I happened to watch a really interesting The Big Short Sunday night and the scene about the Bear Stearns CEO brought back memories of Jim Cramer's HUGE mistake about the company. I also recall a bank analyst (Dick Bove) recommending Lehmann Brothers not too long (Aug 21) before it collapsed as well because he thought it was a takeover target...OOOOOPPS. It kind of reminds me of the current economic state where the Central Banks are telling us that everything is fine even though a significant % of the world's gov't bonds have negative interest rates.

1. The Bear Stearns Segment.  On March 3rd, 2008, Jim Cramer strongly defended Bear Stearns, proclaiming that the company was fine and that you should not pull your money. Less than a week later, Bear Stearns had collapsed.

2. On February 29th, 2000, Jim Cramer gave his "top 10 stocks" that are "going to make it in the New World".  This turned out to be a phenomenally bad list that would have incinerated the portfolio of any investor who was following along and buying. The ten stocks were:

SVNX, ARBA, ISLD, EXDS, INSP, INKT, MERQ, SNRA, VRSN, VRTS

I could also add in the collapse of his thestreet.com stock which ipo'd at over $60 and sunk to less than $1, and his call on Wachovia Bank that also collapsed shortly after his Buy recommendation. But somehow CNBC keeps featuring him on their channel along with every other "the market's going higher" analyst that exists on the planet.

And if you believe in the back tested Spy Pro trading signals from 2008, you would have made more than 100% that year trading the non-leveraged L/S RUT funds from Rydex, and you would have only been "IN" the market for just 142 market days.