **Sonera**
9. **VeriSign**
10. **Veritas Software**
Cramer's choices were soon mostly destroyed too fast to get out whole. By contrast, the same initial $100,000 in a passive S&P 500 index investment would be worth **\~$712,600** today.
This is how taking Jim Cramer's recommendations made me work 10 extra years before I could retire (not hypothetical... true story). I'm just sharing my story because I see posts in this channel looking for 'guaranteed 10x' and I still see Cramer fanboys... IMHO anyone can pick winners when the whole market is going up... the true challenge is who can predict success over time. Someone will say 'VeriSign' is/was great... but that was insufficient to make up for the 90% bad choices and resulted in a 50% loss over 25 years vs 700% gain if you ignored him and listened to Boggle. Young people may not think this is a big deal... but trust me... when you are old... having to work 10 more years is painful.