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Hero
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Right Where You Are
James Cramer dreams of managing a multimillion-dollar stock portfolio. He wants to be a force on Wall Street and speak with a voice of thunder.
James Cramer barely makes a living as a writer for a small newspaper.
Since he has zero real dollars to invest, James begins managing an imaginary stock portfolio. Soon he is spending all his free time studying the stock market and agonizing over his imaginary investments as though millions of real dollars were at stake. His focus and intensity are astounding. His friends ask, “What’s gotten into James?”
James is bursting with new theories about stock trading. Since his newspaper bosses won’t allow him to write about his bizarre ideas, he decides to simply start where he’s at. So, like a dreamer, James Cramer begins leaving stock tips on his answering machine for whoever might happen to call his number.
Sometimes the calls are from telemarketers who want James to change his long distance service. Sometimes the calls are from strangers who have mistakenly dialed the wrong number. But mostly the calls are from friends who think James is tilting at windmills. “Listen Don Quixote, I’m really sick of having to listen to your stupid stock-tip-of-the-day before I can leave you a message. Just cut it out, okay? No one is interested and even if we were, you know that none of us has any money. Hey, call me when you get in and we’ll decide where to have dinner. But I don’t want to hear about the stock market tonight, okay? And by the way, you’re an idiot.”
Martin Peretz wants James to write a book review for his magazine, The New Republic. He calls and gets the answering machine. Fascinated by the stock tip, Peretz decides to take the advice that James has so generously left for “whosoever will.” Soon Peretz is a daily caller. One day he calls while James is at home. There’s an awkward silence while he waits for the recording to begin. When Peretz finally realizes that James is actually on the line, he says, “Hi. My name is Martin Peretz and I’m convinced that your stock tips are way better than what I’m getting from my stockbroker. How would you like to manage a $500,000 portfolio?”
No, this is not a story that I invented for a movie script. James Cramer and Martin Peretz are both real people. Today, James Cramer is a hurricane on Wall Street where he manages a stock portfolio that exceeds two hundred million dollars. His website, www.TheStreet.com is visited by thousands of investors each day.
Maybe James Cramer’s friends were right. Only an idiot would do that much research just to leave a daily stock tip on an answering machine. Yes, any person who would do that would have to be a solid gold, totally focused, two hundred million-dollar idiot.
Gosh, I wish I were that big an idiot.
~ Roy H. Williams
To view the archives click here.
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Invisible Heroes is a collection of more than 100 biographical stories written by Roy H. Williams, the Wizard of Ads. You can read a few of these stories in the archives of this web page, but most of them are inaccessible because they're soon to be published in a book.
We create our heroes from our hopes and dreams. And then they create us in their own image. Heroes raise the bar we jump and hold high the standards we live by. They're the embodiment of all we're striving to be.
Do you want to be notified when Invisible Heroes is published? Give us your email address and we'll send you a note when the book is ready. (We solemnly swear not to let anyone else have your address. We detest spam as much as you do.)
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